Design, digital and aftercare & support

Spitalfields Housing Association

Supporting the UK’s largest Bangladeshi led housing association and bringing the website aesthetics to match the rebrand that we previously developed.

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.

The results

The website received an overwhelming response of positive feedback from the tenants, and we optimised the back office processes on average by 38% of the comparable time before the redesign.

The website also increased the engagement rate of organic search arrivals by 43% and direct visits by 29%. We are now working on the second and third phases of automating the community hall hiring booking process and introducing a payment system to handle online payments.

End-to-End approach

Discovery

Communication workshop, research and analysis

IA Audit

Content evaluation / Categorisation and taxonomy / Navigation labelling and wayfinding / New site map / Migration planning

UX and Design

UX wireframming / UI design / UI Toolkit (style guide and designs) / user testing / forms

Development

Content migration / refinement for all design stages exercise

QA refinement

Quality assurance testing / refinement / prototype testing

Deployment support

Internal and external implement / Staging site development and testing / live site deployment

They are extremely creative and competent designers with an affable nature who have quickly grasped the needs of the customer and tailored their work to suit our particular image. We would highly recommend their services to you.


Community Development Manager, SHA