Finding Forever Homes:
Animal Care & Control’s Digital Transformation

Leading the migration and redesign of the Animal Care & Control website to increase pet adoptions, drive shelter visits, and improve access to community services.

Role

UX/UI Designer
Web Developer

Timeline

July 2025 - February 2026

Skills

Web Development
Data Analytics
Landing Page Design
User Interface Design
User Experience Design
Graphic Design
Stakeholder Engagementr

Tools

Granicus OpenCities
Adobe XD
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Illustrator
Google Analytics
Copilot (Artificial Intelligence)
Microsoft Teams

Project Overview

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Animal Care & Control (ACC) required a complete migration of its website from under the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department (CMPD) umbrella to a dedicated standalone web presence that better reflected its identity, services, and mission.

The Challenge

Animal Care & Control's website was housed under the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department (CMPD), making it difficult to establish its own identity and creating unnecessary friction for residents seeking animal-related services. The existing site suffered from a fragmented information architecture, inconsistent navigation, and an outdated visual design that made key resources difficult to locate.

The project required restructuring content, redesigning the user experience, and modernizing the site's visual presentation to make information easier for residents to find while improving accessibility and navigation. The new website needed to be designed to establish Animal Care & Control as its own distinct public-facing service, with a clearer information architecture, intuitive user journeys, and a more engaging experience for pet owners, adopters, volunteers, and the broader community.

Key Features / Goals

The new website needed to accomplish the following goals:

Establish an Independent Identity

The website needed to clearly position Animal Care & Control as its own public-facing service rather than a subsection of CMPD. Its branding, messaging, and structure needed to reinforce the department's unique mission and responsibilities.

Improve Information Discovery

Residents needed to be able to quickly find the services, forms, and information they were looking for without navigating through confusing menus or dense content. The site needed a more intuitive information architecture and streamlined user journeys.

Increase Community Engagement

The website needed to better connect residents with opportunities to adopt, volunteer, foster, donate, and access animal-related resources. A more modern, approachable experience would encourage greater interaction and strengthen the department's relationship with the community.

User Experience Audit

Fortunately, we had the opportunity to migrate the site before initiating the redesign. This allowed us the opportunity to collect data on how exactly users were navigating the site. It also made their pain points more apparent. This time period between migration and design empowered us to take a data driven approach with all of the design changes that would follow.

Below is a look at the webpage before the website redesign.

Project Approach

We noted that the site was difficult to navigate and made use of dated, non-ada compliant components. Before changing the look of the site, we reviewed each page and made accessibility fixes where necessary.

The next step was to give the site a more personal feel. Now that Animal Care & Control was no longer a subdomain of the Charlotte Mecklenburg Police Department, we had the opportunity to implement the voice, writing style and design standards of the City of Charlotte. The design tool that I used to prepare the initial mockup was Adobe XD. Designing in this platform enabled us to share a live link of the latest version of the landing page, while allowing stakeholders to provide feedback via comments.

Results

After a number of revisions and meetings via Teams, We finally completed the site after using the design process described above. Once we received approval on the design from the Animal Care and Control team, I built a working prototype of the design in OpenCities and hit publish.

Since launching the redesigned website, Animal Care & Control has seen a sharp increase in site visits as well as, stronger engagement with their key services.

Finding Forever Homes: Animal Care & Control’s Digital Transformation