Tandem Birthing Center

Tandem Birthing Center is a nonprofit company aiming to improve prenatal care by giving prospective parents transparent information to aid them in their choices during their birthing process. I was the sole lead on this team and had three other new interns that I guided through the design process. We were tasked with modernizing their site, as well as improving any accessibility issues.

Overview

Timeline: Aug 2023 - Jan 2024

Role: Lead

Constraints: Working from a design brief

My Takeaways

During my time with this project, I learned how to teach the design process to those less than familiar, while holding the team to the deadlines imposed by the course.

I also learned to work within parameters outlined by a design brief and incorporate feedback in unique ways

Final Product

The Process

This project involved us working off of a client-written design brief instead of meeting with the client. In this design brief the client outlined several things like color schemes and considerations, what they wanted to highlight about their company, as well as why they thought their current site needed improvements. I was the sole Team Lead amongst three new interns and had to aid in teaching them the why and how of each step of the design process. Together, we worked on improving the user experience and design of Tandem's Wordpress site. The client was looking to modernize their website a bit as well as improve the overall experience for the different types of people coming to their website like prospective parents, volunteers, and candidates.

As the client already had a color scheme and brand identity, we mainly focused on modernizing the existing elements. We made the accent and lighter color brighter than the original and some of the darker colors a little richer. We did this because the contrast of the original colors were a bit low so they didn't pass all the WCAG tests, so the goal was to provide a little more contrast between text and background colors while still making accent elements stand out.

Working from a design brief instead of having a client contact was interesting because we received significantly less feedback this way, but I think it was a good lesson for the whole team about how to incorporate feedback in different ways. Meaning, our feedback primarily came from each other, giving lessons in how to give constructive criticism as well as applying several other people's feedback, while expressing agreements and disagreements respectfully and productively. We did receive feedback in an email from the client towards the end of the semester, and it was all positive, with some good suggestions. I think it was nice we received some feedback from the client because it reconnects the team to the client and served as a reminder of who we were presenting to.

Through user tests we saw some disconnects for volunteers as well as some people getting overloaded by the sheer amount of information on some pages of the websites. We wanted to streamline the processes for services and volunteers and condense some information. We ended up cutting quite a bit of the information, but as none of us were qualified to decide what was the most important for some of the more medical information, we also utilized dropdown menus. We kept their colors but made things a little airy and bright, as their services help in bringing the next generation in the world.

The Product