Website Redesign & Implementation Handoff
April 2025 – August 2025
Team: Annabelle Zhou · Wendy Moy · Leona Lai · Nela Schechtman | Design for America @ UC San Diego
Background
SDHC needed a revamped, accessible website that helps two audiences quickly find what they need:
- Community members
Members of the general public seeking food assistance.
- Providers/partners
Organizations and volunteers looking for programs that will teach them how to assist those in need.
Working within Squarespace, we restructured the information architecture, redesigned priority pages, and delivered a practical handoff guide to improve information accessibility on the website and enable the SDHC staff to ship the new website quickly and confidently.
Problems
- Homepage clutter and weak hierarchy made scanning difficult
- User flows were inefficient - resource content was buried and hard to find
- Providers needed direct paths to toolkits and forms
- General public needed clear eligibility information without unnecessary information
- Organization’s CTAs were hard to find with overwhelming amounts of competing information
Here’s a glimpse of some user feedback from our research survey:
Initial heuristic evaluation of SDHC website
Solution
Design Decisions
- Homepage simplification: mission near top; fewer cards; remove redundant links.
- New Information Architecture: Re-organize and re-labeled top-level navigation
- Food assistance resources: concise intros, “learn more” with clear eligibility hints; consolidate overlapping CalFresh info
- Provider resources: ****nest all training programs and resources under one tab
- Add clear Find Food CTA to nav bar
New top-level navigation:
- Section: Food Assistance - public-facing program pages nested under dropdown label