CASC/ACÉC - Strategic Report
The Canadian Association for Studies in Co-Operatives (CASC), serves as an academic hub for scholars and practitioners who are passionate about co-operatives. With a focus on research, collaboration, and knowledge sharing, CASC’s goal is to promote member engagement and attract emerging scholars through a revitalized digital presence
Problem Definition:
The current CASC website struggled to align with its academic culture, member engagement, and social media goals.
Solution:
Working in a team of two, it was our job to create a strategic report to create a plan for redevelopment.
My Role (in collaboration):
- Content Strategist
- UX Designer
- Project Manager
- Research Analyst
Research & UX Design:
My colleague and I worked closely to research, prepare survey questions and interview users. Having collected the data, we used Miro to organize and analyze the information. During this phase we also prepared a content audit, competitive and comparative anaylsis, heuristic analysis, as well as a SWOT analysis.
The Client said:
“I was really impressed with how well they understood our typical users and what we could do to attract aspiring scholars, who are more likely to be digital natives than our current members. The personas they created to illustrate user experience were very perceptive.”
Content Strategy: I had a lot of favourite parts to this project, but I love content strategy the most. After proposing a new site map, I prepared a content strategy that would align with the client’s new needs from their website.
Reports and Presentation: During our time working with the client we maintain regular meetings, and provided reports and presentations, so that our client would receive what they most need.
The Client said:
“The report they produced is practically useful. They cared about the work they did and approached this assignment seriously...”
DYL Communities - Design Project
DYL Communities, a membership based platform for facilitators to engage their communities through gamification and real-time collaboration. Built on the First People Four Principles of Learning, DYL is a pre-built platform where leaders can set up quickly, using the provided tools for impactful, meaningful and efficient community management.
Problem Definition:
Leaders struggle to maintain engagement in their communities using traditional methods, resulting in fragmented communication and missed opportunities. Membership based platforms have a learning curve that stops leaders from building membership.
Solution:
Create a pre-built membership platform that increases engagement without the common pitfalls of traditional platforms, and complicated membership building sites.
My Role:
- Founder/Product Manager
- Content Strategist
- UX/UX Designer
- Project Manager
- Research Analyst
- Copywriter
- QA Lead
Where this idea started: I have been a professional facilitator for many years, leading into designing workshops, and managing communitities. I started out on using Facebook groups, and Google Classroom. I discovered that there are many membership/community site building platforms out there, but I found that they were cumbersome, and didn’t give me what I needed without a big learning curve. I dreamed of a pre-built platform that I could start right away, like google classroom, but with the ability to meet online within the membership.
At the same time, I learned about design thinking, and I realized that this is a great tool that could be adapted for facilitators to bring their community together and create engagement.
Ideation: I came up with this equation in my mind, and I decided to test it. I ran a series of workshops, with the help of my colleague, where we applied design thinking to personal obstacles and goals in supportive group settings. I then surveyed the particpants to see how they felt about the process.
100% of participants said that the process was valuable to them and they felt closer the the people who participated.
Anonymous respondent said:
“Collaboration is the foundation of humanity, and always deserves special attention.”
Research & UX Design:
I started by researching the industry to see if this concept should be pursued. I prepared a competitive analysis, business strategy, and persona interviews, which led to the following two samples of personas.
User Journey: I worked through user journeys for each of my personas, which led to creating various iterations of sitemaps. I like to work things out on a Miro board. I use Relume to build the official sitemap.
Wireframe to Prototype: I started with good old fashion paper, which I used to test with my peers. Working in Figma, I created a low-fi wireframe mock-up. I created a style sheet and logo for a hypothetical organization, and then moved on to prototype.
TechStack: After much research, I created this tech stack. My choices are based on privacy for users.
Reports and Presentation: During our time working with the client we maintain regular meetings, and provided reports and presentations, so that our client would receive what they most need.
Centennial College Safety Watch is a site and an app designed to provide information and resources for students and staff at Centennial College. The domain and the app were created at different times and contain some cross over information. However the app is meant to be used in real-time. Whereas the domain is focussed on indepth information and instructions.
Problem Definition:
Both the domain and the app are somewhat burdened with too much information, and inconsistent content strategy.
Project:
My colleague and I were tasked with preparing a content strategy report. This report includes personas, content as conversation, current state analysis, user flow, competitive analysis, SWOT, environmental scan as well as recommendations for an ideal state.
My Role (Collaborative):
- Content Strategist
- UX/UI Designer
- Research Analyst
Centennial College
Safety Watch -
Content Strategy Report
Content Audit
Working with my colleague, we reviewed the Safety Watch domain and app, noting inconsistencies, and issues and generally auditing the content of the sites.
Comparative Analysis
My colleague and I prepared an extensive comparative analysis. We looked at the safety apps of several colleges and universities.
Persona and User Journey
We were provided with a scenario, and created a persona and user journey. From there we created recommendations for an ideal state.
During the process of designing DYL Communities, I ran workshops to beta test the core concept, bringing design thinking as a support group methodology. I designed the workshop, wrote a manual, and set up a Miro board for participants to use. Before the workshop I sent out an onboarding survey. I also surveyed participants at the end of the workshop.
Problem Definition:
Engaging online communities can be difficult, as it can be hard to get people to share. By using a Miro board, and design thinking strategies I was able to keep users engaged, while provided them with a high quality experience.
Project:
My colleague assisted me in the facilitation of the process.
My Role (Collaborative):
- Strategist
- Social Innovator
- Instructional Designer
- Main Facilitator
Beta Workshop -
Content Strategy Report
Workshop Design: I started with the workshop design. I like to keep things very clean and organized, and always start with a responsive table of contents, and use tables to capture information. This keeps things very clear. This workshop was very small, however workshops may have hundreds of pages and sections, with extensive resource lists.
Miro: Working with Miro, I started with instructions and a demonstration board. My co-facilitator provided the instruction, and I led the users through the process.
Facilitation: I love facilitating groups! It was a joy to work with the group of users.
User Feedback: The goal of the beta workshop was to find out if design thinking could work as an engagement tool. The survey results indicated that 100% of participants felt that it was worthy and fun. We also recieved some great feedback for our user journey.
When asked what they enjoyed most, one participant said: “The group ideas part! it gathers all the juice from different brains :D”