Anchor piece
Designing for clean water education and accessibility in two countries
Introducing UX to an international non-profit increased fundraising, email subscribers and wellness participation.
Overview
Juglife hosts water education assemblies for elementary and middle school students in the United States and raises funds to build water wells for schools in Uganda. Three distinct people groups, Two countries and One website for fundraising.
4x
Online fundraising
10x
Email subscribers
8x
Event participation
2
Countries served
Identified User Groups
Participants
People that live in target cities and want to attend the foundation's events.
Donors
People who support the foundation's mission financially.
Promoters
People that value health and want to amplify the foundation's purpose.
Problem space
Donors, educators and school partners each arrived looking for something different, and the navigation forced all of them down the same path. Nothing separated UX insight from customer discovery, so the team could not tell whether a drop-off was comprehension challenge or motivation challenge.
Process
Card Sorting
Rebuilt the information architecture around donor, educator and volunteer mental models.
Research Goals
Defined goals that explicitly separated UX insights from customer discovery.
User Profiles
Introduced user profile matrices showing high-impact segments to stakeholders.
Lean Design
Aligned UX goals with organizational objectives inside a non-profit budget.
Insights
- Impact reporting and progress reports related to number of schools and students reach as well as the amount of water wells built was not only formality but also became a conversion opportunity.
- Educators booked assemblies on a school-year rhythm, this became a functional opportunity the site could adapt to.
- Email was the highest-leverage channel: subscribers converted at a far higher rate than social media traffic.
Outcome
The Information architecture and restructured UX writing, quadrupled online fundraising, multiplied the subscriber base, and grew event participation from the previous year. Introducing UX principles also helped the organization establish repeatable opportunities to measure user sentiment and growth over time.