Highlights
My Role
As an independent volunteer designer for PFLAG Atlanta, collaborated with the organization’s president and chief media officer to conduct a research-based redesign of the organizations public-facing website over five months.
Target User
PFLAG Atlanta serves members of the LGBTQ+ community and their family and allies. The national PFLAG organization is historically known for providing support to parents of LGBTQ+ kids.
Goal
I went into this project with the broad goal of supporting my community through design. At the start of the project, my first step was to discover peoples’ pain points when visiting the current site. Through needfinding research, my goal narrowed to redesigning the support-group signup experience so that parents of LGBTQ+ kids felt secure in attending their first PFLAG meeting.
Impact
In the redesigned signup system live on the PFLAG website, all changes centered around two key imperatives: assure parents that they and their kids are safe from being ‘outed’ in public (e.g. exposed as LGBTQ+ before they or their kids feel comfortable coming out on their terms), and put the participant in control during every step in the signup process.
More Info
In the transition from the original support groups page (left) to the redesigned page (right), the goal was to first introduce what support groups were about to address fears people had brought up in research interviews – namely – that they would be judged or shamed if they attended their first PFLAG support group and didn’t use the right language to refer to their child, for example. I highlighted what parents got out of support groups instead: pulling from interview accounts of parents feeling like they had finally found a group of people who had gone through what they were going through, and who could lend perspective and comfort.
This goal of addressing parents concerns followed through the full process of signing up for a suppor group session. On the main Support Groups page, I replaced the words “RSVP” with “Learn More” on each support group event to address parents concerns that an “RSVP” would essentially be announcing their intent to attend to a wider audience. In the event description, my goal was to make it clear that this was a private space where parents only had to share as much as they were comfortable sharing.
One major challenge with the website platform PFLAG used was that, in some instances of events, the text “RSVP” on the event’s button was locked and non-editable. In addition, while I would have preferred to make last name option in the interest form to support new participants’ need for anonymity, the website builder required both the first and last name fields in the built-in form. Given more time, I would have pursued workarounds to better address peoples’ needs for anonymity.
One of the advantages of many PFLAG chapters going virtual was that participants could log into meetings all over the country and take advantage of specialized support groups that may not be offered in their area. PFLAG Atlanta wanted to position itself as a conduit to point new participants towards other chapters that had the specialized support they needed, so I designed a list of PFLAG chapters in Georgia that would take participants to each chapter’s site or Facebook page. The intent was to create a one-stop shop for other resources beyond what PFLAG Atlanta could provide.