Verizon Volunteer Portal — IA, task flows & UX audit.
Conducted a full UX audit and redesigned the information architecture and task flows for the Verizon Volunteer Portal — serving 150,000+ employees across digital inclusion, climate, and community volunteering programmes. Delivered site map restructure, four primary task flows, and accessibility recommendations achieving 93% engagement boost.
How it started
The Verizon Volunteer Portal is an internal platform connecting 150,000+ Verizon employees to volunteering opportunities across the US — local events, digital inclusion drives, climate projects, and community highlights. The platform had been built incrementally and had accumulated significant usability debt: low-contrast accessibility failures, redundant navigation, inconsistent button usage, and an information architecture that buried key features.
I was tasked with conducting a full UX audit and redesigning the information architecture and task flows from scratch — defining a clear IA, user flows for all primary tasks (browsing, signing up, finding events, sharing stories), and producing recommendations to address the top accessibility and usability issues.
Redesigning the IA & task flows
The IA was restructured around five primary user intents: finding an event, signing up, managing registrations, sharing stories, and accessing community highlights. Each intent maps to a clear top-level entry point — no more than two tiers deep for the most common tasks.
Key usability findings & recommendations
- Low contrast — Accessibility failure H2, H3, and body text on image backgrounds failed WCAG AA contrast ratios. Recommendation: switch hero text to --white on dark overlays, minimum 4.5:1 ratio.
- Redundant navigation — "About", "Act for Impact", "FAQs", and "Help" appeared in both the top nav and the footer, creating confusion. Recommendation: consolidate to primary nav only.
- Inconsistent button usage — "Standard Inverted Primary Button" used in places requiring a secondary action. Recommendation: align to Verizon Design System button hierarchy throughout.
- Standard notification bar — Event prerequisites shown as a blue banner (0077B4 background) with insufficient contrast. Recommendation: use the standard accessible notification component.
- Volunteer Stories carousel — Low-contrast name labels on image tiles, 1/20 pagination indicator not readable. Recommendation: add text shadow or overlay, increase font weight.
