Calvin Iwata
ProductSocial Impact

ImmigrationHelp.org

ImmigrationHelp.org

A homepage rebuilt to convert, for a nonprofit helping young immigrants file DACA applications.

The redesigned ImmigrationHelp.org homepage shown across desktop, laptop, tablet, and mobile

The problem

ImmigrationHelp.org is an east-coast nonprofit that helps young adults complete their DACA application — Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals — to obtain legal status in the United States. The service is free. The alternative is roughly $3,000 in attorney fees that most of their users don’t have.

Which makes the conversion rate an unusually direct measure. Every visitor who lands on the homepage and doesn’t reach the screener is a person who might not file. I was brought in to raise that number: research it, prototype a new homepage, and build the redesign.

What I did

I started by turning my early conversations with stakeholders into two summary graphics, because a nonprofit board and a designer agreeing they’ve scoped the same project is not something to assume.

A design brief page setting out the project objective, key personas, scenarios, and guiding principles
The brief. Personas, scenarios, and principles on one page, so the scope was agreed before anything was designed.

Then rough content layout in Figma, into wireframes, into prototypes — with user testing at each iteration on both past users and prospective ones. Testing with past users mattered more than usual here: they had already been through the process under stress, and they could name where they’d nearly given up.

Low-fidelity prototype mockups of the homepage layout across several screen widths
Low fidelity first, so testing produced comments about structure instead of colour.
High-fidelity Figma drafts of the homepage with real copy, imagery, and calls to action
High-fidelity drafts once the structure held up.
Before
The previous homepage, a long page of dense explanatory text with the call to action far down
After
The redesigned homepage leading with a single clear call to action and a stated success rate
The old page explained the service. The new one starts the service, and puts the credibility signal where a nervous first-time visitor will actually see it.

After stakeholder approval I developed the prototype into the organisation’s own web platform and built responsive layouts for four breakpoints: desktop, laptop, tablet, and mobile. Doing the build myself rather than handing over a file is the reason the shipped page matches the tested one.

Outcome

The redesign went live and is still the site today. Because I built it as well as designed it, the version users see is the version that was tested — which is not always what happens when a prototype is handed off.

More work

All work