client
Methods
- User interviews
- Competitive analysis
- Heuristic analysis
- Moderated usability testing
- UX walkthrough
tools
- Miro
- Figma
- Airtable
- Notion
Year
Mutual Aid NYC
redesign purpose
With the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic subsiding, Mutual Aid NYC (MANYC) was downsizing due to the decrease of need in the city. The core part of the organization's website - its resources - was not updated since the beginning of the pandemic, and the product team was searching for ways to update the site to be applicable to today's needs and flexible for tomorrow's.
redesign goals
- Create an experience that enables New Yorkers to easily access information about resources regardless of device, language, neighborhood, and ability.
- Refresh the MANYC resources to be fit for the needs and pain points of today's New Yorkers.
- Invest in building a site infrastructure that would allow for fast, adaptive changes in the case of future crises.
i. Investigate the current state
Heuristic Analysis
During the ideation phase, I began with user interviews to understand better how people are managing their food inventory and how this is affecting their food waste. I prepared an interview script with 12 open-ended questions, focusing on values, motivations, and routines. In 4 days, I recruited and interviewed 6 users remotely. I conducted the interviews on Notably.ai to more efficiently gather key insights and themes.
To more accurately identify which common theme (i.e., level of organization, visibility of food) affected food waste, I would have operationalized my findings and done a regression analysis, but there was not a large enough sample size.
Competitive Analysis
I then conducted a competitive analysis to observe what other mutual aid organizations and platforms that promote mutual aid resources are doing to make these resources accessible, useful, and navigable. I wanted to pinpoint and replicate what they are doing well as well as identify and avoid their challenges.
ii. Redefine the user base
Interviews
After identifying potential concerns through heuristic and competitive analyses, I conducted user interviews to delve deeper into the specific user behaviors, pain points, and motivations related to those concerns, and to uncover pain points I did not initially identify. My goal was to prioritize the focus of the redesign to ensure my efforts were targeting the concerns most impactful to usability and usefulness of the resources list.
persona
I created a persona based on the needs and pain points gathered from interviews and usability tests. This step was particularly crucial, as I heard in interviews, the post-pandemic world is one where people are trying to be seen, understood, and supported in the midst of numerous burdens and barriers. However, it's particularly hard to advocate for yourself when you're focused on keeping yourself afloat; everyone is battling similar problems but in a very siloed, lonely way. I had to not think of a user as a "user" but my neighbor.
