Adapting Habitat for Humanity to a new covid normal
Client: Habitat for Humanity
Note: This is a concept project, the organisation did not approach us to undertake this work.
Duration: 2 weeks Design Sprint
Team: 2 UXUI designers
Role: UX researcher/designer- define the problem by analysing actual user behaviour and form data-driven insights to address the need of users as well as the business goals, idea iteration, design and documentation..
Tools:
Methodology:
Stakeholder Interviews
Business analysis
Competitive and comparative analysis
Surveys
User Interviews
Archetype Creation
Scenarios Creation
Journey mapping
Affinity Mapping
Empathy mapping
Design Studio Iteration
Sketching
User Flow
Wireframe prototyping
Usability testing
Asana
Mural
Figma
Google Suite (All)
Slack
Zoom
We ran 2 weeks of design sprints which includes 4 stages: Discover, define, design and deliver. We eventually created a cost-effective and high impact solution to adapt the business and keep volunteers engaged during the COVID 19 crisis.
Habitat with humanity: a nonprofit organisation that helps to build homes and create adequate housing solutions.
Brief: Because of Covid, the typical building operations have been temporarily curtailed. Habitat needs to look to other ways to keep potential volunteers engaged with the organisation, identify and put into place other ways to attract and involve volunteers now, and into the future and provide ongoing support for the mission
What is happening?
We have conducted an in-depth business analysis to gain a deeper understanding of the organisation and the impact on volunteerism during the COVID-19 crisis. Different organisations have adopted different sets of measures to avert any major outbreak. Habitat put in place unprecedented containment and social distancing measures. They shut down the full worksite to cope with such situations, putting the organisation at risk of losing volunteers if it continues in its current ways.
The COVID-19 pandemic has forced many businesses to shut down temporarily, businesses that struggled to adapt and adjust to ever-changing rules and restrictions, are now out of business. The rapid digital adoption driven by COVID-19 will continue into the recovery, Habitat needs to adopt a digital engagement strategy and look at all of the digital channels to identify the best ways to keep potential volunteers engaged with the organisation instead of attracting new volunteers.
Understanding the users
We did surveys and a series of interviews because we want to dig into the volunteers’ needs, behaviours and motivation for people to volunteer, what they hope to get out of volunteering and their major concerns to understand archetype and target the type of people that would benefit the most.
Interviews: Nine interviews were conducted in total. We hope to understand what users are passionate about, how users approach different tasks, what their mental models for different things are and their experience when volunteering.
Surveys: 39 responses from a diverse number of people varying from current/existing volunteers, to motivated volunteers, and un-interested volunteers. We hope to find out how volunteers hear about different organisations. the types of volunteering roles they participate in (past or present), the impact of COVID on volunteers and the ways to engage them.
Synthesising - Insights
Gathering all the information from what the users have said and the survey data and began to categorize each group and get further insights out of them.
Snapshot of Affinity mapping
Snapshot of Empathy mapping
Key Insights:
Users preferred personal growth and to learn more when volunteering.
Users are motivated to volunteer and to give back as it makes them feel fulfilled.
Users are worried about scheduling clashes due to their other commitments.
Users disengage with volunteer organisations because of a lack of communication or unnecessary info.
Users disengage when guilt is the motivational call to action to volunteer.
Creating an archetype allows us to narrow down our targeted users and see the type of characters they have and what they wish to achieve, along with their frustrations.
Journey Mapping - helps to visualise the volunteers’ emotional journey through every stage while they are experiencing a service for Habitat for humanity, so that we can understand when and where did the issues begin to arise.
Journey map showing the decline in users’ satisfaction due to a lack of engagement and updates.
Since COVID hit, volunteers are still maintain highly motivated to contribute, but once the organisation informed them of the suspension/slowing down of projects, there is a sudden decline of emotions, and continues to decline with the lack of updates, as users are unsure if the people they were helping are going to be okay.
Ideating
Our idea for a higher level of engagement and better experience during voluntary work is to provide people with an easy way to get engaged and stay updated. Backed by our insights from current trends and volunteers, we were then able to ideate concepts and user characteristics, and what they need to satisfy that. We sketched out the ideas and features, discussed the pros and cons of how well they solved the problem, tested it with a handful of volunteers. Receiving feedback with the initial sketches, allowed us to adapt to changes, assess each idea’s viability and developed MVPs in the next steps.
HMW Statement:
Brainstorming potential solutions as to ”How might we fix this problem”
How might we provide more opportunities for volunteers that allows continuous learning and growth?”
E-learning platform - for virtual teaching and tutorials that can be done remotely
Online community building platform- for volunteers to connect and share their professional skills
“How might we create the perfect call-to-action & remove doubt of role capabilities?”
Overview of all sort of volunteers opportunities and allow users to learn about the specific roles and how to undertake the roles
“How might we help volunteers to see how their help will have a positive impact”
Different visuals illustrating the process, direct and end result
Feedback System / Progress bar
“How might we provide users with up-to-date information”
Show updates at the relevant point of time (e.g newsfeed/time-sensitive notification)
“How might we guarantee that the users are well protected, and show that the organisation is following safety regulations?”
Information System addressing health and safety causes (e.g safety precautions induction befo0re volunteering on-site/scheduling system that allows people to work on-site whilst following the social distancing rules
Sketches
visualise some potential solutions for the how might we statement, and bring the idea to life.
A solution that does not reinvent the wheel
A responsive design utilising a card layout provides flexibility to the organisation if they would like to fix the current mobile app that isn’t working. Providing room to create a hybrid app that incorporates these features and API’s straight from the website to reduce the app development cost.
Our recommendation is phased release of the feature sets
Phase 1 :
Scheduling volunteers
The prioritised ‘feature’ is a simple way to schedule and manage the people required onsite.
We suggested this as part of the first phase release as it was a way for the organisation to get volunteers back onsite, ensure there is no clash with volunteers and visually shows the need for the work. furthering Habitat’s mission.
Step by step task breakdown
Our findings showed potential volunteers want to see what direct impact their work is going to make. An in-depth breakdown of each opportunity with a message from the recipient and step by step guides for each role not only increases user confidence but can also assist unskilled volunteers in ensuring they are undertaking the tasks correctly.
Filtered skills
We found out users were concerned they might not have the skills required during usability testing. With the ability to filter results based on select criteria, we solved the problem of volunteers' declining opportunities with assumptions that they are not skilled enough.
PHASE 2
Remote learning
A feature with ‘new ways of engagement’ involved remote learning through building required fittings and furnishings. Our research uncovered that the main driving forces for people wanting to volunteer are giving back and learning something new. Utilising the ‘Restore’ hardware shops run by the organisation, volunteers can take home materials and build whilst following along virtually.
PHASE 3
Gamification / rewards system
A gamification/rewards system as an optional bonus feature. Aiming to motivate volunteers and attract new volunteers, we looked to harness Habitat’s strong partnerships with other organisations to create a rewards system.
Hi-fi mockups
Browse different upcoming projects
2. Check if the tasks interest them
3. Sign up for the role and book in time slot
4. Check Schedule
What's next?
To discuss further information with the business to understand the details needed to finalise these features such as:
Change Management - What roles and ways of working will need to change for implementation
Layout & Designs - After confirming features, choose how they will look and where they will be located on the devices
Thumbs up to move forward - To discuss with Habitat for Humanity if they are happy for us to implement these changes that will help with their problems.
If I have more time?
Conduct contextual research→ to get on-site to understand the process and pain points of volunteers.
Remove ineffective features → Features that are not yielding any users and business value should be removed. Make sure users are not presented with overdose information and features. As more features are proposed, re-assessed the existing one as well.
Conclusion
COVID is changing all types of business and they have to adapt and cope with such situations. In 2020, there’s a brand new set of challenges for business, ranging from operational level and communication perspective. All type of business needs to go digitalized and cope with people’s constantly changing expectations and stretch empathy as well as a managing crisis response to a new operational model.
