The Starfish Canada
Every small act counts towards the big picture.
Client: The Starfish Canada
Type: Website Redesign
Role: UI Designer
Scope: 3 weeks
Deliverables: Art Direction, Branding, Website prototype
The beginning
The Starfish Canada is a non-profit organization entirely run by volunteers from Canada. Its mission is to showcase and celebrate young environmentalists' projects by providing a platform to help them amplify their impact. The Starfish Canada values environmental initiatives done by youth because these young environmentalists will become future leaders. They believe every small act counts towards the big picture.
Challenges
Currently, the Starfish Canada has two separate websites, thestarfish.ca and canadatop25.ca, to host their most well-known program, top 25 environmentalists under 25. These two websites have entirely different aesthetics and layouts. Users can be easily confused about how these two sites are related, and there is no way to link back to the Starfish Canada’s site from the top 25 site.
Business goals
Increase brand awareness — increase the traffic of the website
Increase involvement — get people to stay on the website and join the movement
Connect youth across Canada
Project goals
Improve user experience for websites
Make a more intuitive website
Visually oriented
Showcase articles in a clear way
Make it straightforward for people who want to join the movement
Two art directions
The Starfish Canada believes "Every small act counts towards the big picture" We took it as a jumping-off point and proposed two art directions based on it to the client.
Love and appreciation for Canada - concentrate on the users and their interest in conservation and environmentalism.
Personal growth and leadership - focus on what youth can achieve and gain internally and personally.
Final design
We kept the coral colour from the initial website and added a dark green to balance it. These are the colours that can quickly remind people of nature.
Lots of images of nature were also used to increase the engagement with the user. We were also conscious not to show any images of people doing extreme sports in nature since it misrepresented the target users of the website. The organization wants to show how anyone can enjoy being out in nature.
Future consideration
A way to get nominees together in person through Starfish.ca — such as networking events, talks or presentations where they can meet each other.
Payment separate from PayPal — due to the security issues and technical problems, we chose PayPal as the sole payment method. However, if the Starfish Canada has the resources available in the future, the payment and donation pages have been laid out.