Health Advocacy

HealthGAP

Taproot has connected me with worthy non-profit organizations in need of professional assistence. This group is focused on advocacy and activism in the AIDS arena. Pro bono

The Value Proposition

Mobile-ize the site and modernize the imagery
Answer the day-trip needs of their audience
Focus on community and people
Cross-pollinate with other media and recreation resouces

proposed Homepage

Challenges

The legacy site design had several problems, among them:

Scattered. Lots of data, but information hard to find.
Poor messaging; text-heavy,
No recognition of customer paths; "inside-out" design
No cross-pollination among information 'silos'
Few compelling CTA's (calls to action)

Analysis

Here's my thumbnail high-level overview of the site. I dived into each section, clicked around a little, and read the mission statement.

HealthGAP focuses most on funding,
along with its related arena of policy. (specific solution: eliminate barriers to medicine / drug access)
There is a lot of information about international issues. The scope is global.
There's an interest in encouraging activism.

The overall action profile of HealthGAP is advocacy and education.

Framing Questions

Accordingly, I suggested that some of these questions should frame the Website Thinking document:

Who are we talking to? (our audience: PeopleWithAIDS or policy-makers?)
What do they want from us? (their needs)
What do we want to say to them? (our message)
How can we help them? (our service)

Reality check: Do we have any feedback/stats on actual usage of the site?

Solutions

Because my role was largely advisory and strategic, rather than design-oriented, I provided more illumination and insight than end-product.

Evaluated and advised on the capabilities and limitations of their chosen website design platform (NationBuilder)
Evangelized for the utility of information architecture as a way to make their extensive and wide-ranging content aceessaible and usable
Advocated that their own employees would be able to crowdsource much wisdom and experience
Provided some guidance through my own writings
Focus on Action
Showcase the accessible stuff

This was a very satisfying engagement.

“John helped our small non-profit get our website redesign project organized and off to a strong start. None of our staff had tackled a web project of this size, and we were struggling with how to approach it in a way that would lead to the end result we envisioned. John was exactly the right person to help. He took us through a process that was totally unfamiliar to us but really organized our thinking in a way that we couldn't have done without his help. Our web committee was blown away when the full team unanimously supported the final product we developed - and there's no way that would have happened without John's guiding hand. John is easy to work with and he "gets it" - he's had invaluable experience with other small organizations like ours and was able to work with us in a way that fit our capacity and our goals. We couldn't recommend him more highly.”

Jessica Bassett , Director, Strategic Communications, HealthGAP

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