FWD.us

FWD.us, a political advocacy nonprofit, had an advocacy tool called Built By Immigrants, which allowed immigrants to submit stories about their experience and for users to share these stories online and with their legislator via writing a letter or calling.

A couple years after launching the product, a few things were clear:

  • low rate of story submission

  • low rate of readers taking political action

  • low reach to broader audience

And thus a redesign was needed – here’s Immigrants Write.

Team: Design Team of 3
Client: FWD.us
Duration: 6+ months, 2015-2016
Platform: Web application
Role: Lead designer – ideation to prototyping

 

Discover

Human-centered research brought the biggest realizations to our redesign – security and privacy fears for writers and apathy of political advocacy for readers were major insights that would never have been discovered without person-to-person conversation.

Methods: competitive analysis, comparative analysis, heuristic evaluation, usability testing, surveys, empathy map

IMG_2009.jpeg

Insights:

  • Story Readers

    • log in requirement to share stories on social media was a huge barrier

    • calls to action were difficult to locate

    • users were overwhelmed by the amount of text on the page

    • apathy for political advocacy was paramount

    • more likely to share inspirational, relatable content and content about people they know in their networks

  • Story Writers

    • security and safety was a large concern as many potential writers are undocumented

    • lack of interaction with their stories after submitting

  • Field Organizers

    • overwhelming amount of hand holding and time spent on recruiting story writers


Define

Our research was incredibly insightful after we mapped connections.

Methods: affinity mapping, user personas, user journeys

Insights:

  • Four main areas for improvement

    • user interface design

    • content format

    • content quality

    • changing user apathy to empathy

 
 

Develop

We worked with FWD.us staff and organizers to develop different solutions to fixing the problem of apathy.

Methods: design studio, rapid prototyping, sketching, user testing, user flows

Insights:

  • Collaborating with FWD.us staff and field organizers was key as it revealed internal organizational processes and tactics that were previously unknown

  • Creating user personas helped us convey our design decisions to stakeholders

  • Paper and lo-fidelity user testing revealed highest priority areas to improve

 
 

Deliver

Weekly check-ins with a few stakeholders created more buy-in from non-technical staff members about the design process.

Methods: wireframing, prototyping, visual design, weekly check-ins

The final product capitalizes on the incredible technology behind the product while making a few key adjustments:

  • for the writer, a completely new story submission process provides security context, tips, and story prompts to help decrease the amount of time spent between organizers and writers, and provides opportunities to stay engaged after submitting through story update entries

  • for the reader, more accessible filter/search options, the ability to call and write their representative without leaving the story page, and the feature to search stories of Facebook friends combats apathy

  • in general, a cleaner and more actionable user interface helps with engagement, learnability, and efficiency