Veterans For Peace (VFP) is a nonprofit association consisting of military veterans who work to foster peace and social justice. Established in 1985, its mission is to promote a culture of peace by encouraging non-violence and opposing militarism. The organization goal is to educate the about the true costs of war, support veterans in their transition to civilian life, and work toward ending conflicts and promoting diplomatic results.
How can we improve the usability, navigation, and overall user experience the Veterans For Peace website?
To address the usability challenges on the Veterans For Peace (VFP) website, we recommended several key design improvements:
Reorganized Navigation
The website’s information architecture should be modified, making it easier for users to find tasks such as joining the organization, donating, and accessing financial records. Clear and intuitive labels with a more logical menu structure would improve the user journey.
Consistent Visual Design
Standardization of fonts, colors, and layouts would create a cohesive, professional aesthetic across the site. The external store should also be redesigned to align with the main site. This would reduce confusion for users navigating between them.
Relocate Buttons Lower on Page
Move the “join/renew membership” buttons below the informative text to funnel the user’s focus so they can quickly understand whether they are a “Veteran” or an “Associate.”
Simplified Donation Process
The user should be able to navigate how often they can periodically donate without change to their original selection
Our usability evaluation of VeteransForPeace.org discovered noteworthy user experience challenges across four key tasks. The research was conducted with four participants and exposed critical issues in website navigation, membership application, and information architecture. The users were asked to rank these tasks with “one” being very difficult and “five” being very easy.
Rankings were as follows:
Purchasing a student membership (averagedifficulty 3.5)
Making donations (average difficulty 5)
Buying merchandise(average difficulty 3.75)
Accessing meeting recordings (average difficulty2)
Key findings included confusing membership verbiage, lack of button feedback, low-contrast navigation bar in the store, unexpected site redirects, and difficulties in finding specific content. The most successful interaction was the donation process, primarily due to familiar PayPal integration. The least successful was accessing meeting recordings, with only half the participants able to complete the task. These insights led to recommendations for redesigning menu labels, improving button interactions, enhancing visual consistency, and clarifying navigation paths to create a more intuitive user experience.
