Feed the Children Website Redesign

Creating an intuitive and accessible environment that fosters users' confidence and trust in the organization’s impact.

Website homepage for Feed the Children with navigation options and information about the organization's mission to end childhood hunger.

Project Details:

  • Timeline: 15 weeks

  • Type: Academic Conceptual Project

  • Tools: Figma · Survey Research · Zoom Usability Testing

  • Role: UX Researcher & Designer

  • Key Collaborators: Lauren Sass & Jazmine Bryant

How do we redesign the Feed the Children website so that a first-time visitor can confidently donate, find volunteer opportunities, and trust the organization — all without friction?

The Challenge

Feed the Children is a nonprofit organization dedicated to ending childhood hunger — but their website was creating friction at exactly the moment donors and volunteers were ready to get involved. Through a heuristic evaluation and user research with 23 survey respondents and 8 usability test participants, we found that 44% of users couldn't complete their goal on the site, and nearly 90% reported difficulty finding what they were looking for.

Research and Testing

Approach

Heuristic Evaluation

A horizontal process flow diagram with six steps numbered 1 to 6. Step 1 is 'Heuristic Evaluation,' step 2 is 'User Interviews & Research,' step 3 is 'User Journey Mapping,' step 4 is 'Persona Creation,' step 5 is 'User Testing,' and step 6 is 'Wireframes & Prototyping.'
Search page showing no results for the query ‘How do I stop my recurring donation?’ on Feed the Children website.

Heuristic Violated: Help and Documentation

Issue: There is not easily accessible FAQs for users that have questions about their donations or those who may need assistance if it is their first time donating.

Suggestions: Create an easily accessible FAQs section where users can see commonly asked questions regarding their donations or improve on their search engine to aid in answering users questions.

Recommendation: Update search engine functionality/ capability to pull relevant searched information

The website was evaluated using guided usability heuristic principles to identify key usability issues and uncover opportunities for improving clarity, efficiency, and overall user satisfaction. One violation found that was used in the redesign was regarding the search feature.

The heuristic evaluation gave us a structural map of the site's problems, but we needed to understand how real users felt navigating them. We conducted surveys with 23 participants to validate our findings and understand what donors and volunteers prioritize when they visit a nonprofit site.

User Interviews & Research

23 users participated in a survey

Surveys were conducted to better understand the needs of potential users on the website and organizations alike by gaining feedback on their current experiences.

Pie chart showing survey results with four categories: 'Definitely Recommend' at 27.8%, 'Recommend' at 33.3%, 'Moderate' at 38.9%, and one unlabeled segment.
Flowchart illustrating a smooth, transparent online donation process for Feed the Children, involving four phases: Find, Explore, Select, and Donate, featuring a scenario with a user named Emily who navigates through social media, website promotion, confirmation, and payment steps.
Bar chart titled 'Main Goal in Visiting a Non-Profit Website for Ending World Hunger' showing the number of participants for each goal. Goals include 'Make a Donation,' 'Volunteer/Get Involved,' 'Learn about the Organization,' 'Sponsor a Child,' 'Learn and Inquire for Employment,' and 'Pro Bono Legal Hours.' The highest number of participants is for 'Learn about the Organization.'

User Testing

Pie chart showing 60% Yes and 40% No in response to whether goal on feed the children's website was completed.

Key Findings

60% of participants completed their goal on the site.

70% of participants mentioned that they expect easy navigation on the site.

50% of participants prefer information presented as short summaries with visuals.

Redesign the homepage layout to prominently feature the organization’s mission and values, ensuring they are easily discoverable for users. 

Pie chart titled 'Content Preferred' showing categories like 'Data & Impact Reports,' 'Stories of Children & Families Helped,' 'All of the Choices,' 'Ways to Get Involved,' 'News & Updates about their Work,' with respective percentages.

One finding stood out: 60% of users achieved their goals on the site, but a lack of transparency about fund use and confusing navigation prevented others from doing so. We mapped Emily's journey from our survey participants to identify exactly where trust broke down and where the experience could be improved.

Personas

Three personas were created to represent specific groups of users with different demographic backgrounds, goals, frustrations, motivations, and pain points.

A bar chart titled "Information Presented Preference" shows the number of participants preferring four types of information. The tallest bar, representing "Short summaries with visuals," has 13 participants. "Infographics or quick stats" is next with 6, followed by "Videos and testimonials" with 3, and "In-depth articles & reports" with 1.

User Journey

This user journey follows Emily, a potential donor, as she moves from discovering the site on social media to completing a donation. Initially motivated by empathy, she becomes more cautious as she explores the website, seeking clarity on how her contribution will be used. Her experience highlights key opportunities for improvement: clearer transparency about fund allocation and more flexible payment methods to create a smoother, more satisfying donation process.

Wireframes & Prototyping

Profile of Emily Reid, an audiologist, with a photo of a woman in a white coat on the left and her personal details and goals on the right.
A professional profile or resume page for Mikayla Henderson. It features a photo of her smiling with crossed arms, along with sections detailing her personal information, goals, hobbies, and qualities. The page highlights her as a married Sr. Marketing Coordinator from Vermont, aged 34, interested in community volunteering, dancing, arts and crafts, and content creation.
A website homepage layout for a nonprofit organization focused on ending childhood hunger. Contains navigation menu, main image placeholder, sections about organization and work, call-to-action button, footer with social media icons, links, and informational text.

High-Fidelity Wireframes

Prototype

Young boy wearing a light blue jacket, smiling outdoors with blurred people and trees in the background.

Reflection

By increasing the visibility of volunteer opportunities, presenting essential information in a clear and intuitive way, and improving the search experience for quicker and more accurate results, the website becomes a more reliable and user-friendly resource. These improvements not only build trust with supporters but also encourage deeper engagement and long-term involvement.

This project taught me that usability problems are rarely about design preferences, but rather usually about broken trust. When 44% of our participants found the Feed the Children website untrustworthy, it was because users couldn't find answers to basic questions like "where does my donation go?" That insight reshaped how I approach every design decision: transparency and findability create the foundation.

If I had more time, I would conduct a second round of usability testing on the redesigned prototype to validate whether our changes actually moved the needle on task completion rates. I'd also explore the donation flow itself more deeply, considering our research surfaced that users wanted more flexible payment options, but our redesign focused primarily on navigation and information architecture.

Working with a collaborator over 15 weeks also reinforced how important early alignment is. What was originally a 3-person project turned into only 2, and we quickly learned that the why behind a design decision matters as much as the decision itself, as well as how to adjust project responsibilities amongst ourselves.

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Profile of Elizabeth Stone, a 37-year-old lawyer from Florida, with her hobbies, goals, and personality traits listed on the side.

Low-fidelity wireframes were developed to visualize proposed design concepts and outline potential solutions to the identified usability issues. These wireframes helped refine layout, functionality, and user flows before moving into final design.

Enhance the search experience by refining the page’s visual design and incorporating a dedicated FAQ section to support users in finding relevant information more efficiently.

Comparison of a website wireframe in light mode on the left and dark mode on the right, showing header navigation, main content sections, search box, frequently asked questions, footer with social media links, and sign-up button.
Three versions of a website homepage mockup, with a navigation menu, an introductory message about ending childhood hunger, a large placeholder image, and additional sections about the organization and ways to help.

These redesigns streamline access to key information and make it easier for users to navigate the site, ultimately improving usability, time on site, and potentially reducing bounce rates.

A digital scheduling interface showing location, day of the week, and time of day filters with options selected for Bethlehem, PA, Monday, and Morning. The interface includes a date and time slot, address, available slots, and a sign-up button.
A group of four smiling volunteers wearing blue t-shirts with the 'Love OKC' logo, participating in a charity event for Feed the Children. They are standing outdoors in front of stacked boxes labeled 'Feed the Children,' with some volunteers giving thumbs-up gestures.
A laptop screen displaying a FAQ webpage with a search bar at the top, followed by a list of four questions about donations, security, sponsorship cancellation, and impact.

Key Insights

44.4% of participants stated it was difficult to find what they were looking for.

66.7% of participants reported finding confusing terms, labels, & buttons.

44.4% of participants found the website trustworthy.

7 out of 10 participants found difficulty finding the volunteer hyperlink on the volunteer page.

44.4% of participants found it difficult to find what they were looking for on the website.

Blocker Issues Found:

  1. A participant was unable to find a hyperlink to get to volunteer opportunities because it did not look like a clickable button. 

  2. The search feature is not yielding relevant data, and it also takes up the whole screen and doesn't look trustworthy.

  3. Participants had a difficult time finding the relevant mission statement and important information because it was not seen on the front page, since the page is full of just a child's photo, and you have to scroll or look under other tabs.

Three blockers emerged from usability testing that directly shaped our redesign decisions. A volunteer hyperlink that didn't look clickable, a broken search experience that dominated the screen, and a homepage that buried the mission below the fold — these weren't aesthetic problems, they were trust problems. Every wireframe decision we made was in direct response to one of these three issues.

Design

An evaluation of qualitative and quantitative data by observing users perform tasks on the website.

  • Nature of Research

    • 8 total participants

    • Test conducted via Zoom (virtual) and in person

    • Participants provided consent to record their screen and audio while using the website

    • Participants recruited from researcher’s professional and personal networks 

Elevate the visibility of the volunteer call-to-action by converting the existing hyperlink into a clearly identifiable button and placing it in a more prominent location to improve access to the volunteer page.