Grapevine Property Services
Redesign
Grapevine Property Services is a management company that aims to assist users who need to pay HOA dues or file maintenance requests, but has ended up with a fair share of angry clients as their prime users, found their website non-intuitive and confusing to use.
Goal
Develop an accessibility driven Redesign of the existing website addressing the major concerns of the user demographic and make its utilization a smooth and pleasurable experience.
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Duration: 6 Weeks
Role: UI Designer & Accessibility Lead
(Worked with a team of 5)
Software: Figma, Adobe, Trello
Discovery Phase
We learned through Stakeholder meetings that a majority of their users were Spanish speakers. In order to get valuable inputs from them irrespective of whether they knew English or not, bilingual surveys, were created and shared, both online and as printed flyers.
Accessibility and Heuristics
Since the primary users were people over 56 years of age, it was imperative to screen the current site keeping in mind the 10 standard Heuristics guidelines. In order to test for Color accessibility the contrast ratios on headers, footers, and body areas of GPS’s website were scanned with a WCAG 3 lens.
Heuristic guidelines reference- NN/g
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Accessibility tool - Adobe contrast checker, WCAG plugins
Competitors analyzed -
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Eugene Burger Management Corporation
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Steward Property Services Inc.
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Professional Association Services Inc.
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Commonwealth Property Management
Usability Testing
When we tested the usability of the current GPS website, we found users had a difficult time navigating to the Homeowner Request. Most people felt it belonged under Services and that it was not intuitive to find on the current site. We specifically chose to test with users over the age of 55 to match the GPS demographic.
Though we worked with clear designated roles, at times, we designers sat in as observers and note takers on some of these tests and our researchers helped by offering feedback on the designs.
Persona & Empathy Map
Developing a clear idea of who GPS users are was taken directly from our user research and felt right on target. People were consistently saying the same things through the surveys and testing.
Cory Terrace
66 Years Old
Retired
Works as a Consultant
​Sonoma Co, CA
Uses a desktop computer to access websites
User Roadblocks
Another important assessment we undertook, was that of clearly understanding how many paths existed for users like Cory who wanted to file a Homeowner Request on the existing site.
We walked alongside our persona and stumbled on every roadblock that he faced. When one path which felt like the obvious choice lead to a dead-end, Cory retraced his steps to the homepage and chose another path which gave success but not without frustrating him initially.
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DEAD END
Cory thinks that he can file a complaint if he goes to Services-->Association Management, but he is met with just a list of services provided by the company without any CTA to file complaints or requests.
User Flow
Though we identified several key issues that could be addressed on GPS’s site, we prioritized, making the path to file requests or complaints, intuitive and easy to find. This is represented by the user flow diagram above.
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Sitemap
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