The “Délégué Général aux Droits de l’Enfant” (DGDE) of the Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles in Belgium is an important institution that advocates for children’s rights. Tasked with modernizing their digital presence and making it more accessible, our Product Design team at CBTW embarked on a comprehensive redesign of their website. This case study demonstrates a methodical approach to delivering a user-friendly, informative and engaging platform in line with the International Convention on the Rights of the Child.
User Interviews: A Pillar of UX Research
User interviews are a key component of user experience (UX) research, designed to dive deep into the user’s world. These interviews provide direct insights that are critical to designing intuitive and user-centered digital products. Here’s how to maximize their impact on the UX process:
- Objective Setting: Start with a clear focus on what UX elements you need to understand or improve. Goals might include improving usability, increasing accessibility, or tailoring content to user needs. These should guide the formulation of your interview questions, ensuring that they are targeted to uncover UX-specific insights.
- Participant Selection: Select participants who reflect your actual user base to ensure that feedback is relevant to the actual product users. A diverse mix of users helps uncover a wide range of UX issues and preferences, providing a richer foundation for design decisions.
- Question Design: Craft questions that probe the user experience – ask about past interactions with similar products, preferences, and pain points. This approach helps uncover the emotional and practical factors that influence user satisfaction and engagement.
- Conducting Interviews: Use tools that facilitate a comfortable and communicative environment, which is essential for gaining real insights. Remote tools such as Lookback not only help you conduct efficient interviews but also allow participants to share their screen interactions and reactions in real time.
- Data Analysis: Analyze interview data with a focus on identifying UX trends and anomalies. Apply qualitative analysis techniques to translate these findings into actionable UX strategies that can directly improve design elements.
- Insight Application: Integrate these findings into your UX design process. Use them to inform wireframes, prototypes, and the overall design language. This ensures that the final product is not only aesthetically pleasing but also functionally optimal for the end user.
- Feedback Loop: Establish a feedback loop where insights gained from interviewing users lead to continuous UX improvements. This iterative approach ensures that the product continues to evolve based on user feedback, resulting in a better overall experience.
In summary, user interviews provide the raw, unfiltered feedback necessary for true user-centered design. By effectively integrating user feedback into the UX design workflow, teams can create products that truly resonate with their audience and meet practical usability standards.
DGDE X CBTW
Web accessibility challenges of DGDE
The Délégué Dénéral aux Droits de l’Enfant (DGDE) of the Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles wanted to make its website a more effective tool for educating and engaging an audience that included children, parents, and professionals. For this reason, the goal was to better communicate important aspects of children’s rights by improving website accessibility, enriching informational content, and engaging users more profoundly.
Our UX-Centric Approach
Our strategy was rooted in a deep understanding of the end-users and was implemented through a structured process:
Stage 1: Research and Discovery
We initiated the project by engaging in comprehensive user and stakeholder interviews to capture detailed requirements and expectations. This phase was critical for setting the foundation for the redesign. Furthermore, we supplemented these insights with an analytical review of existing usage data to pinpoint areas where navigation and user engagement fell short. Additionally, card sorting exercises were conducted to restructure the site’s content, making it more intuitive and easier to navigate.
Stage 2: Definition and Design
In the second stage, we facilitated co-creation workshops that brought stakeholders and designers together to collaboratively craft solutions tailored to the needs of the DGDE’s audience. This was followed by UX design sprints, which allowed us to rapidly prototype and refine ideas, integrating real-time feedback to streamline the design process effectively.
Stage 3: Testing and Refinement
Our redesigned prototypes underwent rigorous usability testing with real users to ensure the interfaces were visually appealing, functional and straightforward to use. We also conducted an external accessibility audit to verify compliance with WCAG 2.1 standards, reinforcing the site’s usability across diverse user demographics.
The development of the final website was executed by another provider.
Benefits of the user-centric design
The design of the DGDE website brought several significant improvements:
- Improved site usability: The new site architecture offers simplified navigation and improved user flow, allowing users to access information quickly and effortlessly. The refreshed visual design also better captures the essence of the DGDE and invites deeper engagement with the content.
- Expanded accessibility: By meeting international accessibility standards, the site now serves a broader audience more effectively, ensuring that all users, regardless of ability, can access and benefit from the site.
- Stakeholder satisfaction: The collaborative approach to the redesign process ensured that the final product authentically reflected the DGDE’s mission and values, and enhanced its ability to educate and engage its community. The DGDE was very pleased with our ability to customize content for children, adults, and professionals, each with different information needs.
- Strategic content and design improvements: We created a clear and intuitive information architecture and reduced the site’s text-heavy content to create a more modern, user-friendly interface that attracts and retains users.
Client feedback
« From the earliest stages of the project, we sensed a real commitment and desire to do things right on the part of CBTW. They were available and willing to listen, eager to gain an in-depth understanding of the project’s implications for children’s rights in the Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles (FWB). It was a website that required careful thought, mainly because it is aimed at three specific audiences at the same time: young people, adults interested in children’s rights, and professionals working in contact with young people. CBTW clearly understood the constraints and challenges that such an ambition represented, and they spontaneously proposed effective solutions, or guided us to make our solutions realistic. The site’s aesthetic is clear and dynamic, and will greatly contribute to revitalizing the Délégué général aux Droits de L’Enfant’s external communication, making it more accessible, multi-channel, modern and targeted. »
– From Pierre Targnion, Community Manager at DGDE
Conclusion
The DGDE website redesign exemplifies our ability to creating visually appealing web environments that are also highly functional and accessible. This project illustrates the significant impact that thoughtful UX design can have on a website’s ability to effectively educate and engage on important issues such as children’s rights.
Not sure if your digital product meets the accessibility needs of your users? Contact us to learn more about the product design services we can provide to your projects.