Voluntii / Case study | audreyferier

Client

WeWork, a coworking/office space

Sector

real estate

Challenge

Create an online platform to connect WeWork members with NGO's and each other.

My role

Research, wireframing interface design micro-interactions, presentation

"A place where we’re redefining success measured by personal fulfillment, not just the bottom line. Community is our catalyst.”

THE CLIENT

Background

WeWork designs and builds physical and virtual shared spaces and office services for entrepreneurs and companies. The company has grown exponentially in the past eight years, now encompassing 24 countries and hundreds of locations, with currently nine locations in Chicago.

During this project, Designation was located in the State street location. Currently Desigation has merged with the New York coding school Flatiron and WeWork.

THE CHALLENGE

A community

platform

WeWork is developing a time saving mobile platform to help their (new) members find interesting volunteer events and foster community by connecting them with non-profits and other WeWork members.

This project was necessary because WeWork Chicago managers believed it was time to broaden the idea of community within WeWork and connect members with local non-profit organizations.

Your challenge is the evaluation of the UX research; all assets and artifacts, including the annotated wireframes that represent the MVP solution for the goals of WeWork tenant businesses, individuals, and social cause-related organizations, specific to how they choose to give their time and funds. You will also do your own research into the competitors and associated businesses that may be in the same space as WeWork’s product. From this research you’ll form your creative explorations from moodboards to style tiles to high fidelity wireframes to working prototype. You’ll perform usability testing and iterate through this user feedback to arrive at the most compelling execution that will motivate users to engage with the platform.

My role

I was part of a UI team of three at Designation, responsible to evaluate the inherited info and design the user interface for the new volunteering platform. Every designer in our team had their own visual exploration– and direction and final prototype design for this project.

The duration of the project was four weeks and we worked together as a team in person. We conducted four user tests, synthesized research results and presented the results as a team. Our final presentation was in front of about 35 people.

Teamwork

Sprint presentations

research synthesis

competitive analysis

Individual work

wireframes

moodboards

style tiles

final prototype

logo design

micro-interactions

RESEARCH

Approach

Understanding brand vision and goals

Logo design

User testing

Understanding the brand vision

Understanding the market

Understanding the user part 1

Understanding the user

Evaluate and change existing prototype

Mid fidelity wireframes

design exploration and High fidelity prototype

Iterating

We did not have the communications with the Chicago State street team about this project to talk about a desired visual direction for this project. with After analyzing the existing WeWork style guide I gained insights about the:

Visual direction for platform: We can help making the plaform on brand by using the same kind of photography WeWork uses: photography is a big component of their branding; of their members in WeWork spaces.

To understand the visual direction of competitors and how our platform can differentiate, we performed a visual competitive analysis.

We looked at the following non-profits: Donate a photo, Neigborly, Volunteermatch and Kiva. We analyzed photography, typography, IA patterns, IXD patterns, colors and look and feel with the different competitors.

Our takeaways were the use of vibrant colors especially bright blue and bright green, a friendly rounded font is used, and a good visual hierarchy promotes glance-ability and

The previous UX team made 2 personas, Courtney our main persona and Dan our secundairy persona. The scope and audience of the WeWork members was so broad that the UX team had to divide the user needs into two personas, where the main needs were represented by Courtney and the additional needs that needed to be considered were represented by Dan.

We Went through the user interviews conducted by the previous UX team and started mapping out user needs and frustrations expressed in those interviews. This is our affinity map part 1.

The main takeaways here is that the WeWork internal platform is not sufficient to help WeWork members connect. Especially the ones working by themselves feel a great need to connect with fellow WeWork members. Volunteering can add an extra dimension to a feeling of community in the form of fulfillment. Members don't want to spend a lot of time finding events with people they are interested in.

Design principles

With our research, competitive analysis, and with the help of affinity mapping we were able to distill the following final design principles for our visual design, which changed throughout our process and functioned as the guide in our design process.