In 2011, Riverdale farm (Cabbagetown, Toronto) became in jeopardy of being permanently shut-down and sold-off due to an aggressive budget-cut campaign by the City of Toronto’s Mayor, Rob Ford. In light of this, a band of citizens came together (dubbed the Riverdale Farm Advisory Council) to try and save their farm.
In mid-2012, through aggressive campaigning, reform, and future planning, the RFAC was able to put a plan forward to the City of Toronto stating how the farm might increase their income over the next 5 years to become self-sustaining and thus save the farm.
In early 2012 I joined the RFAC on their Communications Committee and have been working with them on a web campaign to increase web-presence, increase value, raise awareness, increase patronage, increase revenue, and inevitably save the farm.
The Process
As the initiative to save the farm grew, and additional components made it onto the website, it started to get clunky, and navigation became unintuitive. I took it upon myself to:
- Analyze the results of the Web Analytics data on both the website and the Facebook page to understand what is most important to users
- Conduct an expert evaluation, and use the findings of the analytics data, to inform the design and improve the website structure
Current Website
Evaluation (Executive Summary)
- Logo font has poor readability
- Navigation is unintuitive
- Both Expert Evaluation and Analytics data show Nav is not organized to match user’s needs
- Some sub-navigational elements are unnecessary or redundant
- Metal cross-hatch background does not fit with farm theme
- Content ‘About the Farm’ and ‘The Neighbourhood’ is a wall-of-text
Analytics Summary
June 2012 - July 2012
Proposed Improvements (Navigation Evaluation)
Organize the structure of the website (and the navigation) according to what people would want to do on the website:
Future Website
The website structure is currently being revamped in an offline server. When completed and tested, the new design will be posted here and on RiverdaleFarm.ca
About Me