I began work with Boone & Crockett Club in Spring 2023. We engaged with them to rebuild their website from the ground up, a long overdue project for one of the country's largest Nonprofit Organziations.

The tl:dr:

  • Collaborated with JD Case & Associates and Idea Ranch for a new brand identity in 2019/2020 that hasn't been used

  • Uncovered critical areas for improvement, including a low completion rate for the online trophy acceptance tool.

 • Most users reading on mobile, little work has been done to the mobile site

  • Elevated the content presentation with a complete overhaul of fonts, colors, and readability.

  • Provided guidance to the content team, bridging the gap between print and digital media practices.

  • Introduced enhanced collection pages, allowing for featured stories and improved content weighting.

  • Crafted a user-focused design system using Figma, emphasizing new aesthetics and accessibility.

  • Implemented a stepped process to enhance user navigation, reduce cognitive load, and improve overall usability.

The Boone & Crockett Club's website faces many UX challenges. The site, built on an outdated Drupal platform, requires an urgent update due to end-of-life concerns and limited development support. Lack of initial design work contributes to poor user experiences, compounded by mobile optimization issues affecting roughly 70% of users.

Employees encounter tooling deficiencies, and the e-commerce section lacks modern layout patterns. The trophy acceptance tool shows significant usability problems, with a completion rate below 10%. Content organization is disordered, and the asset upload process is inefficient. Additionally, the integration of a 2019/2020 brand identity remains incomplete. Addressing these issues requires a comprehensive redesign to enhance accessibility, navigation, and overall user satisfaction.

Through some initial exploration about why things are the way they are and what they've been doing to try and move the needle, I learn that in 2019/2020, Boone and Crockett Club engaged with JD Case & Associates and Idea Ranch to develop a new brand identity for their marketing campaigns. They've been slowly transitioning into using it across their advertising media, but hadn't done much else with it (Seemingly a mix of lack of knowledge and pitch to the board of directors). This is opportunity number one, and the one that will make the largest visual impact for their customers. Following this, I began to work with their Directors of Trophy Management, Content, and Marketing to learn about the processes for content creation, trophy acceptance, and subscription support. I uncovered that less than 10% of applications that get started using their online Trophy acceptance tool are completed after they begin, so this is where we're going to start.

In addition to learning our priorities, I needed to figure out how to implement the brand guidelines in a way that matched up with what the market would expect. To do this, I took data from the JD Case research and pinned up websites from across the market including Ducks Unlimited, Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, National Rifle Association, National Geographic, and more. The end result was a much more "sleek" and simple look with a focus on accessibility and championing the original content.

After getting the initial mockups approved, I went to work on a basic design system (utilizing component libraries and variables in Figma) that covered colors, typography, and spacing, as well as prebuilt components like buttons, navigation, tables, cards, etc. This not only ensured consistency across the website but also facilitated easy collaboration and handoff between designers. By utilizing component libraries and variables, the system streamlined the design process, allowing for efficient updates and future modifications.

Diving In, there were a whole slew of UI issues right off the bat. Dropdowns aren't big enough to show their content, there's no visual hierarchy or weighting at all, the page scrolls endlessly and provides a slew of ungrouped, unorganized input fields for the user to interact with. For starters, I went through and logically grouped all of the information we're asking for, and then laid out a stepped process to guide the user through it. The stepped progression will allow the user to only see a small amount of information at a time (reducing cognitive load and navigation confusion) and allow them to skip around the process as needed. We made a concious choice to not use a single column form to try and keep the need to scroll to a minimum. While B&C wants to collect as much data as possible from their users, almost none of the fields are marked as required because we don't want to frustrate the user by showing them error messages that ultimately aren't all that important in the grand scheme of things. Because of this unique approach from the client, I felt okay with not encouraging a single column form, since we're not concerned about the user missing fields. We corrected the size and display issues for each field, and then tackled the next problem: asset upload.

Trophy information is accompanied by on-site photos and documentation. On the current site, they were using a 3rd party tool to accept uploads, and it was a pretty big mess. Drop zones everywhere (that can't accept dropped files?), references to software that the users don't interact with, and generally poor instructions across the board. To fight this, we replaced all of it with a single image dropzone that could handle bulk files and would list each upload for proper naming and tagging. There's also a list of required photos with each individual trophy, so to help the user along, we included a list showing what still hasn't been uploaded and tagged in real time. This way, if the user is searching for photos, they can quickly see what they're missing.

Finally, a focus on championing the content. In it's current state, content looks like an afterthought. It's disorganized, it's hard to find, and even when you do find it, it's hard to read. We did a complete overhaul on fonts, colors, and readability as part of the design system, but also needed to spend some time educating the content team on best practices for posting in modern day publishing. Their team largely has a background in print media, so some of what they were doing on screen didn't translate very well. We also put together some better collection pages, with insights on what you can find within them and the ability to "feature" stories that B&C wants to give more weight. This functionmality works in conjunction with content weighting on the home page as well. With a little guidance and some better tooling, new content is sure to be a step up in the new website.

By November, I had the Design System in a good place, the high-level layouts designed, as well as functional diagrams and notes across the product for how it's expected to perform. It is at this time that I pass off the remaining work to another designer to finish up the final touches, provide development support, and work on updates as needed. I'm sad to be parting from the project, but it's time for me to move on to the next problem to solve and I'm really excited to see it when it goes live.