Overview
How to transform Feed Scarborough's volunteer management process from Email & Excel based drudgery into a smart digital solution?
Feed Scarborough:
A non profit organization that operates four food banks, healthy meal programs, and many more, serving over 4,500 clients per week with the help of over 150 volunteers.
A non profit organization that operates four food banks, healthy meal programs, and many more, serving over 4,500 clients per week with the help of over 150 volunteers.
Challenges in design:
1. Inventing a digital product for a process that formerly relied mostly on Excel and emails.
2. Complicated organization logistics.
3. Restricted user research due to privacy concerns.
1. Inventing a digital product for a process that formerly relied mostly on Excel and emails.
2. Complicated organization logistics.
3. Restricted user research due to privacy concerns.
UX Design Capstone Project Team:
Yumeng Fan, Jaya Hu, Anna Lin,
Jing Sheng, Adler Zhou
Yumeng Fan, Jaya Hu, Anna Lin,
Jing Sheng, Adler Zhou
My contributions
Defined problem space by planning and conducting user and stakeholder research.
Drove design excellence by leading IA and usability discussions.
Acquired stakeholder buy-in by pitching design proposal and deliverables.
Created and polished prototype through ideation, user tests, and iteration.
Deliverables
Current: Inefficient, Labor-intensive, Discouraging
Proposal: Streamlined, Personalized, Intelligent, Empowering
Clickable Mid-fidelity Prototype
Design Approach
Requirement Research & Analysis
Problem Space Analysis
In order to understand the unsolved problems in Feed Scarborough's volunteer management process and identify the root causes, we conducted a series of research to create a user journey map that demonstrates the interaction and touch points between Aden, a coordinator at FS, and volunteer Dinah.
This allowed us to dissect their workflow and closely examine problems at each stage of interaction. For coordinator Aden, we identified 3 top pain points: Time-consuming tracking process, long “silent period” waiting for volunteers' responses, and low acceptance rate.
“Our biggest challenge is that we often cannot find available volunteers for our shifts”
was the problem that we were initially asked to solve.
was the problem that we were initially asked to solve.
Is it really true that the 150+ volunteers are simply unavailable?
Research Method
In this project, the coordinators from Feed Scarborough are not only our key stakeholders, but also the end users. Another group of end users consists of their volunteers, as core of this management process is the interaction and communication between the two parties.
We chose interview and shadowing as our primary research methods considering their flexibility in eliciting detailed qualitative insights while allowing us to facilitate a solid stakeholder relationship. We also ensured sufficient learning about Feed Scarborough through its website, blogs, and social media posts.
The main challenge we tackled during the research phase is the disconnection with the volunteers due to privacy concerns. Therefore, we requested documentation review in which we obtained the excel and email templates along with other records of communication to maximize our understanding of the process and pain point for each party.
Define Problems & Goals
01
The process is time-consuming. Why?
Coordinators dependent heavily on manual assignment tracking and adjustments using inefficient tools such as excel and email.
Hills
Aden
Can
can easily create and manage shift schedules on an integrated platform using pre-registered data fields
So that
he can publish schedules to volunteers and receive confirmations from them earlier by 24 hours.
Aden
Can
track volunteer responses, find replacements, and modify shift assignments through an intuitive and automated system
So that
he can save 70% time from unnecessary and back-and-forth confirmation with volunteers.
02
The “silent period” is long. Why?
Use of inefficient communication tool (email & verbal) while acceptance and cancellation often happen last-minute.
Hills
Dinah
Can
receive, respond to, and modify their shift assignments on an intuitive and integrated platform
So that
she can save 50% time from repetitive confirmation with coordinators.
Aden
Can
track volunteer responses, find replacements, and modify shift assignments through an intuitive and automated system
So that
he can save 70% time from unnecessary and back-and-forth confirmation with volunteers.
03
The acceptance rate is low. Why?
Coordinators have insufficient information to match volunteer interests and changing availability with shift requirements
Hills
Aden
Can
assign volunteers by referencing their preferences, availability, and experiences
So that
he can improve volunteers' satisfaction and the acceptance rate of shift assignment by 45%.
Dinah
Can
indicate and modify her preferences and availability
So that
can receive shift assignments 90% matching her interests.
Design Solutions
01. Optimize acceptance rate
Allow volunteers to indicate their preferences and availabilities.
Recommend the most suitable volunteer candidate at each shift assignment.
02. Minimize the impact of “Silent period"
Streamline the response process for volunteers.
Automatically replace assignment from the volunteer candidate list upon rejection or no response.
03. Reduce the labor and time cost for Coordinators
Synchronized and visualized shift distribution and acceptance status update.
Centralized dashboard for surfacing the most critical actions to be taken promptly.
Predefined Location, program, and role logistics that enable easy shift creation and assignment within a few clicks.
Iterative Design Process
Ideate & Prototype
The team took a collaborative effort on the ideation and prototypes using Miro and Figma.
We sat together with our research analysis results, and ideated solutions from the end-to-end user journey, looking at each touchpoint and interaction between the coordinator and volunteer.
I enjoyed a lot leading discussions on user flow and edge cases, drawing references from my previous experience as a game UX designer.
Evaluate
We conducted 2 moderated usability tests with the coordinators at Feed Scarborough using a clickable Figma prototype. During the test, we adopted the think-aloud protocol, recorded participants’ mouse movement, and probed into their mental model of navigating our design solution.
To substitute for the lack of access to volunteers due to privacy concerns, we tested the volunteer perspective designs with 2 classmates who have volunteer experiences with other organizations.
Iterate
Having the user feedback we received in the usability test, the team collaborated to develop V2, which is the clickable prototype you saw at the beginning of this page. After the Capstone course, I create V3 to explore the visuals as well as ways to further simply the flows.
“The user flows are easy to follow and I like how I can see all the shift status.”
“It says 4 unfilled shifts. I'm guessing clicking it will take me to the unfilled ones.”
“I would love for it to automatically find replacements for me! Just not sure how it works.”
01. Simplified user flow and navigations
Coordinator feedback
1. Expected the portal to redirect them to a landing page where they can take immediate actions.
2. Confused with how the auto-replacement would work.
3. Confused by the carousel navigation from one day to another.
2. Confused with how the auto-replacement would work.
3. Confused by the carousel navigation from one day to another.
Improvement
1. A more comprehensive and actionable dropdown display of emergent notification breakdown.
2. Display auto-replacement history to provide more transparency.
3. Simplified navigation by avoiding cross navigation between child-level pages.
2. Display auto-replacement history to provide more transparency.
3. Simplified navigation by avoiding cross navigation between child-level pages.
Schedule overview page V1
Schedule overview page V3
Rouge Park - Warehouse schedule V1
Rouge Park - Warehouse schedule V3
02. Optimized copy-writing and visual aid clarity
Prospective volunteer feedback
1. Uncertain about the meanings of color coding and certain icons.
2. Confused about strings including "Free," and "Click and drag to."
2. Confused about strings including "Free," and "Click and drag to."
Improvement
Optimized copy writing and use of visual aids.
Volunteer preference page V1
Volunteer preference page V3
Key Lessons Learned
01
Find the win-win spot by reallocating cost amongst user groups
When a product has both business and customer end users, it is important to understand how their user flows intersect, what information is exchanged, and what resources could be reallocated.
In this project, we shifted some responsibilities to volunteers by enabling them to indicate their preferences. This could not only improve acceptance rate, but also provide volunteers with autonomy and acknowledgement.
02
Not all solutions need to be new. Learn from the community.
The community often already has solutions to complicated problems.
In our case, we were able to simplify our design for Feed Scarborough by leveraging the coordinators' knowledge of the "workarounds". This allowed us to prioritize information display, surface only the necessary actions, and thus reduce the cognitive load for coordinators.
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