The Kilimanjaro Porters Assistance Project (KPAP) is a Tanzanian NGO focused on securing ethical treatment and fair pay for the porters on Mount Kilimanjaro. I am the sole designer working with them to improve the usability and visual design of their website.
Resource and Timeline: 30 hours over one month
My Role: UX Researcher, UX/UI Designer
Tools: Figma, HTML, CSS, Google Analytics, WordPress
Client: Kilimanjaro Porters Assistance Project (KPAP)
Focus areas: Information Architecture, Content Strategy
Deliverables: Responsive website
KPAP offers supports Kilimanjaro porters through free gear rentals and educational and training opportunities. They also promote ethical mountain climbs through their Partner for Responsible Travel program.
As a small non-profit based at the foot of Kilimanjaro, KPAP needed a website that effectively communicated their work and accomplished two key goals:
Persuading visiting climbers to book with a KPAP-approved Partner for Responsible Travel
Convincing tourism companies to commit to ethical practices and become a Partner for Responsible Travel
As a first step toward these goals, I planned out a project scope that would have me looking at the site content and page structure across the site as well as making improvements to the UI.
<aside> 🚨 The COVID-19 pandemic has increased the opportunity space for cheap climbs while cutting demand for more expensive climbs run by ethical companies.
The impact of the pandemic on the global tourism industry made having a website that communicates KPAP's work more crucial than ever.
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For my first scope of work, I delivered a re-designed website with clear information hierarchy, content structure, and improved visuals.
Examples of the new KPAP site across desktop, tablet and mobile (click to expand)
I met with the KPAP team in Tanzania and Scotland via Zoom to identify the technical constraints that would define my work.
As KPAP is a small organization that relies heavily on volunteering, all designs needed to be easy to manage and update, and had to minimize complexity and render quickly on slow internet connections.
After asking tons of questions, I settled on a few directives to serve as my personal design principles: