BAYS Website

Client

BAYS is an organization based in the San Francisco Bay Area dedicated to help young cancer survivors (under the age of 30) gather resources and provide emotional support during their cancer recovery journey. 

Situation

Given the increased need to engage online during COVID-19. BAYS, or Bay Area Young Survivors, asked us to help them improve engagement with their audience via their website. Their current website lacked a cohesive story that would prevent engagement from donors, and there were many accessibility issues that prevented people from going and staying on the website.

Problem

Through talking to the users and the stakeholders of BAYS, we found that the current website was a valuable resource; however, due to the outdated visuals, disorganized content, and accessibility issues, they weren’t able to present themselves in the best way. Not only that, as an organization where their members face a lot of health challenges, designing an accessible website that makes their lives easier, was of paramount importance. The biggest challenge for us was to figure out how to navigate the small budget while providing the most value to our client.

Designing with a small budget

Knowing that we had a tight budget, we knew that the website design couldn’t be too custom, as that would cost too much money for development. We also had to move quickly, so we decided to start the design in conjunction with understanding the users. With the input of our stakeholders, we bought a website template that was simple, yet accessible, and planned to rely heavily on our beautiful UI illustrations as the driving point of building the brand. The template also provided an easy way for the members of BAYS to update the information after we were gone. Having usability and accessibility in mind, I designed the navigation, and customized the layout just a bit with UX best practices while plugging in the UI design at the same time.

Transforming the content and design together

I conducted a site audit and partnered with the content writer to strategize how and where to put their resources, service, and mission statement in the web design. We talked to the users during the content transformation to ensure that our designs fit their needs, and developed a clickable prototype along the way to get feedback.