Improving the User experience to partners of Civic Suds ( NGO organization) using Agile.
Civic Suds is looking to bring learning and opportunities to people who rely on laundromats regularly to wash their clothes by bringing training partners into space. Workshops are donated by Civic Suds’ partners, and Civic Suds will need additional investors to open more locations and provide more workshops.
Agile is an approach that we followed for this project, where we were given the following problem statement that we had to solve:
The community partners of our client, Civic Suds, need an efficient way to find time slots and create their own bookings without needing to go through the Civic Suds team.
Civic Suds needs a more organized management system that will allow them to see a global view of bookings and events to share with their laundromats.
The questions we asked ourselves about the given problem statement was as follows:
How Might We:
- How might we make the booking process simple and intuitive?
- How might we help partners find exactly what they’re looking for?
- How might we organize bookings for Civic Suds to keep track of?
- How might we display the value and benefit of Civic Suds to potential investors?
From where we created the following hypothesis:
We believe that by creating a calendar-based booking system, we will allow Civic Suds and their partners to more easily create and track Civic Suds bookings.
We will know this to be true when partners are able to easily create their own bookings and Civic Suds is able to easily track the partners’ bookings with minimal friction.
Research Methodologies
Screener Survey
Goal: To get relevant insights from our target audience on how community organizations seek out and reserve venues for their programs.
Target Audience: Any human or organization interested in connecting with disadvantaged groups to provide them knowledge to help them increase their competitive advantages.
Survey Form:
In terms of data, we collected a total of 42 forms responses.
Interviews
From the Screener Survey, we Identified our potential interviewees. We conducted 10 interviews. Guided by our problem statement, we asked our interviewees the following questions:
Background:
- Where are you located?
- Where do you work?
- What type of organization is it? (Nonprofit, community center, healthcare clinic, etc.)
- What type of educational programming do you offer/would you like to offer?
- Who is your main audience for this programming? (any key demographics?)
Booking
- Where do you typically offer these programs? (What types of venues)
- What kinds of amenities or equipment do you need to run your programs?
- How many participants do you generally host?
- What time/day of the week do you typically offer these programs?
- Typically how long are these programs?
- How do you go about booking venues/spaces for these programs?
- Any specific apps/sites you use?
- What did you like/dislike about using these apps?
- Describe any difficulties you’ve encountered in this process.
- How do you keep track of your schedule? (Physical calendar, Google Calendar, Calendly, etc..?
Partners:
- Think about the last time you partnered with a company/organization. Can you tell me about that?
- What was the most valuable thing that company brought to the table?
- What data or information would make you consider to partner with an organization?
Affinity Map
We mapped the collected data into an affinity map, which helped us identify pain point patterns. We grouped the data on the following categories: Finding a Partner/Venue, Partner/Venue Offerings, Amenities, Transportation/Parking, Scheduling Platforms, Program Integration, and Color Coding.
User Research Insights
Pain Points
Booking
- Transportation/ Location
- Amenities
Booking process
- Integration with platforms so that we can reduce steps
- Partnering
- Access to classrooms and resources.
- Promotional stuff
- Access to fundraising
- Snacks/ Refreshments
Findings
Booking
- Users find valuable the information about the location and transportation of the venue.
- Users want to know what kind of amenities does the venue offer so that they can match it with their programs accordingly.
Booking process
- Users find integrations to be timesaver, users are looking for a platform where they can have access to relevant information and also to download data if needed.
Partnering
- NGO’s are looking to partner with organizations that can provide promotion, access to fundraising, access to classrooms and resources and it’s a plus if they provide Snacks/ Refreshments.
Insights
Booking
- If the user has all the information and clarification of all variables available he/she is most likely to complete the booking process.
Booking process
- Users want a simple way to complete the process and an easy way to visualize and keep track of their events.
Partnering
- Organizations need to see compelling information in order to take the next step in the partnering process.
Task Analysis
In order to better understand the booking process of other platforms, we performed a task analysis of a competitor, Eventup.com. By following through the booking process on this website and noting features, functions, and design patterns, we were able to better understand the booking process. From that understanding we create the following user flow:
After the sketches, we created the wireframes on Adobe XD
From those wireframes, we created the prototype using Axure.
