finEQUITY
Empowering formerly incarcerated individuals through human-centered design.
Background
finEQUITY is a non-profit organization that unites formerly incarcerated individuals with low- to no-cost financial health improvement services, aiding their re-entry back into their communities. They work with two key audiences: Participants (individuals directly impacted by the justice system and their families) and Partners (third party organizations and sponsors that play a crucial supporting role in the re-entry process).
Their team sought our help in redesigning 3 high-visibility pages: the Home Page, Participant Services, and Partner Services.
The Challenge(s)
finEQUITY is a new organization working with limited resources and time. With only eight weeks to conduct research, design, and build a fully functioning website, our team had to work quickly, testing and iterating in real time.
Reaching and engaging their target audience for primary research (people directly impacted by incarceration) required careful consideration around access, trust, and availability.
Through this work, our team wanted to address and counter prevailing misconceptions about people impacted by incarceration to ensure our final deliverable reflected their experiences accurately and respectfully.
The Solution
To improve service clarity, user experience, and visual consistency, we redesigned their website guided by data from their target users all while ensuring alignment with the organization’s mission and audience needs.
As one of two UX Research Leads, I:
Developed a research plan based on the client’s budget, timeline, and objectives
Created personas grounded in psychographics rather than demographics, providing an actionable foundation for design, writing, and research teams.
Produced language guidelines informed by a comprehensive literature review of the experiences of people impacted by incarceration, illustrating how language shapes perceptions and outcomes
Guided teammates through the research process, creating buy-in on the importance of research as a critical basis for design.
Setting the stage
We first audited finEQUITY's existing research materials and analytics, which included website usage logs, membership profiles, and most importantly, interview transcripts.
Prior to our collaboration, the finEQUITY team interviewed eight participants on their use of finEQUITY’s services, broader financial readiness needs, and experiences as justice-impacted individuals.
Five key insights emerged from my analysis of previous interviews:
1. Awareness
Finding:
Our target audience has variable access to reentry services upon release and is seeking direction and support. finEQUITY primarily gains new members through word of mouth.
Recommendation:
Providing resources that are easily shareable between current and prospective users facilitates recruitment of new members.
“Why are you helping me out – what’s what’s your goal? What’s your mission? Why are you doing this? I mean, you’re complete strangers. And and here we are on the phone talking. Why, me, you know somebody who society really wants nothing to do with?”
“You guys call me back. The going back and forth is what got is what kept me going.”
2. Achievability
Finding:
Participants often feel overwhelmed and intimidated when faced with larger financial goals when rebuilding their financial health.
Recommendation:
Breaking larger goals down into smaller, achievable steps may help ease this stress and sustain motivation.
3. Distrust
Finding:
Several participants are distrustful of organizations that claim to “provide free help”. They are already targets for scams, and these services seem predatory.
Recommendation:
Signal credibility and trustworthiness through a clearly defined mission statement. Incorporate customer testimonials and demonstrate how finEQUITY is fulfilling their mission.
4. Unfamiliarity
Finding:
Many participants who’ve been incarcerated for a significant amount of time haven’t had the opportunity to engage with digital tools, and are more likely to grow frustrated when they run into roadblocks.
Recommendation:
Website interface should be accessible for both desktop and mobile users. Stay away from QR codes and complicated links. Include clear and easy to understand instructions for actions like “take a screenshot”.
5. Responsiveness
Finding:
Responsiveness of finEQUITY team members is critical for initial adoption of finEQUITY services as well as continued engagement.
Recommendation:
Make it easy for users to get in contact with finEQUITY coaches and emphasize the response timeline. Maintain consistent communication by establishing regular check-ins and following up on their progress through phone calls or emails. Build journeys within a CRM to ensure users are retained throughout the program.
Benchmarking for excellence
To ground our redesign in best practices and competitive intelligence, we evaluated finEQUITY and six other organizations: Impact Justice, Prison Entrepreneurship Program, Defy Ventures, Root & Rebound, First Step Alliance, and Empowering Women Impacted by Incarceration.
We analyzed these organizations on 6 core aspects, and conducted a SWOT analysis to guide our redesign work.
-
How does the organization brand itself?
What elements of their brand are they trying to convey?
How does the organization establish expertise/authority?
-
Who is the organization communicating to?
Who are this organization’s “Participants”?
Who are this organization’s “Partners”?
Are there different user journeys for existing vs. prospective users?
-
What services does the website offer?
How does the website guide users to services?
-
Are there opportunities for users to get involved at a community level?
How does this organization deal with donations and philanthropy?
-
Are there links to social media sites, contact information, or ways to get in touch in-person?
Do they communicate how sensitive information is stored?
Are there testimonials from existing users?
Do they feature media / press releases?
-
What technological features does the website offer (e.g., speech recognition, translation)
Does the website support different platforms (mobile, web, etc.) and operating systems?
Is the website accessible to users with visual, hearing, or other accessibility needs?
Are language, imagery, and tone reflective of diverse experiences?
Personas: Fostering empathy through psychographic data
We intentionally shifted from demographic to psychographic personas to design for behaviors rather than labels. Demographic categories like age, gender, or income often lead to surface-level assumptions that obscure the real reasons behind behavior.
Psychographics, however, focus on people’s values, motivations, and attitudes – factors that actually shape decision-making.
For target user #1 (Participants) we focused on:
Familiarity with technology
Experience managing finances
Trust in financial institutions
Experience working with FIs
For target user #2 (Partners) we focused on:
New vs. prospective partners
Organizational size
Level of resources at their disposal
Local vs. National level
Inclusive language guidelines
A key finding from our competitive audit was that finEQUITY’s messaging wasn’t resonating with the people it was built for. As such, we decided to conduct research to help us create culturally responsive content during the redesign. Our research team completed a literature review and translated those findings into practical language guidelines for the UX writing team.
We found that:
Stigmatizing language in media influences public opinion of people impacted by the criminal justice system and, in turn, public opinion of criminal justice reform.
Advocates for justice-impacted people argue for person-centered language in place of stigmatizing terms such as “convict.”
While advocates for criminal justice reform encourage “people-first” or “people-centered” language, outdated, stigmatizing terms such as ex-convict or ex-prisoner are still commonly used.
Usability studies: Agile design through user-testing
To test our solution, we quickly recruited 7 users and conducted rapid usability testing on our three key pages. We wanted to know how users answered the following:
Value proposition: Do users understand who finEQUITY is and what services they provide?
Mental models: Is it clear who finEQUITY’s target audiences are based on our descriptions?
Information architecture: Given the homepage and navigation, what content do users expect to find on subsequent pages?
Process clarity: Do users understand what working with finEQUITY entails?
Ethos: How trustworthy and credible does finEQUITY feel?
We split our findings into three buckets:
Strengths (what’s working)
Users appreciated the cards near top of homepage explaining who we are/ what we do/ partner/ donate
Mission statement immediately clear
Website felt trustworthy and legitimate
Minor issues (easy fixes)
Further clarity needed around educational resources
Major issues (urgent)
Unable to identify services for Participants as free
Confusion as to what a Partner is
CTAs unclear
Confusion as to what specific services finEQUITY offers