ODIS Case Study

Understanding the Problem and User

Opening Doors International Services supports families and individuals navigating some of the most complex and emotionally charged moments of their lives. As a U.S. Department of Justice–recognized nonprofit, the organization provides immigration assistance and humanitarian services to the North Texas community, often serving clients who are unfamiliar with legal systems, pressed for time, and under significant stress.

For many of these clients, the website serves as a first point of entry—a place to seek clarity, reassurance, and direction. However, the existing experience did not consistently meet users at their level of understanding or emotional state. Information was difficult to locate, service pathways were unclear, and users often struggled to determine what steps to take next.

To better understand these challenges, our team spent six months working closely with Opening Doors through in-field interviews and collaboration with staff and subject-matter experts. By listening to both clients and advocates, we gained insight into the real-world context in which the website is used. These perspectives shaped our approach toward creating a more accessible, compassionate, and supportive digital experience—one that reflects Opening Doors’ mission of empowerment, trust, and advocacy.

The Problem Statement

Upon entering the website, users encounter an outdated visual design that contributes to confusion and disorientation. This experience is further compounded by broken links, dense legal jargon, and complex information hierarchies that make it difficult for users to understand available services or identify next steps. As a result, users experience diminished trust in the site at moments when clarity, credibility, and reassurance are most critical.

We believe that humanizing the digital experience and simplifying the information hierarchy will reduce user anxiety and improve clarity when navigating immigration services. By using plain, accessible language and minimizing the steps required to complete key tasks, we aim to rebuild trust and help users feel more confident and supported throughout their journey.

The Hypothesis

Personas

Our personas were developed directly from in-field research, including interviews with clients and insights gathered from staff and peer feedback. Rather than relying on assumptions, we grounded each persona in real behaviors, goals, and challenges observed during the research process. This allowed us to represent the diverse needs and emotional states of users navigating immigration services.

To maintain focus and design clarity, we prioritized our users’ most significant pain points based on frequency, impact, and urgency. From this analysis, we identified the two most pressing concerns and intentionally assigned them to each persona where they best aligned with the user’s narrative. This approach ensured that every persona reflected a realistic combination of motivations and barriers, while keeping the design process centered on solving the most meaningful problems faced by users.

These research-driven personas became a foundational tool throughout the project, helping guide decisions around information architecture, language, accessibility, and overall user experience.

[interface] image of tablet with secure financial platform interface (for a fintech company)

User Flows

We prioritized user pain points based on insights from in-field interviews and iterative peer feedback, identifying recurring challenges that had the greatest impact on the user experience. From this analysis, we selected the two most critical pain points for each persona and aligned them with realistic user narratives to ensure they accurately reflected user goals and constraints.

To bring these insights into the design process, we developed scenarios of use as the foundation for our user flows. Each scenario was initially sketched and then mapped across personas, allowing us to visualize how users navigated the website and where friction occurred. This approach helped us identify key moments of breakdown and informed design decisions that addressed user needs in context.

Pain Points

Scenario of Use

We designed an information architecture and user flow for a POS system, then conducted an exploratory test to evaluate whether integrating an AI-powered chat assistant would enhance the overall user experience.

Our challenge was to identify whether this feature would reduce inefficiency from technical issues, build employee trust in the system, and improve overall customer satisfaction—without disrupting the existing workflow.

We mapped the complete system IA to understand key pain points, then designed the Chat Assistant as a specialized subset that detailed conversation flows, response hierarchies, and integration touchpoints. Through testing, we discovered the assistant reduced support ticket volume and increased user confidence, ultimately validating its inclusion in the overall system with key modifications.

The Chat Assistant IA serves as a detailed breakdown of the conversation structure and user interaction patterns within the feature. We designed a hierarchical response system where users accessed help contextually when encountering errors, receiving real-time troubleshooting suggestions before escalation to human support.

Testing revealed that users appreciated the minimal context-switching required, with the assistant reducing support tickets by providing instant first-level assistance. However, we discovered some friction points where frustrated users bypassed the assistant entirely, preferring direct human contact. This led to key design modifications: simplifying initial conversation flows, adding fast-track escalation for urgent issues, and repositioning the assistant as a learning tool rather than purely reactive troubleshooting resource.

Journey Map

To better understand the user experience, we mapped the emotional journey users experienced while completing a key task on the original Opening Doors International Services website. This journey map highlights how users’ feelings evolved at each stage of interaction, from initial entry to task completion.

By visualizing moments of confusion, frustration, and uncertainty, the journey map helped us identify critical breakdowns in the experience and pinpoint where the website failed to support users during high-stress moments. These insights informed our design decisions by emphasizing where clarity, reassurance, and guidance were most needed.

Information Architecture New Approach

To understand how users navigated the original Opening Doors International Services website, we conducted a close evaluation of its information architecture through the lens of user intent and cognitive load. As users moved through the site, it became clear that the structure did not reflect how people naturally seek information—particularly in high-stress, unfamiliar contexts like immigration services.

We observed repeated navigation labels appearing across multiple categories, which created uncertainty around where information truly lived. This repetition forced users to second-guess their choices and increased the effort required to locate relevant content. Additionally, information was spread across an excessive number of pages, fragmenting related content and interrupting users’ mental flow.

In many cases, these pages contained overlapping or closely related information that could be meaningfully consolidated. By distributing content too thinly, the site unintentionally increased cognitive load and made it harder for users to build a clear understanding of available services and next steps. These findings reinforced the need to simplify the structure, reduce redundancy, and realign the information architecture around user goals rather than organizational silos.

Old IA

New IA

Understanding the Problem and User

Outlining the User Experience Research

Creating the System with Prototyping

The Final Design and Reflection

Outlining the User Expereince Research

During our initial card sort, results appeared scattered and inconsistent due to limited context and unclear instructions. Post-study questionnaires revealed that many participants had little prior knowledge of immigration services, which significantly influenced how they grouped information. Recognizing this gap, we introduced a pre-screening step to better define our target audience and provided participants with essential background context about Opening Doors International Services.

With these adjustments in place, we conducted a second card sort that produced clearer and more consistent patterns. This iteration allowed us to synthesize the content into five primary categories, reflecting shared mental models among participants. The visualizations below highlight areas of alignment, with darker sections representing higher grouping percentages. These trends provided confidence in our proposed information architecture and informed the structure of the redesigned experience.

Testing Our New IA

During the card sort exercise, we observed that some participants were unfamiliar with the open card sorting format and therefore defaulted to placing cards into existing groupings rather than creating their own categories. This behavior revealed an important insight: when users lack confidence in the content or task, they tend to seek structure rather than define it themselves.

Despite this initial uncertainty, clear patterns began to emerge. Many participants consistently gravitated toward grouping content related to eligibility, suggesting a shared mental model around determining qualification and next steps. At the same time, immigration-specific terminology created moments of hesitation and confusion, often influencing how cards were sorted and labeled.

Additionally, content related to Internet Safety and Resources was grouped inconsistently across participants, signaling that these concepts were not clearly defined or differentiated within the existing content. This variability reinforced the need to simplify language, clarify intent, and better communicate the purpose of supporting resources within the overall information architecture.

Competitor Analysis

To broaden our perspective, we intentionally stepped back from our internal design process to examine how similar organizations structured their websites and communicated services. This allowed us to move beyond assumptions and ground our decisions in established patterns across comparable experiences.

We created a comparative framework by identifying key content categories we believed were essential for the redesign and listing them as a reference point. Using this structure, we evaluated Opening Doors’ original site alongside peer organizations to better understand differences in organization, functionality, and tone.

This exercise helped us challenge our initial information architecture assumptions and clarify how we wanted the redesigned experience to function and feel. By comparing ODIS to other organizations, we gained insight into opportunities for simplification, consistency, and trust-building—ultimately informing a more intentional and user-centered direction for the redesign.

Lo-Fidelity Wireframes

Building on insights from our information architecture research and competitive analysis, we transitioned into low-fidelity sketching to explore how the proposed IA would function in context. This phase allowed us to quickly translate structure into form and evaluate how users might move through the experience in real scenarios.

These early sketches focused on key elements such as the global header and core page layouts, all informed by defined user flows. By working at a low level of fidelity, we were able to iterate rapidly, test assumptions, and validate the overall structure before committing to higher-fidelity designs.

User Testing

As we moved into the system design phase, our focus shifted toward validating ideas through low-fidelity testing and using those insights to inform the next iteration of the experience. This stage of the process included testing early concepts, reassessing our design assumptions, and laying the groundwork for a scalable mid-fidelity system.

To evaluate usability, we developed a structured testing script that asked participants to complete ten tasks derived directly from our personas and mapped user flows. Each task was assessed based on whether users could successfully complete it or, if not, where and why breakdowns occurred. This approach allowed us to identify patterns across behaviors rather than isolated issues.

We conducted usability testing with four participants—ages 18, 21, 25, and 38—to capture a range of perspectives and familiarity levels. While some tasks were completed successfully, repeated friction points emerged across users, signaling deeper structural issues rather than individual misunderstandings.

Rethinking Our Design

Testing revealed several key issues, including inconsistencies in the information hierarchy and navigation patterns that made it difficult for users to locate certain pages. Dropdown menus in particular created friction, often preventing users from progressing through tasks efficiently.

We also observed that several users searched for alternative navigation methods—such as a hamburger menu or search functionality—rather than following the intended pathways. This behavior signaled a mismatch between user expectations and the existing system design.

While these findings exposed significant usability challenges, they were highly productive. The results made it clear that incremental adjustments would not be sufficient. In response, we revisited our overall process, re-evaluated user flows, and restructured the experience at a system level—ultimately leading to the creation of a more cohesive and user-centered design.

Understanding the Problem and User

Outlining the User Experience Research

Creating the System with Prototyping

The Final Design and Reflection

Creating the System with Prototyping

Building on insights from user research, we transitioned into prototyping to develop a more cohesive and scalable system. Research findings highlighted the need to rethink structure and navigation at a foundational level, guiding how we approached system design moving forward.

Through iterative prototyping, we explored how revised user flows, a simplified information architecture, and consistent interaction patterns could work together to better support user needs. This phase allowed us to validate ideas in context and progressively refine the experience while maintaining alignment with both user expectations and organizational goals.

Mid-Fidelity Highlights

The mid-fidelity designs allowed us to focus on consistency, clarity, and system behavior across key user flows. The moments highlighted below represent intentional design decisions that helped establish predictable patterns, reinforce trust, and create a more cohesive experience for users.

By refining these interactions and layouts at the mid-fidelity level, we were able to validate critical transitions within user flows and ensure the system worked holistically before moving into higher-fidelity prototyping.

User One: Mid-Fidelity Iterations

In this mid-fidelity user flow, we mapped the pathway a user would take to navigate the website and identify the appropriate service offered by Opening Doors International Services. This flow focuses specifically on the naturalization process, illustrating how users are guided from initial entry to the information and resources they need to begin their application with clarity and confidence.

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User Two: Mid-Fidelity Iterations

This user flow was designed around Mateo, a persona whose trust was previously compromised due to insecure documentation practices. Because of this experience, Mateo approaches services cautiously and prioritizes credibility, transparency, and human connection before committing to next steps.

His user flow focuses on learning more about Opening Doors International Services by engaging with key touchpoints across the site that emphasize a human-first approach—such as mission, values, and support—before addressing affordability and logistics. By intentionally introducing the why before the how, this flow helps build trust and reassurance, allowing users like Mateo to feel confident and informed as they move forward.

User Three: Mid-Fidelity Iterations

This user flow was designed around Elsa, a persona motivated by her desire to give back after navigating an immigration process she previously found challenging. Having benefited from guidance herself, Elsa is interested in supporting others who may be facing similar experiences.

The flow maps how users like Elsa discover opportunities to get involved, learn more about the organization’s mission, and explore volunteering pathways on the website. By clearly highlighting engagement and contribution opportunities, this user flow ensures that individuals motivated to help can easily find meaningful ways to participate and support the community.

Understanding the Problem and User

Outlining the User Experience Research

Creating the System with Prototyping

The Final Design and Project Reflection

The final design was shaped by insights from competitive analysis and design inspiration, which informed the creation of a cohesive design system aligned with Opening Doors International Services’ mission and user needs. To support a more unified and trustworthy experience, we also explored a concept logo that better reflected the updated brand identity and complemented the redesigned system.

Given the scope of the project, our focus was intentionally placed on restructuring the website’s core experience—prioritizing clarity, consistency, and accessibility across key user flows rather than pursuing a full brand overhaul. By concentrating on foundational system design, navigation, and content hierarchy, we were able to deliver a solution that feels cohesive, scalable, and responsive to both user and organizational needs.

This project reinforced the importance of grounding design decisions in research, empathy, and iteration, and highlighted how thoughtful system-level design can create meaningful impact—especially for users navigating complex and high-stakes services.

Style Guide

Our color palette was intentionally selected for its versatility and harmony, ensuring that each color combination works cohesively across the system. This flexibility allowed us to maintain visual consistency while supporting clear hierarchy and accessibility throughout the experience.

We explored multiple typeface options, including Poppins and Open Sans, before selecting Rubik for its simplicity and rounded forms. Through research and testing, we found that Rubik conveyed a warmer, more approachable tone—aligning with the emotional needs of users seeking guidance and support.

For illustrations, we chose a style that avoids heavy outlines in favor of color-driven, dynamic forms. By relying on the selected palette rather than linework, the illustrations feel softer and more inclusive, reinforcing the human-centered nature of the experience without adding unnecessary visual noise.

Logo Redesign

The existing combination mark used by Opening Doors International Services did not fully align with the direction of our proposed design system or the brand focus that emerged from our research. To address this, we explored several logo concepts through sketching, using this phase to experiment with form, symbolism, and tone.

Through iteration, we narrowed our concepts to a direction that closely resembles the final mark shown below. Once the direction was established, we applied our color palette and shading techniques to refine the logo and integrate it seamlessly into the broader system.

The final logo was designed to complement the proposed system while visually expressing Opening Doors’ values. It represents unity, diversity, and optimism, with abstract, human-centered forms coming together as a whole. The negative space at the center serves as a metaphor for “open doors,” symbolizing access, opportunity, and the pathways created through ODIS’s immigration services.

High-Fidelity Components & Interaction Design

While designing our high-fidelity wireframes, we prioritized building reusable components for the global header and footer to ensure consistency across the redesign. This component-driven approach strengthened the design system and significantly reduced the time required to finalize high-fidelity prototypes by allowing changes to scale efficiently across screens.

Each component was designed with four interaction states—default, hover, mouse enter, and pressed—to create a cohesive and responsive user experience. A key design consideration was the introduction of a mouse enter state, which was implemented to support dropdown navigation on several pages. During prototyping, we found that relying solely on a hover state caused dropdown menus to collapse when users moved their cursor away from the trigger. To resolve this, we expanded the interactive boundaries to include the entire dropdown area and used a mouse enter state, ensuring the menu remained open until the user intentionally exited the active region. This adjustment improved usability and created a smoother, more predictable interaction.

Final Product and The Future of the Project

The final design brings together research insights, system thinking, and visual identity to create a cohesive, user-centered experience for Opening Doors International Services. Guided by competitive analysis and user needs, we developed a flexible design system that prioritizes clarity, warmth, and accessibility across key user flows.

To support this system, we explored a concept logo redesign that aligned more closely with the updated visual direction. The final mark reflects values of unity, diversity, and optimism, using negative space as a metaphor for “open doors” and the opportunities made accessible through ODIS’s services. Typography, color, and illustration choices were intentionally selected to feel approachable and human, reinforcing trust during high-stakes interactions.

At the interaction level, we designed reusable components and refined navigation behaviors to improve consistency and usability. Component-based design allowed us to scale efficiently across high-fidelity wireframes while addressing usability challenges such as dropdown navigation and interaction feedback. These refinements ensured smoother transitions through critical user flows and strengthened the overall system.

Looking forward, the project identifies opportunities to further expand inclusivity and accessibility, including broader language support, improved navigation flexibility, clearer terminology, and additional usability testing. Together, these foundations position the redesign as a scalable, empathetic solution that supports ODIS’s mission while remaining adaptable to future needs.