A B2C community app for non-profit organization as a SaaS that helps community members get in small groups, search for information, see where things are happening, take notes, and view videos.
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Highlands Church, located in the South, serves a thriving community of over 100,000 members across more than 20 campuses. Their mission is to empower and support thousands through significant community investments, a diverse range of weekly services, and a variety of ministries. They actively engage their congregation through small group initiatives and statewide outreach programs. As part of their commitment to enhancing ministry efforts, they aimed to develop an innovative app designed to fulfill a wide array of ministry-related goals, streamlining engagement and fostering deeper connections within their community.
Despite Highlands Church's strong community presence and commitment to service, there is a need for a centralized digital solution that streamlines communication, enhances member engagement, and simplifies access to resources and opportunities for participation. Developing an innovative app will address these challenges by facilitating seamless connections within the community, empowering members to actively participate in both ministry-related activities and local outreach initiatives.
We wanted to cultivate a process from beginning to end. Based on our collective experience in all our roles, we came up with a process that would suit our goals and give us time to refine. We focused on doing few things really well. See below.
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We decided to take the approach of having staff, people involved in the church, and people who have no connection to the church all do a card sorting exercise. They took these cards and put them all in groups that made sense to them. These cards were all pages or features we knew we wanted to have within the app. Card sorting gave us the ability to know how to create user flows and groups features together that made the most sense to the user.
We followed scrum planning with some alterations. We used two-week sprints. The creative director at Highlands became the Product Owner, The project manager took on the role as Scrum Leader. The developers and I became the Scrum Development Team. We broke this project into six sprints. From there we focused. We did daily stand-ups to ensure accountability and follow ups were clear. Below we'll focus on before and afters of three features.
We found upon that while user-testing and reseach that we were being to ambitious with how many things we wanted on the dashboard. Not only were we putting too many things on the screen, but we found once we gave things more room to breathe it helped with clarity and user experience a lot.
We decided to include more descriptive and include more icons within the groups cards. This helped as we reduced the number of cards that appeared on a page. This also meant we didn't need to have additional states for each group. If they clicked the button they are given options to contact leaders right there.
I'm going to be honest here. Some of this was the clients decision in doing this way. I would have actually left this closer to the wireframe than what we ended up with. Why? If someone is already a member and attending, they likely will know where the locations are, how to contact you. I felt like those were unnecessary.
We asked users to perform a number of tasks on each iteration of the app. This helped us identify areas of difficulty and friction. Each time we learned valuable information helping us with the next iteration. We also did a round of first click texting in specific features; specifically with user profiles, notes, and group directories. This gave us direction in understanding where we should be putting links for where we wanted users to go.
1) Advocating for Data-Driven Design Decisions.
In hindsight, I recognize the importance of taking a data-driven approach to design decisions. Although we completed numerous user flows in a compressed timeframe and delivered satisfactory results, I wish I had championed the integration of more UX research from the outset. A more data-informed process would have allowed us to delve deeper into user needs and behaviors, transforming our work into a comprehensive case study that explains our design choices more thoroughly. Many of the decisions made were influenced by intuition and personal ideas rather than solid data, and I believe a stronger emphasis on research could have yielded even better outcomes.
2) Designing with Client Needs in Mind.
Throughout this project, I grappled with various personal design preferences. However, my primary focus remained on meeting the client's desires. Despite some disagreements on specific requests, I ensured that the final design aligned with their vision and objectives. Ultimately, the client was satisfied with the outcomes, which reinforces the principle that successful design should prioritize client happiness and utility above personal preferences. This experience highlighted the importance of balancing personal design ideals with the practical needs of the client.
This project offered valuable lessons on the necessity of data-driven design and the importance of aligning design work with client expectations. Moving forward, I aim to advocate for more robust research methodologies while maintaining a client-centric approach to ensure that the final products not only meet but exceed expectations.
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