Design.Local is group of indivisuals usually operating out of the waterloo area, who are trying to help solve the issues many different non for profits face using design challenges. They act as the go between for those looking to get involved and the businesses that need help and we were lucky to have the opputunity to work on the MVP for thier new website, here is how it all happened.
Category: Internship
Duration: 2 months
Team: Christopher Browne, Omar Fakhry, Jeshwin Swaminathan, Sunidhi Anand, Desmond Chan
Tools: Figma, Adobe Xd, Miro, Nvidia Video Capture, Wordpress
From the very beggining our goal was to create the best possible website we could that Design.Local would be able to use, with it still aligning with the current goals and objectibes of their business. Someplace where the content was not only clear and concise but was also easy to use, so to achieve we decided we needed to understand what is Design.Local trying to achieve through the website and why are its users coming to the website.
We then looked at what user liked and didn't like about the website along with what they hope to eventually see, and this is exactly what we needed. Using what we found we pored over all the information, coming up with many ideas then went to the long process of choosing the features we felt would be the best fit and took what we felt was holding everything back.
When it came to doign research we tackled this in a variety of ways, the first thing we did was like mentioned above study the current website to see what it had to offer. We then moved on looking at other websites who are similar in a way looking at competitors, so we did a competitive analysis and looking at websites such as prepr which also offers design challenges and we also looked at websites we could use for inspiration such as AIESEC, Sheridan's EDGE and Apple website. We felt we could use features that they impemented to help improve the experience of the users.
Next we asked ourselves who is our target audience, who currently uses the website and who would like to. From this we broke them down into new and inexperienced designers, the more experienced designers who could fufill more of a mentor like role and businesses who want to get in contact and submit challenges to get involved.
Experienced Members/ Mentors
Experienced Members/ Mentors
Businesses
While we were in our research phase, we had the opportunity to interview a variety of individuals belonging to the D.L (Design.Local) community with different backgrounds.
These 5 participants were broken down into 3 inexperienced members, one experienced member and one member from the admin side of D.L.
Users enjoyed the color used in the website.
They enjoy the challenges along with the chance to add projects to their portfolio and gain design experience.
The website makes it clear and easy about how to join the slack.
Teams for challenges were formed randomly and not based on skills set and individual experience.
Sign Up for challanges and the newsletter was done through Google Forms.
Participants felt the term problem solver which was the term Design.Local felt best refelcted all members, didn't fit best for the community.
Some users were confused about the double Sign Up in the current website where you sign up to be a member, with them actually signing up for a newsletter and signing up for a design challenge to complete.
Participants wished there was a way to view the past challenges done by members.
Finally Participants wished the website was more informative along with having a clear way of contacting Design.Local as they didnt have a contact page or email, with most communication occuring through Slack.
During our Ieation Phase we tried many different design activites to help get the juices flowing when we were brainstorming, it honestly took a while sometimes spending an entire day but we eventually got it done. These 3 activites were the ones that we felt helped us the most during this phase.
In summary, from our research, we discovered users liked the colors used on the website, enjoyed the challenges offered by Design.local and ease of access to information and access to the Slack group. However, most users had many issues with the website such as the double sign up for challenges and membership, the lack of ability to view Past Challenges and see how teams approached them, and finally, they wished there was more information on the signup process as well as a way to get in contact with Design.local besides the Slack Group.
Our solution to these problems involved not only making changes to the website but adding some new features, such as adding a new sign up form for users to use instead of google forms. Appealing specifically to the different demographics of Design.local and showing them how being involved could benefit them. Including new features such as a Resources Page for users who are new to Design so they could learn new activities or techniques they would use in challenges and wouldn't only use the website to sign up for challenges.
A Past Projects Page showcasing the challenges worked on by past teams, so people could see their process and even get a sense of what Design.local is about. And finally, a long-requested Contact Page so users can get in touch with any of the admin members if they had questions without having to join the Slack Group.
While the admin team did like a few of our redesigns and ideas, not everything hit the mark. The ideas we implemented that the admin team did like were the introduction of the Resources, Past projects, Events, and Contact Us pages. Agreeing that it was a good of way to keeping users engaged , along with the design challenges. However, they didn't like that most of these ideas needed constant management of the content. Finally, even though the admin team did like our redesign of the Current Challenges page. It wasn't necessarily the right design if they published a large number of challenges at once which we agreed with. In the end, this redesign wants 100% success but with us having many areas to work, but it wasn't a total failure as well. We were credited that our research brought many insights they didn't know before and lead to them making changes to better the experience of their members.
From this project, I've learned quite a few things. The main one being sometimes what users want may conflict with what your client wants. But that isn't a bad thing, and you just have to try and bring the best of both worlds. Another lesson I learned is, research is so important. Most of the data we collected from interviews helped us a lot, and it also gave me the opportunity to learn how to be a better interviewing and get to know the users better.Learning to pay more attention to what people say and follow up on the interesting things that needed following up.
Our next step would be to improve on what we were lacking, which would be making it easier for the admin to manage the content on the website along with also improving on the designs to cater to a large number of new challenges at once. We also aim to make contacting the admin team easier for users, allowing users another alternative besides Slack. We would also like to do a second round of research to confirm and build on the first round of research we conducted.
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