Project Summary
The Nonprofit Exchange Hub (NEH) is a platform in development that will enable nonprofits to access goods, information and connections to further their mission and benefit the communities they serve. As a new volunteer and member of the team, I contributed to aligning the UX strategy by facilitating an empathy workshop and using lean UX methods to create proto-personas and hypothesis customer journey maps.
Project stage: NEH is in the discovery and define stages, with a focus on researching and understanding the problem space of nonprofit recurring or emergency-based needs and the experiences of individual citizens who have goods to donate.
Timeline: 3 weeks (December 2020 - January 2021)
My responsibilities: workshop design and facilitation, and demonstrated leadership with the UX strategy
Team: As a volunteer UX designer and researcher, I collaborated with another user researcher for pre-workshop planning.
Challenge
As a volunteer-led project, the team composition and consistent contribution fluctuates due to varied availability and skill sets. Through initial onboarding, I discovered research gaps on understanding our target users which posed a potential risk as the design and development work progressed.
Solution
As a new team member, I noticed an opportunity to align the team and foster empathy for nonprofit and individual users through persona development and journey mapping. I designed and facilitated a full-day workshop at the Democracy Lab Hackathon in January 2021, where we developed a journey map for an individual user of NEH; and a proto-persona and journey map for a non-profit user.
Target Users
The Nonprofit Exchange Hub will serve two user types: nonprofit organizations and individual citizens. Both user types will be able to view and post goods to lend or donate. Nonprofits will also be able to list items they need, and offer goods to donate or lend to other nonprofits.
Process
A key constraint was limited time before the hackathon, we had to 2 weeks to plan and prepare for the upcoming empathy workshop.
Step 1: Create initial UX artifacts
Once I understood the scope of the UX work conducted to date, I offered my workshop design and facilitation skills to increase team alignment and empathy for target users of the NEH platform. I first collaborated with the UX researcher to develop a donation experience map and three proto-personas for the individual user group.
As a new team member, I first took stock of the completed UX activities including initial research such as roundtable discussions with nonprofits, competitive analysis of other similar services or platforms, and initial mockups of the NEH platform. However, common UX artifacts like personas or journey maps did not exist.
For the team to better understand and empathize with the target users of NEH, I pitched the idea of creating personas and journey maps. We decided to earmark the upcoming Democracy Lab Hackathon for an empathy workshop, where we would work on personas and journey maps.
The week before the hackathon, I collaborated with the UX researcher using Miro to develop a donation experience map for individuals and three proto-personas in the individual user group. The experience map and personas helped me frame the problem space of donating goods and to recognize that the motivations and donating behavior will vary based on a person’s consumption, giving, and house organizing/cleaning habits.
Proto-personas for individual users of the NEH platform
Step 2: Prepare workshop materials and framework
I applied key principles and lessons I learned from facilitating and designing UX workshops in 2020 by preparing in advance the framework and structure for the upcoming empathy workshop at the January edition of Democracy Lab’s Hackathon.
In spring 2020, I took the Nielsen Norman Group (NN/g) course on ‘Facilitating UX Workshops’. The course content and frameworks are practical not only for in-person but remote workshops too, which is a useful skill to have especially with COVID-19 and the changing nature of work.
In anticipation of the upcoming Democracy Lab Hackathon, I applied key principles and lessons I learned coursed and practical experience I gained over the last few months. One key learning for any type of workshop is that intentional preparation and creating structure for participants contributes to successful outcomes.
A report by the Goodman Center published in 2020 shared findings from over 4,000 survey respondents on what works and what doesn’t work with online work, training and presentations. One of the takeaways is related to structure as making or breaking one’s experience. A “clear structure” was cited as a key attribute to making video conferences a positive experience, whereas “no structure” is the third most commonly cited negative factor.
In preparation for the upcoming workshop at the hackathon, I customized the workshop templates in Miro including a clear agenda to set clear expectations with the participants and a series of interactive activities to foster structured ideation related to our workshop goals.
Step 3: Facilitate workshop
The upfront preparation and planning for the workshop paid off. The collaborative and structured activities in Miro generated a wide range of ideas and insights for the NEH UX team to build on for upcoming research and design activities. I received positive feedback from the team and volunteers on how they had fun and appreciated the structure, flow and organization of the workshop.
On the day of the hackathon, I was excited for a new challenge and experience but also curious to see how the day would pan out. One unknown variable was how many participants would join. I expected at least 3-4 NEH team members, but whether we would have additional one-time volunteers and how many, was unknown. Once we were in the NEH breakout room, we had an ideal sized group of 7 people: 4 NEH team members and 3 hackathon volunteers. The combination of existing team members and new volunteers brought forward fresh ideas and questions. Crowdsourcing ideas and input from people who are new to the project can help mitigate potential biases or assumptions that our team has about the problem space.
In the morning session, I walked the participants through the agenda and introductions. The initial set up on required orientation people who were new to Miro, a digital collaboration tool. This is a key lesson/takeaway for me: in order to be inclusive of all participants, it’s important to share in advance the online tools we’ll use or to reserve time to provide a quick orientation. By the end of the morning session we created our first artifact, a hypothesis customer journey map for the Helper persona.
In the afternoon, additional NEH team members joined, which brought new energy and ideas forward. We focused on the lens and experience of nonprofits, as the main target user group. Once we crafted an empathy map and proto-persona for non-profits, it became evident that additional research may help us understand and develop non-profit personas to capture the diversity and range of organizations and their needs, based on factors such as cause, size, level of formality and connections in a given community and ecosystem.
After 5 hours of productive and collaborative workshopping, we wrapped up the day by joining the larger group where over a dozen projects shared what they worked on during the hackathon. In the share back, the project lead summarized that we accomplished our goals and had a productive day at the hackathon.
Step 4: Iterate and refine UX artifacts
After the empathy workshop, I reflected on what I learned from the experience and took the initiative to iterate and refine the artifacts we produced in the workshop. Although based on a set of hypotheses, the proto-personas and journey maps align the UX team (myself as the UX designer along with a UX researcher) to conduct further research and transition to early-stage design activities.
During our next NEH team meeting, we debriefed on what went well and what could be improved for next time. The project lead shared this hackathon was one of the most productive days, which validated my initial pitch of developing personas and journey maps to foster empathy and align the team on better understanding our potential users.
After taking a few days to reflect on the hackathon experience, I revisited the personas and journey maps for the next iteration. As living artifacts, I developed higher fidelity personas that are readable and scannable for any member of the team. I used this Figma template for easy and scalable updates by myself or other team members in the future.
Outcomes & Lessons Learned
The goal we set out for the empathy workshop was to understand and prioritize user needs related to giving and receiving donated goods and services, by exploring common motivations and behaviors of individuals and nonprofits.
Key outcomes included an improved understanding of:
1. Target users needs, motivations, and behaviors related to giving and receiving donated goods and services
2. Key phases for the individual and non-profit experience of using the NEH platform
Key lessons I learned:
1. When you spot a problem and research gaps, offer up a relevant and value-add skill set to work towards a common solution.
2. Preparation goes a long way, especially for remote workshops and unknown variables such as the type and number of participants.
3. Trying something new (like participating in a hackathon) is a low-risk way to experiment with new techniques and get feedback for future improvements.
Next Steps:
In the coming months, the UX team will conduct a series of UX research and design activities including (1) competitive usability testing to test and compare similar platform features and user flows; (2) surveying nonprofit organizations to understand needs and capacity; (3) and developing user scenarios, story maps and user flows to inform our next design decisions.
