Know Thy User and Thyself

We dove deep into the organization to understand whom LIVESTRONG serves, how they serve them, and what the community most values about the organization. We found a startling array of activities, services and needs. We reflected back to the organization areas of agreement and areas of debate to find a unified direction.

Through a series of in-depth interviews, we developed personas to represent the wide variety of needs within the community. From the user who has recently been diagnosed and may be feeling overwhelmed to the user who has emerged from treatment and is ready to give back, personas helped to create mindshare and guide decision-making throughout the redesign.

Leverage the Assets

By consolidating assets and providing better mechanisms for both display and management, we helped LIVESTRONG get more mileage out of existing content assets and provide more value and inspiration to users.

As an organization, LIVESTRONG works to reduce duplication of efforts and encourage collaboration within the cancer community. They often help people in need find local organizations who can best support them. The old site offered siloed, hard-to-find lists of these organizations with often-outdated contact information. The new site captures support resources in a centrally managed database that can grow exponentially. Users can find the resources they need with quick filters.

LIVESTRONG had also invested in the documentation of more than 200 interviews in which cancer survivors shared stories and insights. Users valued these interviews, but were often frustrated that they could not find stories relevant to them. We analyzed and reorganized the interviews to provide a better way of browsing these highly valued assets. We also encouraged LIVESTRONG to consolidate video content on a YouTube channel with playlists that help users find the videos they want to see.