For this project, I redesign the website for Guide Dogs of Hawaii. The organization was expanding their services so the site needed to be restructured to make information on each program easier to find. The visual design for the site also needed improvement. I used Figma to design the site and built it on WordPress using the Oxygen Builder. Like any for-profit business, the website for a nonprofit organization is extremely important. It gives potential clients information about services offered and gives donors information about the individuals the cause they are supporting.

I started by creating a sitemap to restructure the content. GDH’s programs were already grouped by the types of people they served. They have programs for children, seniors and guide dog handlers. Instead of having all services that pertained to one group on a single page, I gave each program its own page. This leaves plenty of room to add additional information like testimonials and events that are relevant to each program.

The sitemap gave me a list of pages and templates to design. I design. Before deisgning each page, I needed to clean up the visual design. I created a design system that used the orange found on the flower in the GDH logo and a troupe color that is often used in other GDH banding. These two colors were the basis for two color sets that had 10 shades of each color. Simplifying the color scheme for the site greatly improved the overal visual design.

As I designed the site, I used spacing to group relevant elements together. Each section had a single purpose. Elements on the page were spaced so that a single section would take up the entire screen. For example, the home page has a section that leads to the different groupings of services. This section took up the entire screen so that visitors knew what they were looking at and wouldn’t be distracted by donating requests or news updates.

This is my third iteration of the site over a period of 7 years. During that time it's been difficult to decide what the focus of the site should be. The staff was knowledgable about the services that they ofered but were not familiar with the way that information should be distributed on the web. Normally this wouldn't be an issue, but since they were my first clients I didn't know what question sto ask and how to interpret the information they were giving me. After a few years of participating in program events and activities, I had a better idea of what potential clients and donors would be looking for which helped me to structure the site.

In the last iteration, I was given a few color palettes to choose from. I chose one that I felt matched the brand and used it in the design. I felt that I needed to use all colors in the color palete. I created a color system wher I used one color for each section of the site. I also didn't think about altering the colors to use differnt shades of the same. color. After learning more about design, I decide to choose two base colors and use 10 shades of each for the color on the site. Each shade could be given a role such as background color or heading color. this made it much easier to maintaint the color system and enforce it throughout the site.

The new site made it much easier to find relevant information on the site. And the rebrand made it look much more professional. Instead of seeing no traffic. We found thatt we'd average around 10 visits per day. During special promotions where we directed people to the site, we found that they were more likely to stick around and look at other pages.

Since completing this project i've applied the process of chosing two base colors and 10 shades of each. I've been much happier with the results as future projects are beginning to look more like other sites found on the web.

Unfortunately, I no longer work for Guide Dogs of Hawaii, but I'd like to use my design skils to help other organizations that serve the blind. Often these sits focus heavily on accessibility and neglect visual design. Peole who assist those who are blind often access these sites to research services, so it sould be helpful if these sites were accessible for them too. I'd like to find a way to balance both accessibility and quality design.