Experience Design
for Dress for Success Washington DC

Client

Dress for Success Washington DC

Role

Experience Designer

Web Designer

Web Developer

Skills

Experience Design

Data Cleaninig

Squarespace

Timeline

Feb - Mar 2024

Dress for Success Washington DC (DFSDC)

Dress for Success is a global not-for-profit organization that empowers women to achieve economic independence by providing a network of support, professional attire and the development tools to help women thrive in work and in life.

Dress for Success Washington, DC (DFSDC) has served over 10,000 women in the DC metropolitan area, with support from various corporate partners that provide financial aid and resources to enhance the organization's services and programs.

Problem

Over the past few years, Dress for Success Washington, DC (DFSDC) has been managing customer data entry and event reservations through multiple Google forms. This approach has resulted in a large number of scattered and disorganized databases. Consequently, volunteers need to manually review forms to process customer information and prepare for each event, leading to inefficiencies and increased workload.

Solution

Through field research, our team gained insights into Dress for Success Washington, DC (DFSDC)’s primary service—the Suiting Experience. After analyzing the organization's existing technology stack, we leveraged Calendly and Google services to rebuild the appointment management system for the Suiting Experience. This new system automates the scheduling process and provides users with greater visibility and ease of access.

Additionally, our team conducted a thorough review and cleanup of all existing data from DFSDC. Using scripts and Python, we integrated the scattered data into a single, cohesive database.

Suiting Experience Design

Dress for Success Washington, DC provides 5-6 Suiting Experiences per month to nearly 40 women, offering professional attire, accessories, and styling advice to help women look and feel their best as they interview or start a new job.

Previously, customers had to fill out a multi-page Google form to make an appointment and enter their information. Organization managers also had

Previous Google Form for Suiting Experience Appointments

to manually review form responses before each event to confirm the number of reservations and scheduled times. Furthermore, the availability for each time slot was not visible to users, leading to a series of issues and increasing the experience burden and management costs.

The team participated in two complete suiting experiences, covering appointment management, venue layout, and customer service. Based on field research and interviews with organizational managers, we redesigned the appointment system.

New Designs Include:

A simpler information entry process where users only need to fill in their name and contact information to complete the reservation.
Visibility of available spots for users.
Automatic email notifications to managers and calendar event updates.

New Suiting Experience Appointment Interface

The new design utilizes Calendly and various Google services and has been deployed and migrated to Dress for Success Washington, DC’s new Squarespace-based website.

Data Cleaning

Dress for Success Washington, DC has accumulated a large amount of customer data over the past few years, including registered mentors, volunteers, donors, sponsors, and users. Our team conducted a comprehensive cleanup and reconstruction of DFSDC’s data from the past three years. We integrated all customer data into a new database and provided long-term recommendations for future maintenance and updates.

Results

Dress for Success Washington, DC's Executive Director, Susan, provided very positive feedback on the new design. The series of new designs has reduced the administrative burden on volunteers and staff, allowing them to focus more on their core mission of empowering women. The streamlined processes and enhanced data management have contributed to a more organized and effective operation, ultimately leading to better service delivery and increased customer satisfaction.