Continuity Despite COVID
Feature Addition for Arts Organization Website
“I really worry about how shut in our participants are going to be during quarantine. They love participating in our programming, and moving everything online is going to really affect them unless we figure out how to keep them engaged.”
Caitlyn C, 26, Arts of Life Volunteer
My Role.
Product Design
User Testing
Team.
3 Product Designers
Timeline.
February 2021
Client.
Arts of Life, a Chicago-based arts organization.
01. Executive Summary.
The Problem.
An arts orgaization supporting professional artists with intellectual disabilities is forced to move operations online at the start of the COVID pandemic, effectively isolating their participants who often don't have another outlet for socializing and require consistent guidance and support for their art careers.
The Goal.
To ensure Arts of Life can continue coordinating programming that keeps their participants engaged remotely by:
facilitating communication between volunteer program coordinators; and
enabling volunteers to sign up to work on individual programs that match their particular skill sets and interests.
The Solution.
A centralized portal where volunteers can maintain communication to properly and efficiently coordinate arts programming, reach out to participants, and ensure program continuity.
The Impact.
Our design proposal was well-received by both the Community Outreach Coordinator and the volunteers, however current bugetary restraints mean that implimentation has been put on hold for now.
02. Background Information.
The Kickoff.
Tim Ortiz, Arts of Life's Community Resources Coordinator, explained that the pandemic has forced them to transition to online programming. This has hiccuped how volunteers comminicate and coordinate to provide continuity of service to their artist participants. It has also created hardship for the already socially vulnerable participants, who are now effectively wihtout the in-personservices that provided a social outlet.
“Our volunteers don't necessarily communicate with each other now that we're not open in person. Another area of improvement is how we match volunteers to our open projects.”
Tim Ortiz, Community Resources Coordinator.
03. Research.
Volunteerism Survey.
We reached out through various social media platforms to source respondents for our Google survey. We sought both external participants who regularly volunteer in their community, as well as those who currently volunteer specifically with Arts of Life.
59
Responses
Interviews.
Our team of 3 set up individual Zoom meetings with 6 of our survey respondents, spltting the interviews evenly amongst us.
The first half of each meeting consisted of a contextual inquiry, and the second half was a task analysis.
Pain Point: Volunteer Sign Up Form.
We had users perform a task analysis to identify bottlenects within the current website. A major bottleneck was the volunteer sign up form.
We suspected that the form's length contributes to this page's bounce rate, resulting in Arts of Life losing many potential volunteers. Since Tim also mentioned that the form contained a lot of extraneous fields, we realized that we would have to simplify and shorten it.
^^See how long this form is??^^
“This is way too much to fill out.”
“It's always easier if the areas you need to populate on the form are drop down choices rather than having to type it in.”
Feedback from various volunteers.
04. Key Insights.
Mapping Affinities.
I created an affinity map based on our user interview responses. As I grouped similar answers, certain themes began to appear.:
Volunteers found it challenging to stay in contact with each other.
The pandemic created a stumbling block towards maintaining volunteer activities.
Volunteers had a sense of pride and obligation towards giving back to their communities.
A Major Bottleneck.
...Was how volunteers kept in contact. This made it difficult for them to coordinate their efforts offsite - which became amplified when COVID forced a shutdown of on-site activities.
Volunteers.
Communication ensures continuity.
COVID forces them to rethink what outreach looks like.
A centralized communication hub ensures that outreach can continue.
Artists.
Arts of Life provides valuable social interaction.
COVID creates greater risk of social isolation.
Online outreach is critical to mitigate social isolation.
Stakeholders.
COVID has forced revamping of operations.
Volunteers are vital to continued community programming and outreach.
Volunteer communication has suffered.
Centralized online communication puts operations back on track.
05. Meet Stephanie.
Our Persona.
Stephanie is a volunteer who needs a way to stay in contact with her volunteer team members to coordinate arts programming and participant outreach.
"How Might We increase the efficency of volunteer activities and make this remote effort more collaborative?"
User Flow.
Based on our research data and user feedback, and keeping bugeray constrains expressed by our stakeholder in mind, our solution proposal consisted of:
a volunteer portal; and
a chat room.
Both to be added to the current Arts of Life website.
06. Design.
Sketching It Out.
Here's a quick clip of me conceptualizing and sketching out a wireframe:
Redesigned Volunteer Signup Page.
High Fidelity Screens.
Adding a volunteer portal button to the site's landing page.
The sign in form and abbreviated signup form.
3. the Create Your Profile page.
4. the Welcome To The Portal page with distinct pathways for new and returning volunteers.
5. the Volunteer Opportunities page, separating opportunities by volunteer team.
6. the Project Details page.
7. the Team Chat Room, displaying team members currently in the room.
Link to Final Prototype.
Can be found by clicking this link: https://www.sketch.com/s/1f9bd31b-97bc-4f04-88cb-dee3185f23e8/prototype/a/F923C663-40AC-4D74-9FD9-4249E5A07978
07. Usability Tests & Feedback.
3
Iterations
14
Screens
12
Avg. # of Seconds Shaved Off Of Task
8. Outcome.
Volunteerism Survey.
We reached out through various social media platforms to source respondents for our Google survey. We sought participants who regularly volunteer in their community.
59
Responses
Continuity = Caring.
After making the necessary modifications to the mid-fidelity prototype, I then handed those changes off to my team mate to convert to the high-fidelity wireframes and prototype. Since the site is visited regularly by their artist participants who have developmental challenges where sudden changes might be jarring) it was important that we ensured that the new features matched the rest of the site seamlessly. Continuity of the existing design helped build empathy into our proposed solution.
Lesson Learned.
COVID's impact on vulnerable populations includes a heightened experience of social isolation.
Volunteers can circumvent the severity of social isolation and sustain their positive impact on vulnerable communities when provided with ways to collaborate outside of physically meeting in the same space.
Centralizing volunteer communication allows non-profits to continue to serve their communities despite the need for physical distancing.
If We Had More Time.
We would have liked to speak with the artist participants who benefit from AoL's programming.
We would have gained deeper insight into the effort it takes to coordinate remote programming if we were able to participate in some of their Zoom class sessions.
Next Steps.
While happy with the mockup our team produced, our stakeholder was unable to move forward with the proposed changes at this time because of lack of budget to allocate toward this project. He expressed a desire to schedule another zoom call with us to discuss implementation when the budget and opportunity open up.