Lil E Coffee — Rebecca Parvaneh

UI/UX DESIGN
Lil E Coffee

More Than Just a Café.

ROLE
UI/UX Designer

TIMELINE
6 weeks

DELIVERABLES
Mid-Fi + Hi-Fi Wireframes
User Research
Prototype

YEAR
2025

Lil E Coffee Cafe is a non-profit organization whose mission is to employ individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities and give them the skills to succeed in achieving their goals by providing training and networking events to get them into their desired fields. This design solution includes a streamlined user experience that eliminates redundancy and reduces the cognitive burden to allow users ease of navigation. Through the implementation of direct pathways and the organization of site elements, these goals have been achieved.

Primary Objectives

CORE PROBLEM

Enhance website accessibility in order to increase usability across user base with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDDs).

Lil E Coffee aims to support those with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDDs), thus, it is even more important to consider these individuals when it comes to usability as they are a huge part of the user population for this website.

PAIN POINTS
VISUAL ACCESSIBILITY

Colour contrast not passing accessibility standards
Lack of customization for elements such as font size and colour
Use of complex fonts reducing usability for those with visual impairments

EXCESSIVE BURDEN ON COGNITIVE LOAD

Redundant navigation and unexpected redirection to third-party sites
Unclear system status + navigation forces users to rely on memory and go through trial and error to complete tasks

SECONDARY RESEARCH

Research was conducted by collecting broad findings from data published in academic journals as well as from individual case studies specifically focusing on website design for individuals with IDDs.

Research demonstrated that individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities struggle with content that is cluttered and dense as well as with inconsistency, making it important to keep website elements minimal and organized while keeping page layouts predictable.

Granting user control, providing system status messages, and including the most important information first reduces cognitive burden and alleviates confusion related to attempts to retrieve ambiguous site functions from memory.