OVERVIEW
Beth Shalom B'Nai Zaken Ethiopian Hebrew Congregation (Beth Shalom) is a local synagogue on the South side of Chicago, IL, and it is the oldest Temple in the Chicago area serving the Israelite Community. For a long time, Beth Shalom had been wanting to refresh their website, but they did not have enough funds to do so. A member of the congregation, Adam Hecktman, took it upon himself to assemble a team in order to help Beth Shalom reach their goal.
This project began as a way to update the synagogue's website, but it quickly turned into an educational learning opportunity for a group of Lane Tech Senior students pursuing Computer Science in college. By having the high school students working with Microsoft employees, a UX designer, a developer, and a project manager, they were able to experience the ins and outs of a website redesign project, and they were able to see the project through from beginning to end.
MAIN TAKEAWAYS
WHAT I LEARNED
• Working on a project from beginning to end
• How to work with a community to learn what was needed
• How to work within a multidisciplinary team of students, developers, project managers, project leaders, and community stakeholders
WHAT I WOULD DO DIFFERENTLY
• Conduct user testing sessions with community members
• Spend more time on design iterations
• Create follow-up discussions with Beth Shalom and the Beth Shalom community after the project concluded
CHALLENGE
Beth Shalom’s website had not been updated since it was created in the early 2000s, and members of the synagogue had mentioned that the website was difficult to navigate through.
GOAL
Create an interactive, user-friendly, welcoming website that allowed members of the synagogue easy access to information such as upcoming events, how to donate, and more.
MY ROLE
UX Lead (Design & Research), Project Manager
TEAM
Beth Shalom Key Stakeholders
The Hecktman Family (Microsoft)
Daniel Contreras (Microsoft),
Roy Moran (Nuevo Foundation)
Lane Tech High Schoolers
Myself
STEP 1: STAKEHOLDER INTERVIEWS
The first step was to get as much information as I could about the project, the Beth Shalom community, and what the needs were. I scheduled and conducted interviews with Rabbi, Communications Manager, and community members to discuss & talk through their vision for a website redesign.
STEP 2: CONSOLIDATING INFORMATION
After hearing what the congregation had in mind, one thing they mentioned was the site being overwhelming with information and it was hard for members of the congregation to find information about Beth Shalom--for example, finding the history of the congregation. After looking through their website and how the information was laid out, it was clear that information had to be consolidated, so using their existing content, I did a content inventory and used those findings to create a new site map:
STEP 3: SKETCHING & WIREFRAMES
Because I was the only designer on the team, it was important for me to work alongside the developer in order to know what was feasible and what was not possible. Therefore, I would create sketches & wireframes and share them with the team as well as the Rabbi and Beth Shalom key stakeholders in order to gain feedback and iterate. Below is an example of one of the wireframes we co-created:
STEP 4: STYLE TYLES
Then, once the skeleton was decided and laid out, I created various style tiles containing design elements (type and colors). The one shown below is the style tile decided on by Beth Shalom:
STEP 5: WEBSITE REDESIGN
After rounds of feedback and iteration from the team and community on wireframes with the styles added (Mid to Hi-Fi), the website began to come to life.
This is a bit of a view of what their previous website looked like--their Home Page. Everything was centralized on the homepage, there was a lot of text present, and overall, the website had not been updated since it was created:
This is a look at their new Home Page it looked like after our team had finished working it:
STEP 6: PRESENTATION
Once the website had been redesigned by our team, we then presented it to Beth Shalom and their community at the Chicago Microsoft office. Everyone gathered to hear our process and how we redesigned the Beth Shalom website.
At the end, the Beth Shalom community expressed their gratitude and explained how much they appreciated all of the help. Here are some pictures of our final presentation to them:
