Songs of Love


Redesigns for Endowment Campaign

Project Overview

The Songs of Love Foundation is a nonprofit organization that creates personalized songs to uplift terminally ill children and teens. The foundation approached our team to help with:

  • Full website redesign

  • Branding and UX strategies

  • Growth, scaling and partnership strategies

ROLE

Project Lead
Market & User Research, Website Analytics
Content Strategy, Information Architecture, Prototyping

April - June 2023

THE PROBLEM

The Songs of Love Foundation needed a modernized website to support a $5 million endowment campaign and attract more donors and partners. The site’s confusing navigation, outdated design, and ineffective logo hindered usability. Additionally, the existing analytics software was difficult to interpret, leading to a switch to a newer solution. However, this transition created a data gap, making it harder to assess the impact of design changes and ensure they met user needs.

THE SOLUTION

We embarked on a complete website redesign, including a new content strategy, design system, and refreshed branding materials. However, after evaluating the existing web analytics software, it became clear that the project required more than just a redesign. We developed a comprehensive marketing and UX strategy, along with an outreach plan tailored to support the endowment campaign and attract more donors.

Prototype



”The name, Songs of Love Foundation, came to me instantly. It was inspired by a song titled “Songs of Love” that my twin brother Julio had written and recorded just three months before his passing on April 12, 1984.”

- John Beltzer, Founder

Background

Established in 1996 by John Beltzer, the Songs of Love Foundation is a nonprofit creating personalized songs for chronically and terminally ill children and teens. My team and I were approached by John to help create a visually pleasing and easy to use donation page and website for their latest endowment campaign.

Songs of Love has written and recorded 41,000 personalized songs since its inception in 1996.

I worked with 4 other designers in my team over a 6 week period. Some key achievements are listed below:

  • Redesigning the logo. Since the previous logo had not been updated in a long time, this helped the Songs of Love logo keep up with current design preferences.

  • Establishing a design system.  This will help any future design or product teams to understand how and why we choose to implement certain components over others. This will also make the website feel more harmonious.

  • Improved usability across the platform. We spent a lot of time on research and finalizing the information architecture so that users could navigate our app easily.

  • Providing a UX strategy for long-term success. This has helped Songs of Love use our designs for their future events and understand our work.

User Personas

We based our persona on an interviewee from our research - meet Mia. She is a teacher in her 30s living in upstate New York. We identified her thoughts, fears, frustrations and other pain points through an empathy map, shown below:

Empathy Map

We created an empathy map from the opinions and data we received through surveys and interviews. By compiling our target users’ thoughts, fears and motivations, we got a better idea of what the user prioritizes when it comes to navigating the Songs of Love website. We then made a Gains v. Pains list to make sure we addressed these issues when

Pains

  • will my donation make a difference?

  • more likely to donate to orgs where they live

  • financial burdens

  • does not fully understand what Songs of Love is

  • finds current navigation confusing, especially donation options

  • confusion with terminology such as ‘partners’, ‘sponsors’, ‘Videos of Love’

Gains

  • legible and accessible donation page

  • multiple donation opportunities

  • has a personal connection to the cause

  • wants to be a part of something meaningful

  • wants to trust the organization

  • wants transparency with use of donation

Brand Assets

We wanted to keep the positive, inviting spirit of Songs of Love in their website so we opted for a color scheme that included the signature red but also incorporated some other colors for a theme that invoked happy emotions. We were attempting to illicit feelings of playfulness, positivity and warmth in a cohesive yet professional manner that would bring trust and engagement. We used vibrant colors with gray neutrals to achieve this effect.


We provided the Songs of Love team with the following templates and assets so that their merchandise, flyers and pitches in the future can be cohesive with the new website:

Designs

BEFORE

AFTER