Footbridge for Families
Fall 2022 - Spring 2023
We redesigned Footbridge for Families' website to help better connect them with government agents and health insurance administrators so that they could form more partnerships and receive money to aid their mission.
Project Lead
Avani Guduri
Team Members
Allison Zhang, Kayley Ji, Tracy Yang, Jasmine Dong, Alisa Lo, Chloe He, Adrian Shin, Connie Kim, Sarah Yun
Community Partner
Footbridge for Families
Context
Working with Footbridge for Families, a nonprofit that helps families in crises
Footbridge for Families is a nonprofit based in Pennsylvania that directs community donations to families facing short-term financial crises to prevent the crises from escalating. A simplified process of the organization work:
Families face financial crises due to gaps in the nation's safety net (i.e. being evicted due to missing too much rent).
Vetted referral partners (i.e. child welfare workers) refer families in crisis to Footbridge.
Footbridge pays third-party vendors (i.e. the one the family owes money to like a landlord) to solve the families' financial crisis.
Problem space
How can we redesign Footbridge's online presence to better connect Footbridge with government agencies and insurance administrators?
Footbridge's main problem is that they need more money to serve families by preventing their financial crises from escalating. The primary sources of this money include government agents and insurance administrators, who look at Footbridge's website after a cold email from Footbridge's CEO and before a synchronous meeting. There is an opportunity to improve how Footbridge is communicated on its website to these target groups in order to increase the number of contracts Footbridge forms with these groups and the amount of aid they receive.
Secondary research
Understanding nonprofit websites and how Footbridge works
We conducted a literature review of what government and insurance administrators look for in websites and what makes nonprofits websites credible, a comparative analysis looking at other nonprofit websites and social media presences, and an expert interview with Kim, the CEO and founder of Footbridge with Families to understand how Footbridge works and how it is currently involved with government and insurance administrators.
Primary research
Understanding how government and insurance administrators navigate and assess nonprofit websites
We conducted four semistructured interviews and four think-aloud studies with local government agents and health professionals. In the think-aloud study, each participant was asked to assess a nonprofit website as if they were considering a partnership. Half of the participants assessed Footbridge's website (top) while the other half assessed the website of a similar nonprofit (bottom).
Modeling
Making sense of our research
Synthesizing key insights
A website that communicates with clarity and specificity saves the time of potential contractors.
a. Contractors look for the communication of a clear mission that addresses a specific, well-researched gap and group of citizen communities.
b. Contractors quickly want to clearly understand a nonprofit’s model (what it does and how it works).
c. Clearly distinguishing between but also accommodating for all users with different goals and priorities decreases confusion and saves the time of users.
A nonprofit’s credibility is established through familiarity, transparency, and consistency.
a. Contractors value the diversity, capability, and history of the team behind the nonprofit a lot.
b. Contractors look for familiar team members, sponsors, and partner organizations when determining a nonprofit’s credibility.
c. Consistent visual design and branding add a lot of clarity and credibility to a nonprofit.
d. The history of a nonprofit, along with consistency in its operations over time with the people and resources it has available, makes a nonprofit more credible.
e. Transparency through specificity in testimonies, statistics, example impact scenarios, and other evidence adds to a nonprofit’s credibility.
f. Transparency through clarity of financial involvement and capabilities adds to a nonprofit’s credibility.
Government agents and health insurance administrators look to form partnerships with nonprofits that are flexible and willing to give more agency to contractors.
a. Contractors value forming partnerships with nonprofits that have a history of flexibility and a willingness to be flexible.
b. Stakeholders want more agency over who they're impacting after giving aid.
Reframe
Scoping the problem into more specific design goals
Ideation
Brainstorming ideas through Crazy 8's and identifying specific user needs to guide designs
Building
Working on how to present a model of Footbridge through sketches
Figuring out how to organize the content of the website into pages and sketching out initial ideas
Creating a low-fidelity prototype of the website
Testing and iterating
Getting feedback on what does and doesn't work
We speed-dated our infographics with 7 participants to understand what can be clearly understood by someone unfamiliar with Footbridge. We realized that using an infographic to convey the entire model of Footbridge in one screen was too much information for a viewer, so we changed the homepage to a scrollable, step-by-step breakdown of how Footbridge works instead.
We conducted a think-aloud study with 6 participants on the prototype's usability and to understand if any content was missing. The feedback from these sessions helped us iterate on the prototype as we moved into higher-fidelity.
Next Steps
We're currently working on more rounds of user testing with the high-fidelity prototype, incorporating feedback from Footbridge's team, and finalizing visuals and iconography. We will be implementing the design in the future through WordPress.
Reflection
Recruiting government and insurance administrators to test with was a struggle. Sometimes, we were able to work around this by testing with participants unfamiliar with Footbridge to see how well Footbridge's model was communicated, but it would be ideal to test with government and insurance administrators specifically to get feedback on the nuances of how they determine credibility. In the future, recruiting should be done earlier.
Balancing the needs of different audiences on the website was a challenging problem. It's important to differentiate between funders like the government and referral partners since they have very different goals in using the website. The best way to balance these differents needs is to get feedback from all groups at every stage—we could've done a better job of ensuring we considered everyone's thoughts in all stages of the design process.