The brief
Spitalfields Housing Association, one of UK’s largest Bangladeshi-led housing associations, had an existing website that was overdue for a redesign to reflect the ongoing changes in how their tenants interacted with them, ensure compliance with the Housing Ombudsman Code and digital transformation changes accelerated by the pandemic. They required a relook at the entire website, from the content to the accessibility, utilisation and integration with their back office workflows.
Challenges and solutions
The new site development started during the pandemic, which made it more challenging to conduct the research with some of the participants (tenants) who were less digitally-abled. As a solution during our research, we included in our research design over-the-phone/video-call qualitative interviews and guided them through reviewing the old site, which removed most of the logistical restrictions we encountered as opposed to running it online.
Project details
The direction of the site was entirely dictated by the outcome and findings of the research to determine what the current resident’s needs were and how it would grow. With additional steering from operational teams to identify areas of operational optimisation, we looked at the IA and UX to make the navigation as smooth and clear as possible and identified additional pages of missing content that needed to be created.
Visual assets were previously difficult to procure, so we suggested an illustrative approach to the UI design (and extending on the new brand guidelines) that gives the association a unique look. As per the client’s requirements, the site utilises a flexible and modular page builder so that they are also able to easily edit the content or construct new pages.