AWI Community

User research and design to inform the service strategy for an interactive virtual design community during the Covid pandemic.

Role: Solo Researcher and Designer

Skill Areas: User Research, Analytics and Strategy, Opportunity Scoping, Hypotheses Definition, Stakeholder Engagement, Workshop Facilitation, Prototyping & Iteration

Tools: Interviews, Surveys, Archetypes, Journey Map, Process Map, 5Ws&H, Competitor Analysis,
Miro, Figma, Adobe Suite, MS Excel

Timeline: 1 year

Background

Problem space

Artwithintent (AWI) is building an art & design network in India to address a lack of social inclusivity for these fields, as there is a cultural barrier in the dissemination of design practice as much as other professions, but a growing interest in the field. AWI's primary community was based on Instagram in a curatorial, one-way content delivery format. After registering interest from the audience for more learning opportunities such as career coaching, they are interested in prototyping the idea of a two-way interactive learning model.

I was assigned with testing the scope of such a learning model under AWI's business model that operates under a limited volunteering capacity and resources. The Instagram community was growing by the day, but we had a limited understanding of what the problem actually was, such as:

What are the audience getting and not getting out of the existing model?

How can we create a deeper learning setting that is different from Instagram engagement?

What formats of interactivity can we explore?

Stakeholder Interviews

I conducted stakeholder interviews and a keyword exercise to outline the current engagement model.

(What) A creative engagement model that (How) packages insights of different areas of design practice to openly share it with (Who) design enthusiasts with varied aspirations and backgrounds on (Where) Instagram (When) fortnightly.

Understanding the Audience

"I want to learn about various disciplines and understand the scope of a design practice in India."

There was a segment of the Instagram audience that wanted career coaching sessions to enrol in design schools. Using this insight, the team had already prototyped a Q&A heavy video session to understand audience needs, from which I interpreted the following:

The audience wants to demystify design career, since design as a career pathway is not introduced in nearly all schools,
The audience, at this stage, broadly constitutes of high school students and non-design students and professionals.
They want to identify application of design and an insider understanding of design roles.

Iteration

I took the above points into consideration when structuring the prototype called Classroom, as an iteration of the Q&A. I focused on delivering to the user need by clustering insights from ideation workshops on value-creation under a Who, What, Why, How framework and archetypes.

The session was geared to address the key user need- to learn about a discipline in depth and gain industry insight.

To gauge the outcome, I employed feedback forms which helped me understand the different user groups, backgrounds, interests and their satisfaction with the session.

Takeaways

The lack of a clearly defined problem

Through these interviews, the lack of a clear 'Why' became obvious, apart from a generic understanding that it is to bridge gaps design knowledge. I was curious to know the audience's perspective, and why they used AWI.

The use of esoteric language and presentation

As someone who newly joined the organisation, I was able to stand in the typical user's shoes. I felt that AWI used a type of language, content and nature of presentation that was too esoteric for the category that AWI aimed to address- people who do not have sufficient access to design knowledge, which pointed out the lack of inclusivity of the platform.

The efficiency of a Q&A model

Due to the success of the Q&A prototype conducted by the team in terms of good audience engagement and participation, we collectively decided to use this format for interactive learning.

What if we organised a virtual community space to leverage learning instead of one off sessions?

However, we weren't able to measure their overall experience of AWI. So, I used the user flow and process map to involve stakeholders in identifying touch points where there was scope of improvement.

As a solution, I facilitated an ideation workshop to engage stakeholders, paving way to an important discovery- a community model that would address nearly all of the key challenges. This idea was supported by user feedback on opening up networking and collaborating opportunities.

Scoping Opportunity

Insight

Hypothesis

If we onboard our users to a community space to facilitate sessions, we will resolve our challenges in leveraging interactive learning and peer support through continuous learning opportunities in the shared setting of a community.

Testing Assumption

Validating Outcome

To test the hypotheses, I initiated a community on Slack with 50+ members, all registrations of the Classroom. By conducting surveys during the Classroom and by observing interactions in the forum, I was able to gain insights into user interests and test new activities with them to gauge their responses, and acquire new members in the process. During low activity periods, I involved volunteers to spark conversations in the space to understand user interest in topics

I converted user data into quantifiable metrics for insight generation. On week 8, we had 120 members, and I used Slack's analytics to quantify my findings:

The participation rate was between 15-25% out of total members for any activity.
Only 5% of those participated in discussions on the community forum, and around 80% were moderately active or inactive.
There was a steady uptake of 20-35 new members into the community during each activity period.
Users showed interest in topic-specific or skill-specific channels, collaboration, networking and guidance.
Most university students and a few professionals found it difficult to make time for participation.

Interpretation

Evaluation

This hinted that while there is user interest in the community, there was scope of improvement to increase the viability, desirability and feasibility of the model to fit in better with user needs and the business model.

At this point, I called for a strategic intervention to evaluate the community model- I invited the business & strategy team and volunteers of the community, presented user analytics, qualitative insights and competitor analysis of a diverse range of design communities, followed by an ideation workshop on activating the community model that aligns with user needs and AWI's broad vision and strategy.

Using competitor analysis, I was able to draw out our USP during ideation to focus our learning model on Design Access, Guidance and Perspective.

Outcome

Design of the New Model

Validation

I floated the following points for discussion during our strategy-ideation meeting, informed by user and market insights:

A multi-channel community with topic-specific/skill-specific channels to create a space for all.
Defining the content by embedding the USP in them, for example, design guidance can mean channels for mentorship and feedback.
Improved ways of making user-centred content to increase participation and leverage learning.

I was able to guide the implementation strategy using the hypotheses to ideate a new community model that is primarily project-driven for scalability and sustainability.

The new model integrates channels under learning, sharing and collaboration, the pillars of AWI, under virtual Classrooms, virtual Design Studios and virtual Events, as shown below.

Screenshot 2023-02-24 at 10.43.01 copy.png

Validation points

These horizontals were tested, and feedback was incorporated to iterate the experience and to revise strategy.
I mapped the user flow to visualise community experience and interactivity.

User Flow: POV 1

User Flow: POV 2

Showing access to general and specific channels.

Key Learnings

Having acquired more experience and understanding of HCD and Service Design, here is what I would do differently:

Improved data gathering, metrics definition and evaluation criteria to measure and quantify user needs contextually.
Propose sustainable and scalable iterations to improve retention and participation, promote diversity and inclusion.
Propose a service blueprint in addition of user flow map to understand where there are gaps in knowledge and interactions between back end and front end.