The Lovefridge.com
UIUX Web redesign, 2022
The SAIC Homan Square Design Team is offering a full redesign of TheLoveFridge.com that aims to appease the difficulties posed by the current website.
With over 30 Love Fridges and an increasing volunteer base, TheLoveFridge team is requesting improvements to be made to their landing page in matters of organizing volunteer work distribution and responsiveness. The team has identified several key issues they are facing and hope that a more purpose driven website would improve those identified areas.
Research
Observation
Stone-Temple (locaiton) site visit
Mimicked the role of volunteer & visitor
Visit the news and article about love firdge
Visit other cities' love fridge websites
Working in Community
Engaged in bi-weekly meetings：
Sites lack accessibility when can be done immediately & universally
Need more tasks requested on the site
Hard to research and get more useable information
Client Identified Issues
Difficult Navigation
The current website is difficult to navigate to find work and understand volunteer service needs & practice requirements
Compromised Service
Donating patrons may not always be volunteers, leading to several instances of improperly packaged goods, food tampering/cross contamination, and negligence
Unresponsiveness
Volunteers who sign up may avoid performing tasks last minute, causing fridges to be out of order, and fail to provide indications to cover their work
Third Party Systems
Navigation and Sign Ups require Third Party Systems that are difficult to use, and stores data which discourages use by volunteers
Irresponsible Participation
Volunteers who sign up sometimes enroll for weeks and horde sign ups
Web-design Style Guide
#70A0E2
#F38845
#FFFFFF
#383535
#F0D634
#FF7979
#E5E5E5
#000000
Re-Design
Homepage
Design For Invitation
Improving the aesthetics of the website, and recognizing the "love fridge" civic activism
Consolidation
To help new users to understand the activities quickly, and show new updating
Volunteer page
Design For Invitation
Promoting the website use and identity (quality of life)
Join the team
Chicagoans can directly and easily sign up via the TheLoveFridge website and get access to features such as organizing tools, task trackers, and notifications.
Sign Up Page & Process
Sign up process
Volunteers can begin by indicating their availabilities and desired tasks, either via a fixed schedule or date-specific calendar system
Sign up process Cont.
The schedule helps reduce and organize the available tasks, making the process swifter for the volunteer. If roles aren’t found, the system directs the volunteer to similar tasks to help fill in needed work, and expand the volunteer's practice. Meanwhile, it would always help users check the task and all the fridge details easily.
Account
Account
After the initial process, volunteers can easily sign up for more work, using the fixed schedule and preferences to determine new opportunities. To edit those settings, volunteers can navigate to the account settings to make direct changes.
Account Personal
The Personal page allows volunteers to change their basic information and see their trackers such as the volunteer journey job completion tracker
Account Schedule
Volunteers can also alter their schedule and desired tasks to rearrange new potential work, removing the need to reapply this step during each work selection process.
Feedback
Volunteers can collect paper feedback slips and deposit them directly to the team database by logging the information through the website.
Directory
Fridges Detail
Users can inspect a summary of each Love Fridge to find out more and specific information regarding them. Volunteers can also modify or update their information.
Directory
Anyone can view the locations of all Love Fridges, and find basic information on their specific whereabouts via a list or map system.
Result
After multiple rounds of review and iteration, we finalized a web design that emphasized clarity, purpose, and full responsiveness across desktop and mobile. We improved accessibility and navigation to help volunteers quickly find the information they need, making the entire process smoother and more efficient.
The final design was handed off to UIC engineering students for development and was launched in late 2022. Since then, the site has continued to evolve with ongoing updates based on our original ideas.
web review: https://www.thelovefridge.com/
