Fondation Michaëlle Jean Foundation

Background

The Fondation Michaëlle Jean Foundation (FMJF), founded by former Governor General Michaëlle Jean and filmmaker Jean-Daniel Lafond, aimed to empower Canada's youth through arts, advocacy, innovation, and entrepreneurship. As FMJF prepared to launch its new five-year plan, the organization revamped its website and brand to align with its refreshed mission, vision, and values.

During my tenure as a Research Fellow with the Social Innovation Fellowship Program (now Propel Impact), I collaborated with Hanh Le to support FMJF. Together, we audited FMJF's website, conducted usability tests, and provided recommendations for improvement. Our insights informed the redesign, ensuring it reflected the organization's history, future direction, and goals. Despite the project's tight three-month timeline, we prioritized key deliverables to meet FMJF's needs efficiently.

Team

• Hanh Le, SIA Program Fellow and Design Support
• Marc Tran, Design Support
• Médérique Mercier, Developer Lead, Groupe RG Design

Project objectives

• Design a user-friendly and intuitive website that makes it easy for people to access information.
• Refresh the visual appeal of the website and align it with the Foundation's current and future goals to increase visibility and recognition.
• Ensure website accessibility by designing a responsive site that can be easily viewed on desktop and mobile devices.
• Foster versatility by designing a website that can accommodate future content updates and attract a youthful audience.

Tools

Miro, Notion, Figma, Illustrator, Photoshop, Google Drive (Doc, Slides), Zoom

Target audience

• Donors (foundations, government, financial institutions, companies)
• Community partners (who operate youth-led initiatives)
• Youth (i.e., between 15-30 years old, traditionally marginalized or underserved)

Duration

6 months

Live site

fmjf.ca/en/home/

Research and strategy

Website audit

In early 2022, my partner Hanh and I conducted two website audits (FMJF and National Black Canadians Summit (NBCS) sites) as part of a Social Innovation Fellowship program. The audit was split into two phases, with phase one focusing on technical performance (e.g. site responsiveness, content, speed, accessibility) and phase two on user experience, site structure, brand audit, and recommendations (e.g. site map, wireframe).

Usability test

A moderated usability test was conducted through three Zoom sessions in Canada with FMJF to address research questions related to ease of registration, recognition of the Summit as a Foundation's initiative, and site navigation. Participants were asked to complete tasks on both websites and data was collected through qualitative data and four KPIs (time on task, success with ease rate, success with difficulty rate, drop-off rate).

Insights

The website audit and usability test revealed limited access to core information on the home pages, unclear relationship between FMJF and the Summit, unclear navigation, lack of community-oriented imagery, and accessibility issues. Recommendations were prioritized as high, mid, or future-term based on effort and urgency.

Discovery and design concept

I joined the project as Lead Designer in September 2022 and held a discovery session with FMJF's core team to better understand their brand, pain points, and desired changes. The approved design concept aimed to appeal to youth and donors through a balanced color palette (inspired by the FMJF logo), sans serif-serif typeface pairing, and textures and shapes to add depth to content.

Brand personality

• Action-oriented
• Innovative
• Creative
• Collaborative
• Inclusive
• Socially responsible