Minnesota Freedom Fund
Create meaningful change in the bail bond system
Overview
My Role
Discovery, Definition, Testing, UI elements
Timeline
3 weeks; Fall 2020
Tools
Adobe XD, Miro, Trello, Invision, Google Workspace
Team
Emily Hicks
Omar Rehman
Hali Sanderlin
Katie Taylor
Context
The televising of the murder of George Floyd in Minnesota on May 25th sparked an international conversation on race.
As a group, we wanted to capitalize on the common interest and passion we each had regarding this subject. I suggested the Minnesota Freedom Fund website for this redesign project, and it was clear on initial load that this site was in need of a little TLC. After a bit of research, we discovered that following the murder of George Floyd, this small organization--started by a student with a grant in 2016--received an influx of 20 million dollars. They received so much money, and so quickly, that they had to stop accepting donations and encourage people to donate to other organizations. In an article reflecting on this shift, the MMF communicated that they were interested in leveraging those funds to broaden their reach.
Problem
The Minnesota Freedom Fund is dedicated to the reformation of the criminal bail bond system. A system that “puts a price on freedom that only a few can afford and many cannot”, but The Minnesota Freedom Fund website does not currently reflect that view. It lacks content that pertains to the non-profit’s mission and is in need of updates with modern, impactful visuals.
Solution
We developed the Minnesota Freedom Fund's website to help divert donations and spread awareness of the bail bond system. Our approach focuses not only on increasing funds to assist those needing bailout but also providing easy access to resources and action items to citizens to help educate and drive policy changes so bond bail outs will, one day, no longer be needed.
Our Approach
Discover
Competitor Analysis
Heuristic Evaluation
Survey
User Interviews​
Define
Affinity & Empathy Mapping
User Persona & Insights
Develop
Sketches
Wireframes
a/b testing
Deliver
Hi-fidelity prototype
Discover
We began our process with an examination of the site as it was, and determined what major changes there were that needed to be made. Some of our main observations included:
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Inconsistent color and font choices
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Important information hidden below the fold or hard to find
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General lack of visuals and impactful imagery
Following that we performed a competitor analysis. Looking at websites like National Bail Out and The Bail Project (direct competitors) some things that set them apart included:
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Powerful imagery
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Variety of other media types
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Striking color schemes
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Visual clarity
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These became some of our major inspiration moving into our prototyping phase.
User Interviews
We created our interview plan with 3 main questions in mind:
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How does the User feel about non profit organizations?
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How do the Users feel about the MFF
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How do personal experiences change the perspective of the User?
Our primary methods of gathering user data were from survey responses and user interviews.
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Our main takeaways were that folks were unsure what exactly the Minnesota freedom fund's mission was, and that they were more inclined to donate and volunteer to a cause when they could see where exactly their money was going or how it was being used.
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We used various methods to synthesize this data including, an Affinity Diagram, and Empathy Mapping from which we arrived at our user personas.
User Persona
We came up with two personas to represent the two different types of people who might access the Minnesota Freedom Fund's website.
Nadia is fairly far removed from the center of action, but she’s aware of the issues facing the black community in America, and she wants to help. Her main goal would be to make a donation, since she is limited to participating remotely.
Nandi is a social worker, and part time student, looking to pursue a career as a human rights attorney.
Define
We used the I Like, I Wish, What if? method and a Feature Prioritization Matrix to help us define our most important tasks for the redesign:
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Update visuals
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Bring relevant information above the fold
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Where to learn more about Bail bonds and donations
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How to volunteer
During our interviews, we discovered that
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people are very passionate about fighting for racial equality
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People want to be able to seek ways they can meaningfully participate.
We will help users to do this by
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showcasing the MFF content in a way that puts more emphasis on what bail funds are
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who they help (where the money goes), and the
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ways that people can participate or help.
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Doing this will inform more citizens about the injustices of the current bail bonds system and encourage them to join the fight for policy reform.
“We believe that providing clarity & spreading awareness of the unjust bail bond system in America will help drive policy changes to provide a fair system, especially for marginalized and underprivileged communities.”
Develop
Paper Sketches
Staring with mobile-first RWD we created some rough sketches of what our new landing page could look like. As stated earlier, we wanted to use evocative, dramatic imagery to inspire and grab people's attention. We also created more dramatic and emphasized call to actions.
We also defined the style and branding of our redesign during this time. More information on that can be viewed in our style guide, linked below:
Low-Fidelity Wireframes
A/B Testing
After defining our style and applying it to our design, we went ahead and did some a/b testing of a few different features to determine what features our potential users would prefer. From both of the samples below we wanted users opinions on our top navigation bar.
From the samples on the left, we wanted to know how people felt about the double navigation bar look (B) versus a sleeker single bar look (A). The results were close, but people preferred a sleeker look.
From the samples on the right, we found that people preferred the bottom dropdown, and so we incorporated both of these results into our final design.
