Finding value aligned work is difficult. Activate is a mobile and desktop solution for budding activists that gets results.
6-month speculative product design collaboration with Luxoft Smashing Ideas and UW.
SUMMARY
End-to-end product designer, full control over Mobile Design, Research, UX, UI, presenetation and branding.
ROLE
Research focus on social impact barriers
We noticed there was increased interest in social change work in the summer of 2020, but many recruits struggled to find value-aligned organizations that offered projects that fully utilized individual abilities, and were sustainable over the long term in terms of commute and time commitment.
Initial Hypothesis: phases of development
We initially hypothesized that an activist has a developmental lifecycle wherein there are different phases where drop-off is common. If we could pinpoint the highest point of drop-off within the development lifecycle of an activist, and create a tool or service to address that issue specifically, this could empower more people to successfully reach their activist goals.
Subject Matter Expert Interview
The next step was interviewing a Subject Matter Expert (SME) to validate or reform our initial hypotheses.
The more questions we asked, it became apparent that the SME opposed our conception of activist work. They considered an activist a lifelong member of a directly oppressed community who is committed to fighting their own system of oppression for life. The SME thought that anyone who wasn’t already dedicated to working against these forces shouldn’t be considered in this line of work. We realized we were inherently targeting a very different group of people, but hadn’t defined that scope narrow enough to benefit the study.
Narrowing the Target Demographic
To still gain insight from our interview, we focused in on what makes for successful volunteer events and what keeps people coming back to their org. The SME agreed that individual long-term connections, and creating a sense of community improves long-term commitment.
After the interview, we debriefed and agreed that we needed to narrow our demographic scope. So after some discussion and research, we chose recent grads as a community-seeking, readily available, engaged, and often relocated demographic.
Interviewing Primary user: Organizers
The next step was to interview one of our primary users - social change work Organizers.
Our talk with the first organizer centered on the issue of burnout. We asked again about what makes for successful, or positive experiences and what historically has made for negative experiences.
The organizer described positive volunteer experiences as events where social connections are encouraged, where the org has created a well-defined, non-judgmental, growth atmosphere, and where they have established a clear purpose that aligns with individuals’ values and goals.
We then identified and interviewed recent grads as our secondary user (we’re looking at people 0-5 years out of college) identified that social connection and being part of a community were crucial to their overall wellbeing. This became the foundation of our next research segment!
For our interviews with recent college graduates, we wanted to understand their background with social change, why they are (or are not) involved, whether they want to lean in further or need to step back, etc. Some of our questions included:
Interview Primary user: Volunteers
Can you tell us about your background in social change and activism? What social change issues are you interested in? When did you first become interested in social change?
Can you describe your current level of involvement? Do you participate in any activities or communities? How often? What motivated or initiated your involvement?
Can you describe your desired level of involvement? What is keeping you from getting to that level?
What do you think would motivate you to get more involved? What might help you develop social connections that would motivate and sustain your involvement?
What are the barriers you face as you try to develop these connections?
The importance of psychological safety
We reviewed our interviews to extract key points, body language and other elements we may have missed in the initial interviews.
In interviews where we found the users exhibiting evasive body language, frowning or keeping a closed/neutral face, giving short answers, or using terms “guilt” “guilty” “I feel bad about…” etc, often the resulting answers became short, evasive and surface level.
We reformulated to purposefully create a warmer introduction and a more conversational questioning style. In recordings where the interviewer and interviewee were smiling, speaking conversationally, and scheduled where neither were in a rush, users were able to give deeper, more introspective answers without shutting themselves out due to embarrassment, cognitive dissonance, or feeling like it was a hostile interrogation.
Contextual Inquiry for further context
In addition to our interviews with SMEs, Recent Grads, and Organizers, we conducted a contextual inquiry with a local non-profit.
Our goal was to see a real working org in action and identify any pro-social activities or structures that they had in place.
We were also keeping an eye out for more subtle indications of relationship building, like changes in body language, perceived camaraderie, and tone.
Emotion-Mapping Workshop:
For this workshop, we wanted to identify the different emotions that crop up as people seek out and try to join social change organizations. This technique is meant to identify the pitfalls people may experience and address areas of greatest improvement.
Pink post-its were used to identify positive factors, while yellow denoted barriers. Further, we requested they add how meeting each of these factors made them feel on blue post its.
Research Analysis
Once we finished conducting our primary research, we began to affinitize quotes and insights from each of our interviews to see if we could identify themes across the board.
We organized our interview data by creating categories for barriers to connection and facilitators of connection, placing interview insights and quotes from each interview on this chart.
After we had organized all of our interview insights, we affinitized the insights based on common themes we found, some of which included organization structure, personal connection, and safe spaces.
We did this affinitizing twice, then created broader categories, to identify recurring patterns from our interviews. Our initial insight categories were structure, culture, social connection, enjoyment, and information.
We then refined these down to trust, social connection, goals, information barriers, structure, enjoyment, and culture.
Phase II Design
Ideation
We then independently came up with 20 ideas for how we might tackle this problem space. We regrouped, affinitized, and explored compound solutions.
Sara’s Part: I drew from different successful services and thought what could we incorporate? Can can we combine our individual concepts into an even better compound service?
Story and User Flow
Storyboarding
We then developed a key story for how our users might encounter Activate, and how our product might improve the activist experience. Having an artifact to show our users and advisors improved the depth of feedback we were able to get.
Sara’s Part: I drafted this initial storyboard and the final storyboard used in presentations (this final product artifact will be shown at the end).
Lo-Fi, Initial Storyboards
User-Focused Design Workshop
After creating the storyboard, our next step in the process was to validate our concept with our target demographic - young adults who are interested in volunteering.
We validated our concept with a design workshop. We used the storyboard to lead our participants through our envisioned experience.
While we went through the storyboard, we had them make notes frame by frame asking for positives, pain points, and ideas for us to explore as we developed our platform.
Sara’s Part: I led the second half of the workshop and made sure everyone got equal space to speak about their experience.
Our design workshop served not only to validate our design concept but to access the viewpoint of our target audience. We knew there would be key insights they may note that we wouldn’t consider.
Prototyping
Mobile First prototype
After the Workshop, we reconvened at the studio to apply insights to our actual design. We started out with a low-fidelity prototype of the mobile system. We also explored a desktop system as a way of more quickly going through all our features and sorting functions. The issue here was, would we narrow the pool of who was able to use our service if it was so dense that you’d need to seek out a desktop? For this reason, we started this project with a mobile-first format in mind.
Lo-Fi Mobile
At this point, we were trying to get all the functions done on an app, so it would be more accessible to people without desktop access.
We got some crit, and unfortunately, the style was deemed too dense.
Further, the stylish setup and bright colors confused our critics. Instead of giving notes on our content or information architecture, they ended up giving us feedback on the outward UI styling. We had to pare it down and focus on the infrastructure and user journey rather than the UI to improve feedback quality.
We brought it back to grayscale and reassessed the differences between mobile and desktop.
Mid-Fi Prototype Mobile
To improve ease of use, we decided mobile would be primarily for communications, event reminders, and managing personal goals, while desktop would handle the majority of the onboarding.
Hi-Fi Mobile
This allowed us to show only relevant information on the personalized, hi-fidelity mobile design. This would be a product that’s easy to use on the go, and leaves the initial heavy lifting to the desktop onboarding system.
Desktop Prototype
Lo-Fi Desktop: With the simplified mobile design, we explored some different ways to present information and create the sorting functions for the desktop system.
Lo-Fi Home Screen
Lo/Mid Fi Desktop Onboarding
Home Screen Clarification
After choosing a few opportunities of interest, users move through the onboarding wizard to open an account, meet with a matchmaker and start the Activate process.
Mid-Fi Desktop: We identified what our users valued and found ways to visualize all those different elements. For example, areas of interest, shown in the drop-down menu, time commitment, and in-person or online opportunities.
Mid-Fi Search Function
After choosing a few opportunities of interest, users move through the onboarding wizard to open an account, meet with a matchmaker and start the Activate process.
Mid-Fi Onboarding
Hi-Fi Desktop: For the final high fidelity mockup, we optimized the color scheme for screens, clarified the copy, and further fleshed out the onboarding system.
Hi-Fi Desktop
Hi-Fi Onboarding
User Testing and Crit!
We then conducted online user testing as well as a crit session with Smashing Ideas which gave us great insight into areas for improvement.
Phase 4: Results
These insights informed our design response, Activate, which is a platform that connects people with social change opportunities and teams in order to enable participants to have a meaningful impact each week while deepening connections with a team of peers.
Activate User Journey Flow
1st: Get matched with an opportunity and a team
2nd: Onboarding and bonding
We found that in order to maintain the motivation required to continue involvement, young adults need to feel a sense of belonging and that their skills and time are valued and making a discernible difference toward hitting specific and measurable goals. They also need to feel that they are personally aligned with the current and future trajectory of the cause.
This final storyboard depicts the final integrated product flow, human interactions, and mobile and desktop use throughout the full user experience.
What we’d change for next time…
Through this process, we often received conflicting advice from subject matter experts, our advisors, and our users. The majority of projects will have varied stakeholders and different goals in mind, so this project was a good snapshot of that.
Further, it would have been ideal to meet in person with our teammates and our users throughout the whole project, as we had some trouble building rapport and connecting with each other and with our users over zoom. We recognized the importance of taking our time with user interactions and tweaking how we ask questions and how we are coming across so people feel more comfortable talking about a tricky subject.
We succeeded in this project by defining and understanding our users, centering their needs, and making decisions in line with their values.
