Health Food Association
Complete redesign of website & member data platform
Methodology
1. User Research• Workshop planning• Content inventory & audit• Discovery workshops:• Content Management System (CMS)• Events• Membership registration & renewal• Member portal2. UX Design• Discovery findings presentations• User flows for key tasks:• Membership onboarding & renewal• Event registration• Information architecture• Taxonomy & vocabulary planning• Wireframes• Mockup review3. Develop & Launch• Developer handoff• User acceptance testing and bug tracking• Client training

Services:

UX Research & Design • Data Planning • UAT • Client Training

Tools Used:

Figma • Miro • ASANA• Airtable • WordPress

Industry:

Health Food

Timeframe:

1.5 Years
Project Overview
Following a recent visual redesign, the client needed strategic UX support to solve deeper challenges:

• Improving content discoverability

• Simplifying membership registration and renewal workflows

• Increasing event engagement

• Increasing credibility as a national thought leader in health food

Our work focused on refining the site’s architecture, streamlining key user journeys, and enabling more effective content promotion.
Objectives
• Position the organization as a thought leader in health food

• Highlight awards and industry events

• Simplify the process of purchasing event tickets

• Increase membership sign-ups and retention

• Reduce administrative burden related to website maintenance

• Make the website easier to search and navigate
User Research
STEP 1
Workshop Planning
Following a review of the client's redesigned site and documentation from the previous agency, I mapped out a series of discovery workshops that I found necessary in order to uncover the requirements for a successful website redesign.

The discovery workshops were:

• CMS
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• Events
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• Membership registration and renewal
STEP 2
Full Content Inventory & Audit
I conducted a comprehensive content inventory to document all content on their website. The client was asked to review the inventory and indicate which content was outdated or no longer relevant.
STEP 3
CMS Workshop
I designed and led this session to align with the client’s business goals and key pain points. We explored topics around content strategy, user experience, and internal workflows, with a focus on what content needed to be surfaced to build trust and support their goal of becoming a national thought leader in the health food space. I integrated insights from Google Analytics to spotlight user behavior and content performance.
Using session notes, I facilitated an affinity mapping exercise to help the client group and prioritize feedback. This process clarified CMS pain points and informed the structural changes proposed later in the project.
View CMS Workshop Miro
STEP 4
Events Workshop
Events were a key offering the client provided to professionals in the health food industry, but they weren’t seeing the level of engagement they had hoped for. Through this workshop, we uncovered which event types were most valuable to users and how they typically discovered and signed up for them.
STEP 5
Membership Onboarding & Renewal Workshop
Membership drop-off was a known issue. My focus was to simplify and clarify the onboarding journey while also making renewals seamless. A key challenge was the non-standardized pricing model—memberships were often priced on a case-by-case basis. This made it impossible to create a streamlined, automated process.
We also solved for cascading memberships, where member organizations needed their sub-organizations to receive discounted rates. This required backend tagging and access management to ensure the correct views and pricing logic were applied.
This project moved into light business consulting territory, where I worked with the client to revise their pricing strategy. After several iterations, we defined membership tiers and benefits that could be automated.
Membership Discovery Miro
UX Design
STEP 6
 Discovery Findings Presentations
Before creating any design artifacts, I presented synthesized findings from the workshops to ensure we had alignment on goals, challenges, and user needs
STEP 7
User Flows
I developed detailed user flows to illustrate how users would interact with the system, focusing on two key tasks:

• Membership onboarding and renewal

• Event discovery and registration

These flows were reviewed with the client early on, helping us identify and eliminate unnecessary steps that made onboarding and renewals more cumbersome than they needed to be.
View User Flows
STEP 8
Information Architecture
I created a revised IA to:

• Promote thought leadership content
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• Surface legal/regulatory information more clearly
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• Reduce clicks to key content areas
STEP 9
Taxonomies & Vocabularies
I built a simplified taxonomy system and vocabulary guidelines to help both end-users and content admins more efficiently search and organize content, allowing events and resources to be filtered by users' fields of interest.
STEP 10
 Define User Roles & Access Tiers
User permissions were relatively simple: access to certain content and billing information was restricted to verified members or designated group representatives.
STEP 11
Wireframes 
Based on insights gathered during the discovery session with the client and guided by project scope and constraints, I developed wireframes for key templates and user flows, including:

• Homepage

• Resource listing & detail pages

• Event listing & detail pages

•Membership registration & renewal workflows

• Member portal

The wireframes were reviewed with developers to ensure technical feasibility, then presented to the client for feedback. Through several iterations, we refined the designs before moving into the high-fidelity mockup phase.
View CMS Wireframes
View Member Portal Wireframes
View Membership Registration Wireframes
View Membership Renewal Wireframes
*Only a very few of the wireframes are displayed below.
CMS Wireframes
Member Portal Wireframes
Membership Registration & Renewal Wireframes
STEP 12
Mockup Review
High-fidelity mockups were produced by the visual designer based on my wireframes. I reviewed each to ensure they met both business and user needs.
Development & Launch
STEP 13
Acceptance Criteria & Developer Handover
I wrote detailed, plain-language acceptance criteria for each user flow and feature, often including pseudocode and edge case handling.
I helped the PM prioritize the development sequence and walked developers through the wireframes and logic prior to kicking off development.

I led weekly stand-ups with the devs to align on tasks, review completed work, and adjust timelines. Weekly updates were shared with the client to maintain transparency and momentum.
STEP 14
UAT & Bug Reporting
I conducted in-depth testing of each feature against the wireframes and acceptance criteria. Bugs were tracked and retested before handover to QA.
STEP 15
Training & Documentation
I created clear, step-by-step guides tailored to the client’s new workflows and CMS. I also led live training sessions and provided ongoing 
Reflections
Having a dedicated project lead on the client side can make a big difference. In this project, some delays were caused by internal misalignment, which led to repeated strategy discussions. I would always recommend appointing a main point of contact who can gather internal input and make decisions ahead of workshops. This helps ensure a smoother process and keeps momentum strong.