The Challenge

“In the 30 years since NWFruit was established, much has changed. Our organization recognizes that the tools we use to connect with the public and our members need to evolve in order to be socially impactful going forward.

We’ve realized that we need help modernizing our website to improve access and engagement with our members and the public."

Celeste Frisbee, NWFruit Secretary & Project Manager

The Brief

NWFruit took part in Democracy Lab’s 48-hour Earth Day hackathon event, to partner up with skilled volunteers to help reimagine their website and user experience in the following ways...

• Improve internal communication and organisation.
  
• Design a user experience to improve public outreach and awareness
  
• Understanding typical habits of users and what new users would want to do when they land on their page.
  
• Design a user experience to improve access to the fruit garden and educational programming.
  
• Create a strategy for recruiting new volunteers, publicising opportunities, and onboarding volunteers.
  
• Create content to support the volunteer recruitment strategy to build awareness and buzz.
  

48 Hours

Isn’t Long

With a huge brief and a small amount of time we needed a strategy. We needed to focus on one main deliverable for the hackathon and decide what research we could conduct in 48 hours that would be beneficial to this particular project?

What Research

Already Existed?

Prior to the start of the project, NWFruit carried out a survey amongst it's members with the following goals:

• Which existing and potential website features are of a high priority to it's members?
  

• How accessible are tools and how functional is the existing website?
  

• What website content or features would be valuable to the general public or potential volunteers?
  

The survey was yet to be analysed so that was my starting point...

Survey

Insights

Website features identified as as a high priority need were:

The following tools were the hardest to locate/didn't exist

Affinity Mapping (already?)

It's not standard practice to affinity map survey results, however, NWFruit had conducted the survey prior to the Hackathon and had included an open-ended question that received 24 in-depth written responses. Out came Miro!

Site Map

A common issue uncovered from the affinity mapping was that the existing website was difficult to navigate. Our hackathon goal was to improve organisation as well as communication, so I skipped a few steps ahead in the design process to focus on IA (Information Architecture) and created a site map to better understand the existing layout.

Card Sorting

I devised a hypothetical, more simplified site map and conducted a closed card sort to validate the new website categories.

I planned to conduct two card sorts, one with the general public and one with NWFruit members, to observe potential differences in their thought processes. The results of the general public card sort are displayed on the right. Unfortunately, the exercise posed a challenge for many charity members, whose average age was 71, and tech proficiency low, preventing me from testing this hypothesis.

Competitor Analysis

I also conducted four SWOT analyses of competitor websites for two reasons:

1) To help the research and design team understand the industry more, having no prior orchard experience we needed to understand the "lay of the land" better.

2) To uncover competitive advantages and generate ideas for how we can improve communication and organisation through NWFruit's website.

The full analysis can be viewed here

SWOT

Analysis

Functionality Research

I gathered inspiration from other non-profits to see how they'd incorporated communication features such as calendars and member portals into their websites. Great examples included:

Aspen Institute has a great public events feature

Good Gym has it all! A public-facing website, members portal and members calendar

Key Quantitative

Research Insights

Wrapping Up

The Hackathon

After a crazy 48hrs the hackathon drew to a close and I presented our findings to the democracy lab team.

• The website needed a full redesign, rather than just building in extra functionality, or redesigning certain pages.

• We needed to conduct further qualitative research before any design work could commence.

• We'd established a fantastic team and were committed to working as volunteers on the project until we had a prototype to hand over to the developers.
  

What Happened Next...?

Having a team dotted around the globe and a project of this scale we decided to implement the agile methodology of working, with Ira taking on the role of Scrum Master, a job he knew well from his professional career. Below is a screenshot from one of our weekly scrum meetings.

Measuring Success

1) Increase the number of website visitors

2) Increase the number of people attending events, having found out about the event through the website.

3) Increase the number of volunteer and member sign ups under 55 years old.

4) Higher satisfaction amongst members surrounding communication within the organisation - measured through an annual survey.

The New Research Plan...

Consisted of collecting as much qualitative data as possible through user interviews!

We had two target audiences so I decided to conduct two rounds of interviews each with different research goals.

The public was our primary target audience, but I started by interviewing NWFruit members and volunteers, as I could recruit interviewees easily and they would provide insights into problems they and NWFruit faced.

Member

Interviews

The full interview script can be viewed here

Affinity Mapping

(round 2)

To conduct more effective user interviews, I always record sessions to stay focused on meaningful dialogue. After each interview, I review the recording and document key comments and observations.

Slight Problem...

Change of

Approach

I had more success spotting trends and patterns when organising the data into categories based on features, functions and the interview goals. This round of mapping generated 20 different categories, 3 of which are displayed below and the full affinity map can be viewed here

Events

Education

Website needs

Organising Insights

Key insights were split into the following 3 groups as this seemed like a logical approach to addressing them. The full list can be viewed here

What We Can’t Fix

One of the interview goals was to understand what problems the members faced on a day to day basis to see if we could solve those problems through features and functions of the new website.

Whilst many of the issues uncovered could be solved by the website redesign team, there were a number of problems that came to light that needed solutions determined by the NWFruit Board of Directors. These included:

• What benefits does a paid member get over a volunteer?
  

• The orchard is a demonstration place. Educating the younger generation and passing on skills by “doing” should be the main education focus.
  

• What the onboarding process will be for new volunteers?
  

• Organisation needs to revisit and review the vision and mission statement
  

What We Can Fix

• Major concern as to how difficult maintenance of the new website will be
• A real need for younger volunteers to get involved
  
• The community aspect of the organisation is really important and needs shouting about
  
• Members' main motivation to join the organisation was education - to learn how to care for fruit trees at home or to utilise or develop their special horticultural skill set
• A lot of members and volunteers don't want to get involved with the back-of-house jobs
• Tabs on the website aren’t helpful and it’s difficult to find information
  
• “Help” is the motivation to donate, however, people are much more likely to donate, if they have a personal connection to the organisation
  
• Add more context to the donation page to increase donations
  
• Volunteer and membership benefits need to be more clearly defined
  

Organisations Strengths

In UX, we tend to focus on problem-solving, but it's essential not to overlook the strengths. Identifying NWFruit's strengths was crucial, as we wanted to integrate them into the website redesign.

• Community and camaraderie “When people move to a new town they look for the kind of congregation NW Fruit offers”
  

• The physical orchard
  

• The testing of varieties and techniques - not being done anywhere else in USA
  

• Body of region specific knowledge is vast amongst the members
  

• Virtual tour
  

General Public Interviews

The full interview script can be viewed here

Affinity Mapping

(round 3)

This time round I interviewed 2 fewer people and kept the interviews shorter to make the analysis more manageable, so grouping feedback by behaviours and attitudes was possible.

I also grouped by features and functions as this proved effective with the previous affinity mapping exercise and was again useful this round. The full affinity map can be viewed here

Social media

Donations

Climate change

Apps/podcasts

Events

General Public

Insights

• Volunteering faces a time commitment barrier

• Volunteering challenges include lack of training, onboarding, and organisational issues

• Personal connections drive donations

• Young people donate time, not money

• Credit cards are preferred for donations; diverse payment options are necessary

• Charity status and financial transparency are crucial for trust

• Trust in NWFruit is linked to Washington State University's reputation

• In-person gardening advice is trusted, but most turn to Google

• Reputable sources are preferred over the top Google listings for online research

• Casual research occurs on phones; extensive projects are on desktops

• Facebook is how people hear about events and keep track of what they’re attending

• Only interest in newsletters would be if they were a member. Insta accounts and podcasts favoured over blogs
  

User Personas

opted for personas instead of archetypes for this novel product and unexplored problem space. This approach allows the design team to empathise with users and base decisions on their needs. Sabena, our main persona, emerged from non-member interviews and will guide the design as the primary user. Carl, derived from member interviews, serves as a secondary user.

My Work

Let’s Chat!

Sarah.lindleyuk@gmail.com

+447404588302

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