Hooked on Fishing
Project Overview
Duration
February 2023 – May 2023
Company
Hooked on Fishing
Project Goal
Worked in a team of six to redesign the look and feel of Hooked on Fishing’s website to increase the number of online donors, volunteers, sponsors, and visitors.
Role
UX Design and Client Relations Manager
The Client
Hooked on Fishing is a non-profit organization based in Peoria, Illinois. They are a fishing park that provides locals with an opportunity to fish in Peoria Lake. They have been in operation since 2008, providing local children, veterans, special needs groups, and senior citizens the opportunity to experience the joys of fishing.
You simply have to bring yourself. Hooked on Fishing provides you with all the fishing rods, bait, and experience needed to land your first fish. Our point of contact for this project was executive director Adam Singly, who provided us with the direction he had in mind for the website. We were brought into contact with Adam by means of our course professor, Gregory Lynn.
The Challenge
Our client was focused on solving user engagement. People generally used the website for booking; however, donations, volunteer applications, and sponsorships were hardly ever gained through the site. These essential parts of the business were being carried out by the staff, but they have relatively few employees so our website needed to fix this issue.
Each asset; donate, volunteer, and sponsor have its own user flows; therefore, we needed to find a way to simplify and optimize each for this site. All of this needed to be accomplished under the scope of creating a new, more enticing website interface.
Previous website design
Rebranding
Each pillar had its own set of specifications and obstacles that needed to be overcome; however, my project lead and I had frequent meetings with each other and employees from each respective department of the enterprise. Eventually, all necessary and supplementary elements were built out and added to the page layouts. Finally, we marked all the specifications of each element in order to be sent over to the software/engineering team.
This style of spec documentation is extremely helpful for the engineering team because it shows them the exact specifications of each element. The following images show the specifications for each design element.
Moodboard
Layout & Content
First, we determined the structure, or information architecture, of the site. This entails how the user would click through the site and which pages went where. This part of the process was imperative to increase user engagement and website flow.
We had a Home page that contained what the company does and how to get involved. The Booking page pretty much stayed the same in terms of steps and layout. The Get Involved page includes portals to donations, volunteers, and sponsors. The events page shows upcoming events the park will be holding. Our Community page has sections for a catch of the week, fishing report, and volunteer of the month. Finally, we have a basic Contact Us page if anybody has questions.
In terms of user flow, our team gave a facelift to the existing procedures and simplified the navigation. We mainly changed the look and feel of the home screen, giving new customers a sense of what’s in store with Hooked on Fishing. For this, we followed the Storybrand framework by Donald Miller: A character, has a problem, and meets a guide, who gives them a plan, and calls them to action, which helps them avoid failure, and ends in success. This means we highlighted what the company does and guided how someone would end up getting involved with the business.
Information Architecture
Results
Our team’s changes have resulted in a total revamp of the website. The color, font, and image changes gave new meaning to the website. With a good color scheme we were able to accurately highlight important calls to action and we gave a much-needed splash of life to the existing content. Our restructuring of the pages made user navigation easier. New website visitors will now be able to tell what Hooked on Fishing is all about and how to get involved; whether that be volunteering, donating, sponsoring, booking a visit, or keeping up with events.
