Historic England

Foundation

A charity that distributes grants to other bodies who promote conservation, protection and improvement of heritage in England for public enjoyment.

The old design had several issues that needed to be addressed in order to improve navigation and accessibility. These included:

• The navigation was often missed due to the light font and bottom page alignment.
• The navigation jumped up and down when clicked on.
• There was little nod to the donation functionality.
• Poor imagery choice as it does not tell the user what we do.
• It has a charity number but there is no other indication to tell a user that this is a charity.
• No clear call to action

The design aimed to do three major things.

• Make the donation functionality very obvious
• Create a clear navigation menu
• Choose imagery and wording that helps to showcase what the charity does.

Design choices:

#1 In all of the designs the bright yellow was used, to help uplift the design and attract users to essential buttons such as ‘donate’.

#2 The imagery was changed from black and white to pictures of restoration; showcasing what Historic England Foundation does with the donated money.

#3 The Historic England logo was given less emphasis, as they wanted to be seen as a stand alone charity.

#4 Statistics were highlighted to further showcase the aim of the charity and its progress.

After a discussion with the management team, it was decided that although we would have liked the donation form to be directly visible, it was not the best choice technically and in terms of user experience. We didn’t want to be forceful with our donations, before they found out more about us and what we do.

Black and white images were kept, so words such as ‘help’ were critical in order to create sympathy and help users understand how critical their money is for the protection of heritage in England.