COMMUNITY COMPASS
Finding Support Made Simple
Community Compass is the result of an end-to-end application project aimed at empowering social workers to efficiently connect clients with vital resources. This comprehensive app streamlines resource exploration, organization, and saving in one intuitive interface, enhancing efficiency and support delivery. It stands as a digital compass, guiding social workers toward the support their clients need, all within the palm of their hands.
Problem
Social workers invest significant time and effort in searching across disparate sources for crucial resources, often encountering challenges in effectively locating the specific information they need. This fragmented process can be both time-consuming and frustrating, hampering their ability to efficiently access the essential resources required for their clients.
Solution
The solution to the challenges faced by social workers is the implementation of the Community Compass resource application. Community Compass serves as a centralized platform designed to streamline the process of discovering and managing resources for clients effectively. With its intuitive interface, social workers can easily search for relevant resources and save them in one convenient location. Additionally, Community Compass offers filtering options, allowing users to refine search results based on specific criteria, thus enhancing the efficiency and accuracy of resource discovery. By providing social workers with a comprehensive tool to navigate the complex landscape of social services, Community Compass empowers professionals to deliver timely and tailored support to individuals and families in need.
Project Scope
End-to-end application
Role
UX Designer (Research, Visual Design, Interaction Design, User Testing)
Timeline
3 weeks / 2024
Platform
Figma, Lookback
Design Process
Discover
Research Plan
Competitive Analysis
User Research
Define
User Persona
Affinity Mapping
How Might We
Ideate
Feature Roadmap
Sitemap
Task Flow
Brand Style Tile
Design
Low Fi Wireframes
High Fi Wireframes
Usability Testing
Final Screens Interactive Prototype
Recollect
Challenges
What I Learnt
Discover
Research Plan
Research allows me to better understand users - their frustrations, hopes, fears, abilities, and goals. This understanding is crucial in creating effective solutions later on. To keep the research focused, I created a research plan. This plan outlines the goal, objectives, questions, methods, participants, assumptions/risks, and timing.
Research Goal
To understand social workers’ challenges when it comes to finding resources for clients in order to develop a user-centric resource directory application.
Research Questions
What are the primary challenges social workers encounter when seeking resources for their clients?
How do social workers currently discover and access resources for their clients, and what are the limitations of their current methods?
What types of resources and information do social workers most frequently seek when assisting their clients, and are there specific gaps in the availability of these resources?
What are the critical features and functionalities that social workers believe would make a resource directory application more user-centric and effective in their daily workflow?
Assumptions/Risks
Assuming that social workers will readily adopt and effectively use the new resource directory application.
Assuming that accurate and up-to-date information on available resources can be obtained and maintained.
Ensuring the accuracy and timeliness of the resource information could be challenging, and incorrect data may lead to ineffective referrals.
Methodologies
Competitive analysis
User interviews
Competitive Analysis
In the competitive landscape of resource-oriented platforms, SPIDER, WIN (What I Need), and myNM each offer distinct strengths and weaknesses. SPIDER stands out for its collaborative effort and role as a key resource for welfare services, yet suffers from usability issues and outdated data. WIN provides a comprehensive range of free resources, particularly catering to vulnerable populations, but faces limitations in availability and technical performance. Meanwhile, myNM excels in healthcare management for patients, boasting a sleek UI and convenient features, yet lacks inclusivity for caseworkers and individuals seeking services for others. As platforms strive to enhance usability and accessibility, addressing these weaknesses will be pivotal in meeting the diverse needs of their target audiences and improving overall user satisfaction.
User Research
3
Participants
24-31
Age Range
14
Open-Ended Questions
10-20
Duration (min)
3-5
Years in SW Field
All three social workers face a recurring challenge of locating resources for their clients. This task is a daily responsibility, with each spending considerable time navigating various platforms and databases to find suitable resources. They commonly encounter obstacles such as long waitlists, lack of Spanish-speaking providers, and limited availability of certain services, particularly in suburban areas.
Despite utilizing tools like Google searches, insurance provider lists, and specific platforms like SPIDER, they find these resources often outdated, incomplete, or difficult to navigate. Time constraints significantly impact their ability to search for resources, with each spending upwards of an hour per client on average.
Their ideal resource directory would offer comprehensive features like a centralized database, search refinement options, a user-friendly interface, and enhanced communication capabilities with service providers. Maintaining accurate and up-to-date records of referred resources remains a challenge, given the sheer volume of information and the lack of follow-up processes.
Define
User Persona
As someone dedicated to understanding my audience's needs, I rely on user personas to represent key user groups. These personas help me focus on solving the most important problems for the most significant user segments. Whenever I make design choices, I refer back to my user persona to ensure that it aligns with the user's needs and goals.
Meet Daniela, a dedicated 28-year-old caseworker from Chicago who loves helping families and staying efficient.
Affinity Mapping
After conducting my research, I organized the thoughts and ideas into distinct categories within an affinity map. These groupings served as a foundation for extracting insights and identifying recurring themes, guiding the direction for subsequent steps in the design process.
How-Might-We
How might we streamline the resource discovery process to address the challenge of finding services in a client's specific area, ensuring greater efficiency for social workers and faster access for clients?
How might we design a user-centric resource directory application that provides accurate and up-to-date information, ultimately reducing the time social workers spend searching for resources?
How might we address the issue of long waitlists and limited providers, particularly for specific language requirements, by enhancing the resource directory to include real-time availability and language options for mental health services?
How might we improve the documentation and record-keeping process for social workers, ensuring that they can easily organize and update resource information, reducing the risk of information getting lost or becoming outdated?
Ideate
Feature Roadmap
Next, I translated the brainstormed solutions into a list of product features, shaping a comprehensive feature roadmap. Categorized into four tiers - Must Have (P1), Nice to Have (P2), Surprising and Delightful (P3), and Can Come Later (P4) - these features were prioritized based on their alignment with both business and user goals. The feature roadmap serves as a blueprint, integrating project objectives while ensuring that development cycles prioritize essential features.
Sitemap
Now, with the product goals established and feature selection underway, the next step involves constructing the structure of the mobile app through a sitemap. This tool enables me to visualize the content's relationships and assess its hierarchy effectively.
Task Flow
Understanding how users would move through a task is crucial for my design process. By mapping the task flows, I can see which pages to prioritize in my design. This also helps me understand how the flow might change for different tasks, even without designing each screen separately. This way, my design can better meet user needs and expectations for different interactions.
Brand Style Tile
I created a style tile to define the visual direction, bringing together brand elements like the logo, colors, and typography, which guided the UI design process.
Design
Low Fi Wireframes
I began by sketching low-fidelity wireframes to capture my ideas before transitioning to digital design.
High Fi Wireframes
I refined my ideas into high-fidelity wireframes, adding detail to the design to visually represent the layout and functionality. Through attention to design principles and user experience considerations, these wireframes aim to create an intuitive and engaging interface that aligns with the project's goals and user needs.
Usability Testing
Usability Test Plan
4 participants were interviewed remotely using Lookback
Research goals
Learn how a user navigates through the platform
Identify any areas for improvement
Check if users can go through the task flows without any assistance
Task flows
Edit filters to search
View search results in list and map view
Navigate to favorites
Success metric
How easy or difficult was this task to complete on a scale of 1-7? Metric for success is a 5 or higher
Usability Testing Summary
All participants rated the tasks a 7.
Following the usability test, the feedback indicates a positive user experience. Participants appreciated the user-friendly interface, expressed satisfaction with the available categories and filter options, and strongly desired the project to be developed into an app. This positive feedback suggests that the design effectively meets user needs and preferences, providing a seamless and intuitive experience for accessing resources. Additionally, participants expressed a desire to see waitlist status as a filter, highlighting an area for potential improvement.
Revisions
The feedback obtained from usability testing guided me in making necessary revisions to the design, ensuring a more user-friendly experience. I iterated the design based on this feedback, incorporating the addition of waitlist status as a filter to enhance usability further. Additionally, I introduced a bottom navigation menu to selected screens, facilitating easier navigation for users. Furthermore, I enhanced the map screen functionality by implementing a feature where clicking on a location zooms the map to that area, improving user clarity and interaction. Lastly, I made the favorites list collapsible and expandable, providing users with greater control and organization over their saved resources.
Interactive Prototype
Recollect
Challenges
A challenge I faced was finding the balance between packing in all the features users might want while keeping things simple and easy to use. Too many features could overwhelm users, but too few might not meet their needs. To tackle this, I leaned on talking to potential users, testing, and iterating to make sure it was a good balance.
What I Learnt
This project taught me a lot about the entire design process, from start to finish. I got hands-on experience with everything from researching and brainstorming ideas to testing and refining the final product. Along the way, I learned how crucial it is to really understand the people who will use what you're making and to keep iterating things until they work just right. It's all about paying attention to the details and making sure everything feels easy and natural for the user. Overall, this project helped me sharpen my design skills and gave me a solid foundation for future projects.