Inclusive project

Helping users discover resources and encouraging sign-up

UX writing | Interactions | Testing 

Overview

The Inclusive Group |IDD Resources is an NYS-based social enterprise that connects parents of children with developmental disabilities and services providers. Its organizers seek to transform this experience into a SaaS product and a website.

This case study highlights my experience at one of the sprints, but the project is ongoing.

High-level goal

 

Help parents of kids with ASD find information about providers and create a community that would use Inclusive product

Sprint’s goal

 

Create and test the prototype to validate the idea and collect actionable insights for future product development

My role

 

Shaping content strategy, product design, testing

Scope

 

Team of 4 designers led by Inclusive’s founder

The challenges

Providing users with relevant search results in a few clicks

Encouraging parents to sign up without being pushy

 

My team started by studying the insights and transcripts of user interviews conducted before us.

Stock photo from Unsplash.com

The project’s persona is a mother of a 12-year-old autistic kid living in the Bronx. She is looking for new providers for her child. 

She grows frustrated every time she has to call multiple providers trying to find the one who would meet her needs and requirements.

She wants to spend more time with her child, rather than on the phone talking to providers

The competitive research helped us discover an opportunity for Inclusive:

Although there was a lot of information on the diagnosis and treatment of autism, New York parents didn’t have a comprehensive guide on how to find suitable providers and navigate around various obstacles.

Two problems to solve

  • User perspective

    How might we help parents find resources fast?

  • Business perspective

    Why would parents sign up?

Our brainstorming sessions resulted in an idea of a search function that would lead parents to the list of local providers and information relevant to their kid's age.

But how would parents find the list of providers?

Parents discover resources via Google and Facebook groups. Since Inclusive's website will have many informative articles about IDD, we assumed that users would land on a relevant blog page. The page will contain several points that can lead users to discover Inclusive's SaaS products. In this case, the online resources guide.

 We were working on sketches and low-fidelity wireframes as a team. But I was writing the final copy for mid-fidelity wireframes.

As I was writing, I had to consider several nuances.

  •  Parents may be overwhelmed. 

  • They may not speak English at a native level 

  • The tone should be supportive and encouraging.

Pondering PDF dilemma

The initial idea was to present the list of providers or other relevant information in the form of a PDF. Websites dealing with developmental disabilities use this form a lot and parents are familiar with this format. However, it is not mobile-friendly and may take time to download. After I raised this issue, we decided that users should be able to see lists on websites and have an option of a PDF.

Prototype and testing

Scenario: A parent of a 12-year-old child with ASD is looking for a speech therapist in the Bronx.

Step 1: The user stumbles upon a Facebook post leading to an article on Inclusive’s website. 

Step 2: The parent clicks on the banner and lands on page where they can choose the type of services and location.

Step 3: The user gets to the page where they can the list of Speech Therapy providers in the Bronx, Our goal was to test what parents wanted from the list of providers and at what point they might be willing to sign up.

Another designer and I conducted moderated tests of the prototype with four people who match the persona characteristics.

Our goals were:

  • Validate the concept and the execution of the project

  • Find out when users will be willing to sign up

Test results

What was good

  1. Users were very excited about the idea of being able to get a curated list of local providers.

  2. They liked the supportive tone of the home page. (Shown here)

    “It’s very comforting to see that our efforts and struggles are recognized,” one user said.

  3. Users could complete the task without any significant problems.

  4. Users said they would sign up if they like the design and if being a member of the community offers any perks ( i.e. a meetup with other parents and service providers).

 Criticism and iterations

  1. Users could not see the banner leading to the main navigation tool.  The iterated version included shorter text and more visuals

2. Users had trouble noticing the “Sign up” and “Download”  buttons. I moved the “Download” button up on the page, and turned “Sign up” into a banner.

3. Users loved the idea of saving the articles and search results and didn’t mind creating an account for that. They said that they would only use a Google account for signing up because it is fast. They didn’t like the pop-up covering search results. I made signing up with Google the only button,  and left “ Other options” as a link. This version is to be tested during the next round.

4. The “Download” pop-up faced the same criticism as above. So I made it smaller.

What I learned

Even though users are focused on the end goal, they can be distracted easily ( i.e. by a pop-up) and it spoils their perception of the product.

Users preferred to save files as PDFs because they do it often with government websites and have folders for that.