Making an inclusive volunteer experience by Using a Human-Centered Design Approach
Overview
Code for San Francisco is a non profit volunteer based brigade under Code For America that focuses on solving civic related issues happening in the local community.
The goal is to unite the colorful, professional, and personal identities of the residents during an every-Wednesday “Hack Night” to work on civic tech projects that bring out the best in the city of San Francisco.
Team Members : 3
My Role : User Researcher & Service Design Strategist
Duration : 2 weeks
Tools & Methods:
Competitive & Comparative Research
Contextual Research
User Interviews
Online Survey
Archetypes
Journey Map
Storyboarding
Sketches
THE CHALLENGE
Our client, CSF, has a problem with completing delayed and unproductive projects due to poor new volunteer retention, and an inability to attract “non-technical” folks to their weekly hack night.
We Have a solution
Our idea to address this problem is a two phase solution: the first phase focuses on a reimagined new volunteer experience that will increase volunteer retention and project completion; the second phase focuses on an outreach campaign to a broader SF community, which will engage community organizers and activists. They need to facilitate consistent and dedicated volunteer participation, and recruit a more diverse volunteer base, which is representative of the SF community needs.
OUR PROCESS
In Two Weeks…
A timeline depicting how we spent our time during the two weeks and what we accomplished a long the way.
How Are The Other Brigade’s Doing
We then went ahead and took a look at what other brigades are doing in terms of their online presence and we discovered that although Code for SF’s social media presence is doing great in terms of engagement from active followers to new content being posted, we noticed that there were some design best practices that could be improved on such as site content and language , where the CTA buttons are, to making things easier such as a clearer navigation as well as having more consistent project info that is easier for people to find and sign up for.
What We Found Out
Code For SF’s online presence was not as strong or clear compared to the other brigades,
because of their content and IA (Information Architecture).
There was lack of explanation on what “civic tech” meant for people who were not familiar
with the term and no proper way to get connected to projects online.
ATTENDing A HACK NIGHT
We wanted to get an understanding of what actually happens at Hack Night in present time, and we felt the best way to go about this was to attend an event ourselves and participate in the projects. We had the chance to meet the “Core Team” who organizes the weekly event as well as getting a chance
to chat with members and learn about the projects they were working on.
From our observation there seemed to be a lack of direction and comfort for new members to engage fully and feel confident to be involved.
It seemed that the core team members of Code For SF who were hosting the event were not guiding the new members once the initial intro meeting was over.
getting to know the attendees
My team and I split up and began having interviewing conversations with the attendees- both new and returning- to get a sense of :
Why they decided to become involved?
How did they hear about it?
What do you they hope to achieve?
Key takeaways
We conducted interviews with 7 participants.
The majority of the people were all interested in
Working on projects that focused on bettering their community.
Developing their technical skills through the projects at Code for SF.
Coming to the meetings in hopes of networking and making professional connections.
To our surprise, we discovered that Code for SF serves as a great place for community activists such as employees from non profits who may not have the resources or budget to hire a full time employee to come by and connect with more technically skilled members to collaborate with them on their respective work projects.
“I work for a non-profit organization, and I needed someone who had experience in Project Management to help build a new website.” - Sheana
SURVEY DATA & RESULTS
To get a sense of what motivates people to become involved in their community, we sent out a survey asking them questions regarding We analyzed data from 26 survey respondents.
“What does civic tech mean to you?”
word cloud created from answers received
64% of respondents want to feel belonging in their community.
People’s primary reason for community involvement is to improve the city.
72% of respondents receive civic news in San Francisco by social media and news sources, and 64% by word of mouth.
24% of respondents are interested in getting more involved in the San Francisco community.
MAKING SENSE OF THE DATA
Once we had a large amount of data collected from our surveys and interviews, we created an affinity map to organize our findings and find distinct trends to work with.
Through this exercise we were able to uncover 15 themes of, we ultimately moved forward in digging deeper with the 6 main pain points.
Hack Nights are welcoming and the staff is helpful.
Disprove the stigma around the term “hackathon.”
People’s primary motives to attend Hack Nights: personal interest, develop skills, or network.
People recognize that SF needs help: we are witnessing growing unrest and tension in civic and public life.
People aren’t sure what Code For SF does, or what Civic Tech is.
Code for SF has a very limited outreach, primarily via word-of-mouth.
We need to meet a diverse audience’s needs online: English please!
Mistrust between tech and non-profit space in SF: people need to start listening to each other.
While willing, tech volunteers don’t take time to really understand what communities need.
Low volunteer retention leads to inefficient and delayed projects.
No formalized way for new volunteers to indicate interest for projects.
No continual check-in or on-boarding volunteers.
New volunteers need more information and specifications on projects.
It’s difficult to get out of one’s shell in a new social environment.
WHO ARE WE DESIGNING FOR?
Based off our affinity map insights we were then able to create 4 potential archetypes of members who would benefit from Code for SF ranging from the Longtime Volunteer who is very familiar with Code For SF all the way to the young professional who is not necessarily in tech and very unfamiliar with Code For SF.
We defined their needs, motivations, etc. This gave us a clear visual of how diverse the membership is at Code for SF and what it could potentially become.
We decided to focus on the experience of the New Attendee
A NEW JOURNEY FOR OUR AtTendees
Our journey map was then created to showcase the pain points that someone would go through as a new member while online as well as in person and what areas we should be focusing on to improve for an enjoyable experience which would make them stay committed and see Code for SF as a credible and promising organization.
A NEW HACK NIGHT EXPERIENCE
We revisited our original experiences and insights from our data, and started to ideate some solutions for our realized How Might We-s. From our thinking, we decided to look at both an online and in-real-life solution that was combined and how we could best prioritize them given the resources and time.
A 2 phase holistic solution is born
PHASE 1 (scroll DOWN for sketches)
Create a reimagined new volunteer experience that increases volunteer retention & project completion.
1. Website Redesign
Content and IA redesign that communicates purpose, encourages registration, and recruits diverse participation
Online Registration & Interest Indication for new volunteers
Online Volunteer Progress Feedback (click for User Flows)
2. Hack Night Experience Redesign for New Attendees
Agenda restructure for on-boarding and commitment to projects
PHASE 2
Coordinate outreach campaign to broader SF community to engage community organizers and activists.
1. Marketing
Social media campaign to engage wider audience
Logo redesign with slogan*
2. Community building
Request tech companies’ sponsorship
Develop relationships with community and non-profit organizations to bring in new projects
HOW WOULD THE SOLUTIONS WORK?
THE NEW HACK NIGHT IN-PERSON EXPERIENCE
The Flows OF THE WEBSITE EXPERIENCE
Leading Up To Hack Night FOLLOWING HACK NIGHT
Sketches of WEBSITE RE-DESIGN
NEXT STEPS
Moving forward, we plan to work with current Code For SF Design and Web Development volunteers to build out a full functioning digital prototype for a mobile-first web redesign. As designers, we will conduct some usability tests to validate our solution and gain more insight to the information architecture as well as the registration flows.