Creating Community with the League of Women Voters
Designing a platform for like minded people to come together and share experiences!
IF YOU ONLY HAVE 10 SECONDS...
I worked on a team of 3 to design a phone application in addition to the League of Women Voters website where users could share experiences and activities in a safe environment. I conducted competitive/comparative analysis, usability tests, and made user journey maps.
IF YOU HAVE SOME MORE TIME...
The LWV is an organization that advocates for improvement of our government and citizen engagement. They want a platform for members to share experiences and broaden their community with like minded people. Their goal was to have a safe space for people to read and write about what's on their mind, join groups and go to events that interest them.
We found that by creating a safe discussion platform for users to share experiences, we will help build engagement in community causes.
The League of Women Voters is currently a website but based on our research we found that individuals wanted a way to share community experiences on a mobile application that could fit into their busy schedules. They believe that staying connected will allow them to make a positive impact on causes that matter to them.
Challenge
Research
Survey
The first thing we did as a group was create a survey for the general public to use. It had 5 questions about how they share experiences, how they stay connected to politics and why they want to learn more. After receiving ~50 responses, we used this to narrow down 6 people to interview in depth.
Competitive/ Comparative Analysis
We continued the research process by seeing what competitors and apps with sharing features were doing. It was interesting to see how similar websites like Chicago Votes and Better Gov didn't have a discussion platform. However, according to the comparative analysis, there were platforms out there to share personal experiences or stories such as Facebook.
Design Studio
This was a breakthrough for prototyping because it gave us something to build off of when it came to the final product. After individually designing our own paper prototypes we came together as a group to collaborate on what our mid-fidelity prototype looked like by discussing interesting features someone added versus things that we believed we could do without.
Gray-scale Wireframes
User Testing
"Mind map"
Multiple users were confused as to what the format of the trending "mind map" was. Someone mentioned how they were not sure if it was something they could click or was an image. Therefore, in our final we changed the home screen to have topics that are more beneficial and needed for day to day use.
Navigation
On the bottom of our screens we placed icons (Home, Community, Profile, Create, and Get Involved) that seemed to cause some confusion. Some users thought that the icons did not support the text underneath it and could be clearer and Get Involved was blank.
"Your Groups"
Previously, our profile tab led to a section called "Your Groups". Some users assumed this meant groups they were admins of. However, our intention was for it to list groups you were currently a member of so you could see it in one place. We knew that this was something we had to clear up in the final prototype.
Final Prototype
Onboarding Process
Creating a Post from Particular Group
Creating a Post from "Home"
Navigation Bar
* GIFS created by Rick