Lola Howell

 

Introduction

This project was part of a Web Design course taken at the University of Washington. We were given a month to redesign an existing website for a free, confidential support group “Coming Out Women” in Tacoma, WA.

 

Problem

Our client wanted a place where women felt safe, supported and welcomed. The site should enable visitors to share personal stories and connect, as well as able to find meetings information. Our client also has expressed a desire for a website to contain a lot of helpful information, which could be web as well as print-based.

 

Client has expressed a desire for a simple yet substantial design for the overall site. An accessible event calendar and an open forum discussion, at least pertaining to the “herstories” topic, are a must. The client has also expressed that she wishes for the website to visually represent her target demographic. Many lesbian-oriented sites represent the demographic as young and traditionally “feminine,” and it is important to represent all varieties of the lesbian community. She doesn’t want anyone to visit her site and feel as if they aren’t welcome purely to the initial visuals that they encounter. As previously mentioned in the summary, a keen sense of cultural sensitivity is incredibly important during this project.

 

Lastly, the client has requested that the site have an easy-to-use administration role. Though we, as developers/designers, are capable of altering complex portions of the website, the client wants only access to a few simple parts of the sites editing and publishing functions. The administration role should allow the client to create and edit stories, events, discussion posts, and front-page posts. Similarly, this role should allow the client to approve/deny public posts to her site in order to main site integrity.

 

The client was also concerned with the privacy of the community members.

 

Target Audience

Our primary audience will be older women that have, will, or wish to come out. These women are typically 55+ years of age and come from a large variety of backgrounds. These women are proud and fond of their identifiers and therefore will not shy away from using them. Also, these women wish to have a resource to ease the community connection process.

 

The secondary audience are friends and family of our primary audience. These users may or may not already know that their family member is wishing to come out, so these resources will assist the family members in approaching one another in a culturally sensitive manner.

 

Design Goals/Solution

The goal of this site creation is to empower and inform active users and their families, allowing both primary audience and their families to connect with like-minded and proud individuals in their communities. 

 

The Drupal site creation for Coming Out Women will provide the client with a number of tools to ease the community development process. It will provide both the client as well as their desired demographic with a means of communication, information, and comfort. The finished product will provide a discussion forum for easy sharing of personal stories and endeavors, chatroom, as well as a user-friendly scheduling system, making events both easy to create and attend. The entire site will be culturally sensitive, relevant, and specifically molded to the target audience.

 

Based on our audience we knew that the website had to be visually appealing to older women as well as younger. It also had to appeal to members of LGBT community as well as someone who wasn’t a member. We didn’t want someone to feel as if they aren’t welcome purely due to the initial visual design that they encounter. As previously mentioned, a keen sense of cultural sensitivity was incredibly important during this project.

 

We have decided that images of roads, as well as vast, open spaces and forests, are the best visuals for the slide carousel on the home page. The roads represented paths that women took, that lead them to live different experiences and able to share unique stories. The vast and open spaces represented the freedom and excitement that comes with feeling accepting of yourself and others, even if they have a hard time accepting you.

 

We also decided to add a banner on each page underneath the logo and navigation menu. The banner had three words Authentic, Whole, Empowered. They were meant to remind visitors of three goals of “Coming Out Women”:

 

• AUTHENTICITY: being truly who we are

• WHOLENESS: being all of who we are

• EMPOWERMENT: moving through life as healthy and strong-spirited women.

 

A forum feature for the members to share stories and ask questions, as well as chatroom meant to provide visitors with another way of communicating in times when waiting for an email for an answer or a meeting to ask questions, is nerve-wracking were causing concern for the privacy of the community members. Therefore, we decided to build the system where the client will have access to editing and approving the content, as well as being able to block certain users. Also, unauthorized users will not have access to the chatroom. The client will be able to authorize users after registration. Though we have done several cautionary steps to keep the privacy of the visitors safe, it’s not entirely possible to eliminate the problem.