Role: Lead UX and Visual Designer
Military families move around a lot, and it can be an isolating experience. Start Strong, Stay Strong connects local families, especially moms and primary caregivers, to each other and the military family community around the world.
They can browse for and submit local events, find hot spots in their community, unlock great savings in the commissary, and read powerful and inspirational stories that help them feel connected and supported.
I worked as Lead Designer on this project, serving as a key member of the Agile team to define, develop and iterate on each of the major features of the site. I worked with the Product Owner, content and research strategists to establish our target audience and goals, and how those translated into the features on the site. Then moved into mapping user flows and interactions for features like Account Center, browsing and adding events and marketplace items, and joining groups and participating in discussions. I also developed a pattern library and design system, and made sure that from both a UX and visual standpoint, things stayed consistent site-wide.
Check out the site at startstrongpg.com
Target audience:
Military families with a priority on moms
Motivators:
Continuously seeking ways to simplify their days to reduce stress and allow more time for themselves and their family.
Challenges:
Moves frequently -constantly re-establishing local resources. More often than not serves as the sole family caregiver - saving time and energy is often more important than saving money. Spouse, Family and Friends are often absent - finds ways to build local support systems. Schedules are unpredictable - adopts a one day at a time approach.
Needs:
- Wants to quickly locate local businesses & services that are family friendly, convenient, reliable and a good value.
- Wants to find activities that require little to no planning.
- Wants to establish a support system that can assist when I need/want help. - Wants to get and provide help with issues that are unique to my situation.
- Wants to connect with others who are like minded - interests, values and/or situation.
Before embarking on an exploration, the user is prompted to select a home base so that base-specific content can be presented to them.
By making it easy to switch the base-locator while keeping the content structure consistent, the site supports the idea that starting all over again in a new environment isn’t something they have to do alone.
We built a group functionality where users can connect with others who share their interests by joining specific groups and starting conversations with others who are like-minded in interests and values.
This site is built for users, and also relies on them to generate content, so a large feature of this product including building a robust Account Center. Using our UX research, we set the requirements and user flow for each individual section of the Account Center, so we were sure to hit the right goals.
The Account Center includes functionality like:
sign in/out, change password, setting email alert notifications, submitting user-generated content such as events, marketplace, and services, and being able to review/delete items that have been posted.