Improving the Accessibility & Scalability of a Product to Serve More Children at Risk
The Global Orphan Project is an impact organization that exists to break the orphan cycle across the world. Their CarePortal platform is a proprietary technology that connects local agencies, churches, and community responders to meet needs in the community. Currently, CarePortal serves thousands of communities across the US, but they have global ambitions.
In preparation for scaling to the global market, Global Orphan Project chose Crema for a UX & product audit to help them unlock the potential of CarePortal, improve the accessibility and scalability of the app, and prioritize potential features.
125,000 children in crisis served through CarePortal
38,000 community responders have been empowered through CarePortal
$40,000,000 contributed by individual responders and churches via CarePortal
Innovation doesn't just happen. We're here to help guide you through the earliest stages of R&D and explore the real possibilities for the future of your business.
Preparing the product to scale and meet global needs
CarePortal has been effective at many things: raising community awareness, equipping churches and individuals to care for their community, creating economic impact for those in need, and more. However, it needed to be critically examined before scaling for global adoption. They knew they had something good, but wanted it to be great.
Core challenges the Global Orphan Project team brought to Crema:
An aging product that has built up technical and experience debt
User needs and priorities shifting from the original vision and feature set
It was difficult for local churches to get involved without one-to-one training
Product value propositions and cohesion
With this UX & product audit, Crema was committed to giving the CarePortal team a 360° view of the platform’s strengths, what needs to be improved, and how to position the platform for success from a design, strategy, and technical perspective.
Further challenges Crema uncovered:
Internal understanding of user roles and their respective jobs-to-be-done
The suite of platforms provided overlapping functions or left gaps in functionality
The website was not driving ideal conversion or providing necessary clarity for potential users
Inconsistent onboarding processes, leading to lower adoption and inefficient training
“We did our due diligence and felt Crema aligned well with our high-quality standards and shared our vision for a world-class digital experience that would delight our users.”
- Adrien Lewis (Chief Innovation Officer, Global Orphan Project)
Performing a UX & product audit in 5 weeks required starting with an intensive full-team kickoff in which we mapped out the full CarePortal experience, identified critical areas of focus, and aligned stakeholders on the top priorities for our partnership. The team convened three weeks later for another strategic summit to focus on other products in the CarePortal portfolio and how they fit into the current (and future) CarePortal ecosystem. These workshops gave the Crema & CarePortal teams the information needed to dive deeper into the codebase, design library, and test environments to do further research, as well as prepare critical questions to ask their team and a group of their users.
Additional services provided in this engagement include:
Website analytics assessment
Website heatmap analysis
Conversational interviews with users, trainers, & others close to the project
Accessibility & error testing
Systems performance metrics
Competitive & market analysis
Design & branding review
Findings & suggestions
After completing the assessment, research, and analysis of their platform, Crema presented findings & suggestions to the CarePortal team, including the next steps for:
Sitemap reorganization, in order to position the user for success as they arrive on the website.
Updated onboarding process, in order to equip the user to use the platform as soon as possible.
Updated taxonomy, hierarchy, naming conventions, and criteria for user roles, in order to create a standardized user experience, make a clear delineation between user roles, and create a simpler product for team leaders to equip their teams.
Updated information architecture, to create an experience that enables information to be accessed in relevant & easy ways for users who lack familiarity with the platform.
Feature suggestions, which contribute toward a scalable, elegant experience that users expect from digital products.
Conclusion
Crema equipped CarePortal’s teams to zoom out from the day-to-day of their individual strategies and see the larger whole of CarePortal as a platform that, with the right attention and improvements, can go “from something good to something great.” Stakeholders walked away with clear priorities, decisions to convene on, and new clarity around what product excellence is.
Crema’s final deliverables included:
Summarized results, insights, and recommendations presented to the full team
Appendix of technical documentation, audit findings, and assessment results
Process Map created in Miro which visualized the entire CarePortal customer journey
A five-phased roadmap that prioritized the foundational shifts that needed to happen in order to create new features, facilitate an improved experience, and support a scaleable product
Most importantly, the CarePortal team has received the go-ahead for further commitment toward this life-changing work. They continue to work through the prioritized feature list, embodying their ongoing mission to help more kids and families in need than ever before.
Want to talk? We're eager to listen.
Our product experts come prepared from the very first meeting. We're ready to help you better understand the possibilities when it comes to business strategy, design, and technology.
.png)
