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The State of Hawai’i government hired myself and 3 other designers to create a website where citizens could share their stories of hardship due to the COVID 19 pandemic. The information garnered from this would allow them to start the process of creating economic reform policy changes to counter future economic downturns due to a pandemic or other disaster.
- Joseph Caouette
- Mounika Sammiti
- Christopher Rini
- Justin Pejman
- User interviews
- Persona creation
- Set up of discussion board website
- Designed and developed a moderation guide for in person meetings
- Created mock ups for developers
The HIERR team needed to create a discussion board website to collect data on Hawaii residents, as well as a moderation guide to assist the in person workshops that would be held to educate citizens about the website. This needed to be completed in a short time frame and on a strict budget.
Our design team decided on utilizing a discussion board template website called Peerboard, due to its ease of use for the HIERR team, simplistic design, and it’s inclusion of essential features that fit the needs of the HIERR team’s goals.
1. Their limited budget did not allow for the hiring of a developer team to code a website
2. They only had about one month to get these deliverables, so we needed to get things done quickly
3. The HIERR team needed to be able to easily manage the site themselves
4. They have no user research, so this would need to be conducted by our team
Our team conducted 8 total user interviews with participants ranging in age from 21 to 60 years old, due to the fact that any Hawaiian citizen of any age could be a potential user of the website. We had several pieces of information that we were trying to understand through the interview process;
1. How do people like to learn how to use a new software or website?
2. What discussion board websites do the participants use regularly?
We created two personas that exemplify two potential citizens who may be interested in using the website based on some of the data points that were gathered during the user interviews. The HIERR team was exstatic that we created these for them because it would help them back up their ideas to their superiors.
Jason is a business owner who is not very comfortable with technology, and would rather go to an in person workshop to learn how to use the website.
Katie is a younger citizen who works in healthcare and wants to be able to share her story with others. She would access and learn how to use the site on her own.
The existing HIERR team had already done prior research on some potential options for a discussion board website.
Using their research and doing some analysis of my own on a few other options, I decided to go with a website builder called PeerBoard. Listed below are several reasons that PeerBoard was the best option.
Peerboard has a simple and easy to use interface that makes editing and moderating the website a breeze. I was able to walk the product manager through how to make any necessary changes to the site if they needed to.
We wanted the site to be as minimal as possible to avoid any confusion with Hawaii residents who are less comfortable with technology.
The main features needed for this project were the ability to create a post, comment on other posts, and a way to organize the site into different topics.
PeerBoard was not only simplistic in design and easy to teach, it was also a very cost effective option and the HIERR team agreed to the pricing that the site offered. They only needed the $30 per month category.
The HIERR team was working with a volunteer team of developers from a group called Code for Hawaii on a separate system called Pol.is. Pol.is is a website that creates polls and the HIERR team wanted to use this to get insight into the vision and values of the Hawaiian people.
This developer team had no designers working with them and they were solely focused on making a system that functioned well. I offered to attend some of their late night meeting to help out with the user experience of Pol.is. Below are a few of the big problems that I helped them to address through some simple changes.
Because Pol.is is a template based polling site, there was only so much that could be adjusted on the poll itself. One change that I recommended to the original setup was to remove the option of sharing to social media. The verbiage used for this feature did not really make sense, and would most likely just confuse some less tech savvy users. It is also not necessary for the goals of the project.
The primary mission of the developer team was to create a demographic questionnaire that poll participants would complete before they take the poll. This would allow the HIERR team to provide demographic details along with the poll results when they submit reports arguing for economic reform.
I helped them make several changes to this questionnaire with the primary goal of increasing the completion rate of it. Below are the changes that I recommended along with the original design and my redesign. All of these changes were accepted by the developers.
Changes:
1. Created more readability with the layout of the page by adding some padding and spacing between elements
2. Added a count of how many questions are remaining on the questionnaire, so that users are not discouraged by an unknown amount of questions
3. Created a clear distinction between primary and secondary buttons on the page
Original Design
Re-design
We conducted usability tests on Peerboard and Pol.is to see what issues users may have with the initial setup of them.
The first tests were done on Peerboard, and we asked participants to complete 3 tasks which are shown below.
1. Create a new post
2. Like someone else's post
3. Comment on someone else's post
With a completion rate of 80%, the usability test was a success! It showed that a majority of participants were able to complete the tasks given without any input from the moderator of the test.
Only one participant needed to ask a question about the terminology used on the button shown below. The "create post" button originally said "share my story" and this confused the user because they were looking for something about creating a post.
It took the developers longer than expected to deliver a working test poll that could be used for usability testing, but once we had it we were able to conduct 2 usability tests on it.
Participants were able to complete the polls without problems, and actually enjoyed the process of answering them. However, there were a couple issues that they believed could make the experience even better.
The first issue had to do with the number of statements on the poll. One of the polls had over 200 statements, and the participant stated that they most likely would not have finished it if they weren't doing it for a test. The main problem was that the poll would only show the user that they had "100+" statements remaining, which could discourage some users from completing it if they are short on time.
My solution to this problem was to break the poll down into several sections, which would accomplish two things. First, it would allow the user to take a poll that they are more interested in, and therefore they would be more likely to complete it. Second, it would reduce the number of total statements on each poll, making the process quicker and easier for the user. They would also have the option afterwards to take another poll if they would like to.
The HIERR team wanted to hold in person meetings to teach less tech savvy citizens of Hawaii how to use the discussion board website as well as the polling system. By doing this, they can get the feedback of these citizens while at the same time offering some technology education.
They originally asked us for a PDF document for this guide, but our team instead created a Google Doc that they could make changes to if necessary and they were very happy with this change. In addition to the moderation guide, we also created them a user's guide that would be accessible via a link on the Peerboard site, and this document would allow users to get a visual walkthrough guide of how to use the site themselves. The HIERR team was very pleased with the documents that we created for them, and plans on using both of them once their project launches.
We created a table contents for an easy way to find different sections of the documents
In user interviews conducted, several participants noted that they like how IKEA instructions include many pictures along with their instructions. We took that concept and applied it to our documentation.
We also included pages that included annotated pictures detailing the features on certain pages of the site.
The HIERR team was very satisfied with the deliverables that our team gave them, and plans on using everything created for their project. We had also included space on the user's guide document to allow for other languages to be added in due to the diversity on the islands. The project is set to launch in July of 2023, but is expected to be delayed due to unforeseen development issues.
1. Sometimes designs are not always what is needed for a project. In this case, it was more beneficial for us to create the HIERR team an entire template website because this saved them time and money.
2. Ask questions. We had several initial meetings with the HIERR team to really understand their rationale behind what they were asking for, as well as to get a clear understanding of what their vision was for the project.
3. If you have extra time, fill it coming up with new ideas about how else you can provide help or offer other solutions.
