BRANDING • DESIGN • UX
LIFT FOR LIFE GYM
Lifting up the inner-city youth of St. Louis.
Background
CLift for Life Gym exists to give a positive alternative to the underprivileged youth of St. Louis through mentoring and after school programs.Our job was to create a world-class website that reflected the power of their mission. Great design can propel a non-profit by giving them credibility and a streamlined donation process. That was our task.
The Situation
This project fit the main two characteristics that we find among non-profits.
1 We learn everything we possibly can about your mission, your donors, where you've been and where you are going.
2 We create a website that speaks loudly to your cause. An experience you can be proud of.
We had our work cut out for us. Our first step was to learn everything we could about the gym and their mission.
Original Site
Research
Stakeholder Interviews
The first thing we did was begin to build relationships with the stakeholders in the organization. We began learning the different perspectives, hopes and fears related to a redesign.
Content Analysis
We did a full content analysis and inventory to see what we had to work with and how it was performing.
Identity Workshop
Our team gathered the primary stakeholders together in one room to define the identity of the gym. This include a “20 Second Gut Test” where we showed 20 non-profit websites to the stakeholders for 20 seconds each and got their visceral feelings on aesthetics.
We also ran a cardsort where we gave them 150 adjectives and ask them to determine which ones should be associated with their brand. Really interesting conversation took place, and tough decisions were made about who they want to be moving forward as an organization.
Research Outcomes
We used the results of our research to begin putting together strategies, personas, sitemap and wireframes.
Once we had a good idea of what type of people used the website, we began creating a strategy for content.
Design
Using what we learned during research, we started designing what the website would look like.
Conclusion
Lift for Life Gym was trilled with their website. They feel it is a perfect representation of who they are as an organization and how they want to present themselves to the world.