Problems:
• Outdated
• Lack of organization
• Difficult for users to navigate
Goals:
• Inform members of updates and resources
• Refresh APWU's brand
• Restructure the site to be more intuitive to navigate
APWU is a massive organization that provides a lot information and resources to their many members. Unfortunately, their members couldn't find any of it on their old website. Forms, documents, and articles were jumbled and buried under layers of content and random items.
My intrepid creative director and account manager and I embarked on the daunting but invigorating task of trimming their content and presenting it in a way that their members could easily find and utilize themselves. Once we established the content, we mapped out the direction in countless wireframes that would be our GPS for the project.
I created so many wireframes for both desktop and mobile that we had to schedule them for view in batches so that our brains wouldn't melt to oatmeal. This step seemed neverending but was absolutely crucial to the design step. With so much content, I wanted to have a very detailed map to follow when I began the design phase.
One of the most important goals of APWU's website was to inform and support their members. Therefore on the home page, we presented prominent links to their most helpful pages, as well as the latest news and a form to sign up for their newsletter to stay up to date.
With a huge library of forms, articles, and official documents, we felt it best to create a main navigation menu at the top and a secondary one for less frequented pages.
The client also required that their site be easily changed for future use. They wanted to be able to quickly add and remove features without having to resort to design overhaul.
I satisfied this request by laying out items in a modular way that could easily stack upon each other. That way, when the client felt the need to add or remove something, the items would simply stack like Legos.
To help our users locate resources, we also created a tagging and filtering system. Users may search by keyword, date, document number, or select from a list of existing tags.
Some resources are reserved for different tiers of users so we implemented a member login system to ensure users only have access to the resources that apply to them.
This site was very well received by APWU, and they continue to use it actively today. They have since added and modified the site with new content just as we hoped. You may visit at the link below.