GILDA’S CLUB: A CONTEXTUAL INQUIRY
Intro:
Gilda’s Club has been around since the 1989. It’s a network of more than 54 supportive, free and welcoming clubhouses where everyone living with cancer can come for social, emotional and psychological support. They work extremely hard to make sure that everyone that comes through their bright red doors has a place to Non-Profits throughout the board have a place to be their selfs. It’s no secret that non-profits have an innumerable constraints to overcome, but luckily there are ways to help.
The Users:
Primary users:
Gilda’s Club staff looking to streamline their volunteer operations
“Super” volunteers who wish to assist staff with managing other volunteers Community volunteers hoping to provide their help at Gilda’s Club programming
Business Objectives
Gilda’s Club currently has a Volunteer Portal web application designed to simplify and streamline the process for volunteers to sign up for volunteer opportunities with Gilda’s Club. Staff also envision the custom- built tool as a centralized location to manage volunteers and volunteer opportunities (including the ability to segment volunteers based on skills, assign to specific tasks or do outreach based on specific tasks) while allowing for volunteers to also manage their involvement with the many opportunities at Gilda’s Club. Even though this tool has been developed, they came to us and asked if we could help out with the functionality.
The Process
Our Design team took to action conducting deep dive research into other wellness programs, put out a survey to see what users would be interested in participating with in a wellness platforms as well as conducting interviews with stakeholders from Allina and Healthpartners.
We synthesized notes during this process to see common patterns that started to emerge. After seeing what the user goals were and the business goals, we started to formulate a plan on how to accomplish building out a digital platform.
The Cognitive Walkthrough
The design team concluded we should preform a cognitive walkthrough of Gilda’s Clubs in order to gain better insight on their pain-points. In laymen terms, we laid out tasks for the user to take, and tried to answer four questions.
• Will the user try to achieve the right outcome?- Mental model
• Is the correct action visible?- Visibility/Hierarchy
• Is there a clear connection between the control and the resulting action -Mapping/Consistency
• Is there sufficient and/or appropriate feedback?- Feedback
If the answer was no- I indicated how it could be improved upon, or noted why it’s an issue that we should look into further.
Contextual Inquiry
The most “aha!” Moment, was when our design team conducted a contextual inquiry at the Guilda’s Club offices. We conducted two interviews with the Ryan ( The Development and Stewardship Manager) and Madelyn ( The Volunteer and Program Coordinator). Not only did it confirm some things we noted on the cognitive walkthrough, but gave us new insights into why the program was not functioning when delivered by the developer.
What we found while synthesizing notes:
• Gilda’s club volunteers range in age from 12-94 and income. Because of the age range, some do not have access to the internet or have email accounts in which to sign up with.
• Currently their system is relies on many data entry volunteers. Many of the forms are filled out on paper and pen
• Guilda’s club uses many system databases. This means that if they wish to incorporate this system, it is one more database they would need to add to their workload.
The Prototype
After finding out constraints Gilda’s club has and their pinpoints much better understood, I got to work planning out the prototype. I listed my goals of the application, tasks I could improve upon and tools I could incorporate to make this web application be incorporated into their workflow. Starting out with markers and paper, I sketched out wire-frames and user flows of how this could be accomplished.
Some design changes I made
• Changing email login into username login
• Directing users to fill out profile which in return could be exported into their existing crm database, so it would reduce data entry workload
• Allowing the administrator to “Add Volunteers” accounts, so users without internet/email could still participate by calling in or stop by in person.
Click here to view the annotated interactive prototype
Interactive Tour
Sketching communicated my idea’s to my design team and client, but since they haven’t had the chance to choose a developer for this project, I thought a higher fidelity prototype was in order. That way I am able to clearly convey how the redesign should be implemented.
I utilized Sketch (the application), Photoshop, Illustrator and inVision to create a clickable walkthrough of the sites redesign.
To view go to https://invis.io/XJPF00QGWCP
Gilda’s Club does tremendous work with their community and getting to help make their lives easier with this redesign left me feeling great- Knowing how a few simple tools and changes to their web application could help streamline system, so they continue doing their amazing work on helping the community and those effected by cancer.