Brittany Nowicki
THE CHALLENGE
BACKGROUND
This project was intended to create an outlet that would allow users to interact and participate in their global causes of interest, in turn, supporting the United Nation's initiative to support sustainable goals.
The Goal
The overarching goal of this project was to create an outlet that would allow users to interact and participate in the UN's One For All campaign in support of sustainable initiatives and allow users to engage in their global causes of interest
THE OVERVIEW
My Role
As a team, all members were heavily involved in each phase of the process. Personally, I conducted introductory interviews, contributed to the design of both the mock-up and prototype, conducted user testing, and made agile changes before creating a final presentation to deliver to our client.
The Team
Our team consisted of professionals from a variety of disciplines from software engineer to designer. With a wide range of perspectives, we were able to tackle the challenge from all angles.
THE Research
We hit the streets and interviewed our target audience: college students.
Searching for answers to how and why they interact with social causes, whether participating in their passions or volunteering for requirements.
Interviewing the students sought to tell us:
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How active college students currently are
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What types of activities they have participated in
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What does it take for them to get involved currently
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How they find out about social causes
Synthesis of our findings
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Most awareness was spread via word-of-mouth
and social media -
Most students needed activities to fit into their schedule
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Being able to see the difference they made was VERY IMPORTANT
PersonaS
Jen
Jen was our Optimistic Seeker
The user who wanted to volunteer based on her own desire to participate in important causes but she was a new freshman and didn't know where to find opportunities outside of the clubs she already belonged to.
Charlie
CHAD
Charlie and Chad were more passive students. They would only participate if things were presented directly to them, like donating a dollar at the grocery store, or for mandatory service hours required by many clubs and Greek organizations.
THE PROCESS
Design Studio
We went to the drawing board for rapid ideation.
Utilizing the Crazy 8's method we worked together, going through the best pieces of each of our ideas to develop one cohesive concept.
We learned from our interviews and first-round drawings we needed:
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interactive onboarding - a place to what causes are available
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a social screen to see upcoming events
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a place to create your own group and post events for others to join
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and a calendar function to manage personal events
PROTOTYPES
Our ideas translated into an event scheduling and connection app that would allow students to volunteer for activism opportunities by their preferred sustainable causes of choice. Users could also join groups based on their interests and find correlating events. Since the UN's One For All brand was rainbow themed, we kept this cohesive throughout; everything color coordinated with the corresponding social cause.
Below is a sample of the main screens created for our prototype testing. Linked is our interactive prototype to participate in our intended interaction.
Testing
After creating our prototypes we conducted in-person usability tests. Each person contributed valuable feedback and helped us view the product and its areas of improvement from a different perspective.
During this phase, we recorded each tester with their permission in order to evaluate their body language and facial expressions. Not all of our tests were very vocal, but we were able to find areas of friction through hesitation and furrowing.
Task: sign up for an event, join a group, find other events
"user friendly"
"I want more information about causes"
"don't need event confirmation page"
"very intuitive. easy to navigate"
"change button language"
AGILE CHANGES
Utilizing an agile methodology allowed us to make quick changes on-the-fly in between user tests.
Based on similar feedback between multiple testers, we recognized common areas of confusion with labeling language.
For example:
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we were updated “add cause to profile” to "add to event profile".
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since this was the opening screen, we need to be more descriptive about what users were deciding on
THE CONCLUSION
Future Iterations
The app concept was well received by our testers, but throughout this process learned of additional areas of improvement for next round testing. Moving forward we plan to implement:
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Pre-filled profile page to refer users back to following their initial create profile step.
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Build out the Calendar page to reflect “Upcoming Events” and “My Events” tab.
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There was some confusion regarding whether these were the user’s events opted in to. Users’ feedback was that they wanted to know how this view was generated.
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Create an all-encompassing calendar view that incorporates external app calendars so that the user can view everything they have going on, all in one place.
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Rethinking labeling
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For example, a user gave the feedback that a pencil icon or “+” would be more intuitive terms of adding or editing your picture on the Profile page. The group icon was also mentioned.
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Create an email confirmation notification following registration for the event as a physical message present on the page.