Global Justice Ecology Project Case Study

Building Trust Through Clarity

Redesigning the Global Justice Ecology Project Website

Executive Summary:

The Global Justice Ecology Project (GJEP) faced declining donations and engagement due to mission confusion and credibility concerns.

Leading a six member design team, I improved trust by enhancing mission clarity, increasing financial transparency, and simplifying navigation for easier content discovery.

As a result, user reported mission clarity improved by 130%, trust by 225%, and navigation ease by 143%.

Project Overview

The Problem:

The Global Justice Ecology Project’s (GJEP) website was struggling to effectively attract, engage, and retain online donors. From 2021 to 2023, total online donations dropped by an average of 10.54%, with annual donations declining by 18.35%.

The Goal:

Utilize research to drive the redesign of the main pages of the current Global Justice Ecology Project website in order to help enhance users’ understanding of their mission, reinforce overall trust towards the organization, and increase engagement with the website to attract more online donors.

Success Criteria:

Users can clearly describe the mission of GJEP after spending time on the website.
Users trust the organization enough to take supportive actions, such as donating or subscribing to the newsletter.
Users can easily navigate the website to find specific information related to GJEP’s causes and projects.

Project Duration: February 2024 – July 2024

Project Timeline: Two phases, each divided into four sprints

My Role:

Lead UX designer responsible for:

Aligning UX expectations with business goals
Leading a remote team through a website redesign
Generating user stories, user flows, and research scenarios
Developing wireframes, mockups, and prototypes

Collaboration:

Team of five UX Designers
Worked with PM, strategy, UXR, and UXW to align UX expectations and deliverables with business goals
Met with GJEP’s VP of Product and web developer to ensure designs met standards and capabilities

Discovery Research: Key Insights

Only 37% of users understood GJEPs mission. Those who struggled were unable to identify the main focus of the organization. Some believed it was a news outlet, others thought it was academic, and some saw it primarily as a fundraising platform. This lack of clarity diluted GJEP’s identity.

27% of users identified GJEP as a credible organization. Most of the uncertainty revolved around desiring more transparency around the organization’s legitimacy and goals. A significant number of participants wanted clearer information on how their donations would be used, which contributed to hesitancy in supporting the organization. Ultimately, new users did not trust the organization enough to donate.

While 37% of users were able to easily navigate the website, 63% were unable to find information. The majority of difficulties were with the navigation menu. There were no landing pages so users had to understand the specific path to find articles, biographies, etc.

These insights directly related to GJEP’s business goals. To reverse the declining trend in donations and newsletter subscriptions, we needed to strengthen the organization’s trustworthiness and clarify its mission to the audience. These metrics will be used for each usability study to show progress.

Design Solutions: Clarity, Trust, and Engagement

Structuring for Focus:

To help users quickly find information, the team created dedicated landing pages for each item in the navigation menu. This improved the site’s information hierarchy and made navigation clearer, allowing users to focus on key organizational efforts.

Emphasizing GJEP’s Mission and History:

In the redesign, I prioritized prominently displaying GJEP’s mission, goals, history, and accomplishments. GJEP was celebrating its 20th anniversary, but users were unaware of the organization’s key achievements. The new design highlighted this history, showing the impact of GJEP over two decades.

Increasing Donation Transparency:

One major user concern was the lack of information about how donations were used. To address this, the donation page was redesigned with infographics and descriptions that outlined how the funds are allocated, making the process more transparent and trustworthy. This approach aimed to alleviate users’ hesitancy in contributing financially to GJEP’s mission.

Modernizing the Visual Design:

The overall website design was modernized to create a more credible, professional and inviting appearance. The updated design elements and consistent UI were implemented to instill trust, reinforce GJEP’s credibility, and make the site more visually engaging while increasing accessibility.

Usability Testing: Refining the Experience

I collaborated with the UX research team to develop a usability test plan focused on user expectations, navigation, and content understanding.

The research findings included feedback on:

While all participants reviewed the About page and the Mission, Vision, and Goals sections, only 40% were able to accurately understand the focus of the organization. The remaining 60% of users had difficulty clearly defining GJEP’s overall focus stating it as “too vague” and “all over the place”. At this point, the UX Writing team began to discuss how the verbiage could be causing some of the confusion.

60% of participants appreciated the new focus on transparency, particularly the donation page’s descriptions of fund allocation and the “About Us” page, which introduced the team behind GJEP. The redesign of the podcast page, petitions, and the addition of fiscal partnerships were noted to give a sense of professionalism.

Ease of navigation improved to 60%, though 40% of participants still experienced difficulty when trying to access articles. Those participants who succeeded took an average of 58 seconds. This prompted the team to revisit the site’s navigation structure for further improvements.

After discussions with the client, research team, and project manager, it was determined that updating the information architecture was the best solution. Additional research guided us in the decision to simplify the site map, with the goal of improving navigation, enhancing clarity, and strengthening the organization’s credibility.

Design Solutions: Improved Navigation and Content Presentation

Revised Information Architecture:

Based on user navigation difficulties, we updated the site’s Information Architecture. The solution was to eliminate the landing pages and replace them with clear navigation bar headers featuring dropdown menus. This new structure made it easier for users to scan and access specific information quickly, resembling a table of contents.

Dedicated Media Pages:

To solve the issue of users struggling to find specific types of content, we reorganized the media section. Each media type now has its own page with filters, allowing users to search by issue, date, or location. This made GJEP’s rich media content more accessible and highlighted their expertise in these areas.

Focus on GJEP’s Impact:

The homepage was redesigned to prioritize GJEP’s impact statement in the hero image. A timeline of key accomplishments was added, and a section highlighting the organization’s current projects, making it clear what GJEP stands for and what they are working towards.

The Final Designs:

The final designs included a new color pallet inspired by GJEP’s brand colors and emphasis on photography to draw the user in. The colors and fonts used follow WCAG guidelines. The page layouts were adjusted to increase whitespace, create hierarchy, and give a more modern look. The prototype includes 23 pages total.

Impact: Increasing Trust and Clarity

The redesign of the GJEP website aimed to tackle major user concerns around mission clarity, credibility, and donation transparency. Through user centered design and iterative testing, we developed solutions that improved the overall user experience, enhanced trust in the organization, and aligned with GJEP’s goals to increase donations and engagement.

During the final round of usability testing, 85% of users accurately described GJEP’s mission, demonstrating a significant improvement in clarity. The redesigned homepage, featuring a stronger impact statement, along with the restructured “Who We Are” and “What We Do” sections, effectively communicated the organization’s purpose. From discovery research (37%) to now (85%), this metric saw a 130% increase. I hope to increase this metric even more after the UX Writing team updates the wording of the mission statement, vision, and north star.

88% of first time users perceived GJEP as a credible nonprofit organization. This increase was driven by greater transparency in donation allocation, the improved organization of media and resources, and the addition of social proof, including features in well known publications and links to social media. From discovery research (27%) to now (88%), this metric saw a 225% increase. I am interested to see if the improvements made by the UX writing team also lead to an increase of credibility with users.

90% of users successfully navigated the redesigned website to find specific information, confirming the effectiveness of rewording group titles and updating the Information Architecture. By transforming the navigation bar into a scannable table of contents, we improved usability and reinforced GJEP’s credibility with a modern, well structured website. From discovery research (37%) to now (90%), this metric saw a 143% increase.

By clarifying GJEP’s mission, modernizing the design, and simplifying navigation, we created a more trustworthy and accessible website that allows users to connect more meaningfully with the organization’s cause.

Next Steps: Working With the Developer

The next steps are to finish up annotations and design specifications so the developer can begin to implement the changes. We have been working closely with the developer throughout the design process and are confident the designs are not only achievable, but can be implemented efficiently.
During this time, the UX Writing team will be working on updating the wording of the mission, vision, and north star to further clarify GJEP’s purpose with users.

Kristin Lucas – Updated 2025

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