NGAP.

NGAP rescues retired racing greyhounds. The work is meaningful and the dogs are wonderful — but the website was cluttered, confused, and buried the things that mattered most. Tree-testing with three users on three core tasks (donate, volunteer, find contact info) revealed where every breakdown happened. Information clutter and poor navigation were costing the organization donors.

Built three personas around the people who actually show up — Adopter Addison looking for a dog, Donator Dan wanting to give without friction, and Volunteer Valerie trying to find ways to help. Each persona surfaced different content needs that the old IA had collapsed into one undifferentiated stream.

Did a full content audit. Ran open and closed card sorts with 12 users to redesign the IA. Established a new style guide. Built a homepage that puts the dogs and the donation flow front-and-center, not buried five clicks deep.

Then — and this is the part I loved — we built an immersive interactive experience with a character named Scooby who walks users through different paths. Choose your own adventure for a nonprofit. Made the website feel like the dogs it represents: warm, specific, hard to ignore.

Nonprofits don't usually get good design. Their websites are afterthoughts built by volunteers, and the work suffers — fewer donations, fewer adoptions, fewer dogs going home. NGAP taught me that design for nonprofits is design for outcomes a real animal feels. That changes how you make decisions.