I jotted down a few notes during the Lend-a-Hand India presentation that I wanted to share. Overall, it was effective. I particularly liked the way the team trimmed down the nine+ menu items to just five. That seemingly simple change made the site seem a lot less daunting.
But I thought the team's topline recommendations could have gone even further. Specifically:
1) The presentation of the three personas was useful. I got a good sense of Lend-a-Hand's three main audiences, both actual and aspirational. At no point during the presentation, though, did I become clear on what the site can (or should) offer each of these groups. A map showing content types for each of the five main sections would have helped. For instance, what would press get out of visiting this site? If Lend-a-Hand really wants to target journalists, then perhaps they need to develop some press-friendly contents--e.g., photo library, background briefings on poverty in India, interviews w/ leading development economists, reviews of Slumdog Millionaire by Indian youth... Also, what's in this site for donors? As our two judges hinted, Lend-a-Hand should be taken to task for not doing more to highlight their on-the-ground work and local partners. One obvious way for them to go would be to adapt the Kiva approach to their needs.
2) Like Craig Zheng, I liked the fact that the team's mock-up for the Home Page urges visitors to "Donate Now" and "Take Action." That said, "Take Action" is vague. Maybe "Get Involved with Us," with two sub-categories: "Donate" and "Volunteer"?
3) Also on the team's proposed new Home Page: I kept thinking that some of the language was clunky. Maybe you could play with the organization's name more: e.g., "How can you lend a hand?" Also, the logo, showing people holding hands, is quite clever. Could the photos on the Home Page echo that somehow--close-ups of people's hands or some such? It would help to reinforce the message...
4) Also, the branding doesn't convey the message that the organization is focused on India, apart from the name. The tagline, "Making a difference in the lives of the poor through self-help," could apply to many groups. How to bring in India more prominently--would a map visual help?
5) The team mentioned several times Lend-a-Hand's attachment to its video. That's all well and good, but what do others make of it? Are the contents good enough to inspire people to donate to, volunteer for, or write about Lend-a-Hand's work? If not, how might the contents be improved? To get maximum mileage out of the video, the audience question needs to be tackled. Also, and as Constance said, the team should consider whether other kinds of multimedia--e.g., a slideshow of photos taken in the field--could be just as (if not more) effective.
6) During the presentation, I was taking two, somewhat contradictory impressions of Lend-a-Hand's work: on the one hand, it runs high-profile fundraising events in NYC that staff members could be blogging/twittering about; on the other, there are all these poor young people in India they're trying to help. This puts in mind Kipling's "the white man's burden"--but is that Lend-a-Hand's intent? I don't think so. Still, it's hard to reconcile the image of chocolate tasting at MadamX Lounge in Soho w/ images of India's rural poor. I'm not quite sure how to address, but at the very least, the client should be cautioned about it.
7) Finally, I had a kneejerk reaction to the notion of the site being divided between "static" and other kinds of contents. "Static" has a very special meaning in Web world.
Well, enough of my critique. Time to give a hand to the Lend-a-Hand team!
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Hi All,
ReplyDeleteJust want to put in my own comments. First, I wanted to reiterate the last line of Mary-Lea's critique above by saying that you did a great job overall and the judges, Mary-Lea and I were all pretty impressed with your presentation. Bearing that in mind, I just want to briefly summarize my own take on the strengths and weaknesses of the presentation (which of course is distinct from the full report).
I thought you did a good job of researching your client and its audience ad a great job of modeling and summarizing the target audiences. I agree with ML and the judges that the actual messaging and specific pathways that you intend the audiences to take weren't as fully fleshed out -- I'd like to have seen at least one sample narrative of a complete trip through the site.
The home page re-design/mock-up was pretty good, but I think a little unrealistic in that it doesn't seem to provide an accommodation for news and announcements, and so seemed a little too inflexible.
You did a really great job of thinking about how they could and should manage their content, and I thought the idea of using a blog as a sort of cheap and easy cms was a good, inventive solution. ML's issue with the word 'static' is I think about the actual label, but you should note that in presenting your proposal, it would help to craft the language so that it doesn't seem as though you're suggesting there be a type of content that is never managed (Sorry for the double negative here).
I thought you could have gone as far as to also recommend that they rethink their resource allocation here and actually staff their web operation better as well.
Possibly the biggest strength in your presentation was the idea of immediately separating your recommendations into quick-wins and long term plans. That is a very helpful way of organizing the proposal, and we were all impressed by that.
I have a question not related to the presentation, but related to the final paper. Do we need to cite references? I haven't been doing so, but I'm sure I could go back and figure out the sources.
ReplyDeleteI think it might be helpful to have the occasional footnote and to list some key references at the end of the report. As we saw last week, clients can be defensive. Thus I'd be in favor of anything that helps to add weight, credibility, to your recommendations. But unlike traditional academic papers, I see this as being strategic, not exhaustive. We also don't want to overwhelm them.
ReplyDeleteFollowing on my last: Another technique that I think could be effective in the written version is to add hyperlinks to the text. Particularly important, in my view, is to hyperlink to definitions of key terms, to ensure that you and your clients are on the same page--e.g., does UNANIMA understand what is commonly meant by "intranet"? We can't take that for granted.
ReplyDeleteNOTE: If you do add hyperlinks, then you have to tell the client to make sure they read the report on the screen as well.