Westshore Seniors Website

Project Description

A custom-coded website specifically designed for a senior audience featuring a complex events calendar.

Project Goals

To connect seniors with resources and programs available to them, eight local senior centers created a collaborative website, centralizing their events. The site needed to be easy to use, for both the audience and those adding the events.

Challenges

The site’s user experience needed to work well for a senior target audience. I had to consider how to make the site as accessible as possible to that demographic.

Creative Strategy

I did extensive research on accessibility and user experience for senior citizens. The homepage design was created in Photoshop by my co-worker with some influence from that research, then I created additional variations further informed by those recommendations. The concepts were presented to a test group of seniors for feedback, which helped us choose the most effective design elements for them and create a final design. I then created a custom theme in order to apply the design to the site. I also researched events plugins that would best meet the client’s needs, determined which aspects needed to be purchased, and installed and integrated the event calendar functionality, applying the site’s design. Documentation and training were also essential so that the various senior centers could maintain the events calendar.

Results

Data showed good use of the site with an upward trend. The usage doubled in the first month after launch, proving that the site was a success among the seniors. The participating senior centers’ staff all received training and ongoing support (as needed) on maintaining the site and events calendar. Overall, the site was a well-executed solution to a unique challenge.

My Role

I led the user experience research and provided the testing materials. I created a custom-coded WordPress template using HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and PHP, which allowed me to match the provided design as closely as possible. I added the images and content. I installed and configured all plugins, including the events calendar. I also tested the site thoroughly, ensuring that it worked well and responsively across browsers and devices. I created the documentation for maintaining the site and trained the site administrators from the various senior centers, also providing them with support when they had needs and requests.

At some point, the client elected to discontinue the site. I was not contacted and do not know why the site is no longer active.