Click above to visit the site (and if you wanted to donate, that wouldn't be so bad either :-)
UX Research • Information Architecture • Editorial Direction • Interactive Prototyping • Squarespace Build
From a design standpoint, this is a fairly straightforward website — deliberately so. The chief communication priority was to tell Action Kivu’s story succinctly while striking a tonal balance between its mission’s sober reality and hopeful progress.
The Nielsen Norman Group was just one of many invaluable secondary research resources that helped focus our efforts on the criteria that matter most for charity websites and directed our primary user research.
Action Kivu had an abundance of gripping information about their mission. It was paramount to tell their story chapter-by-chapter: familiarize the viewer with events they may not be familiar with (generating concern); segue to the sustainable solutions that empower those most affected (inspiring hope); provide transparent background on the leadership (developing trust); and support it all with an ongoing blog to report on the progress being made (promoting confidence).
With client buy-in on the editorial direction, I set about building a high-fidelity prototype in Adobe XD. After a few design tweaks, the final site was built in Squarespace to make it easy for the staff to maintain it with a minimum of fuss.
Of all the projects I've worked on, this is the one I value the most because it goes beyond commerce and entertaining diversions to support countermeasures against human suffering.