Hawai'i Economic Recovery and Resilience Project

Hawai'i Economic Recovery and Resilience Project

Hawai'i Economic Recovery and Resilience Project

Overview

Overview

Overview

The COVID-19 pandemic devastated our planet in countless ways. The state of Hawai'i, in particular, was severely affected. As a result of the mass lockdowns and travel restrictions beginning in Spring 2020, revenues from the travel and tourism industry in Hawai'i were crippled. Hawai'i, a state whose citizens' incomes are largely earned through tourism, saw unemployment rates breach 22%. Over 140,000 citizens were unemployed, and approximately half of all workers in hospitality were left without work.


The Hawai'i Economic Recovery and Resilience (HIERR) Project is an undertaking led by the Office of Planning and Sustainable Development with the goal of sourcing invaluable qualitative data from Hawai'i's citizens. However, this isn't as simple as sending out surveys and waiting for responses. With a demographic as richly diverse as the population of Hawai'i, the HIERR team is particularly interested in reaching some of Hawai'i's smaller communities. The voices of these communities are often undermined by technological, geographical, and cultural barrier, and thus our team was tasked to aid HIERR in surmounting these hurdles.

My Role

My Role

My Role

As a UX Researcher & Designer, I tackled this problem alongside three fellow UX professionals: Mounika Sammiti, Christopher Rini, and Joseph Caouette.



Methods & Approach

Methods & Approach

Methods & Approach

While throughout the project we emphasized our team's joint contribution and collaboration, my primary responsibilities included User Research, Research Synthesis, Competitive & Comparative Analysis, Prototyping, Usability Testing, and Project Presentation.

Tools

Tools

Tools

Figma

Peerboard

Google Docs

Slack

Whimsical

Timeline

Timeline

Timeline

March 2023

3-Week Design Sprint

What's going on?

Through the first week of this project, my team and I dove into the depths of discovery - and boy was there a lot to discover. Right off the bat with HIERR's project brief, the more we read the more questions we had.


What did our client want?

  1. A moderation guide for an in-person workshop to teach Hawaiians how to use HIERR's polling system.

  2. A discussion board to extend the conversation post-poll


Prior to this, my design experience revolved around designing commercial websites and apps, something so far removed from designing tools to assist a government entity to gather post-pandemic data from civilians. And further so, with past projects such as Lulu's Kitchen and Bay Alarm Medical, I designed for narrow, niche audiences that I either understood already, or could easily access information on. What was I supposed to do when the proposed users of a product I needed to design was all "Residents of Hawaii"?



Let's find out.

Along with the project brief, HIERR provided additional research materials for my team and I to go through. We soon discovered that we are one of many teams, both past and present.


Code for Hawaii, a volunteer organization that offers their programming services to bring positive ideas into reality, created HIERR's website and integrated the polling system.


Student Volunteers, two unique groups of design and research students, conducted several studies to identify the optimal guidelines for workshop moderation and evaluated several different options for template-based discussion board building websites.


Anthology Marketing Group, a hired marketing firm that conducted a pre-study to identify important community leaders, common issues to further investigate, and particular communities and groups to target. Additionally, they will soon be conducting a focus group to explore these topics.

From there, I dove deeper into the contributions of the student volunteer groups that came before. To my surprise, a great deal of high quality work was already completed. They tested several different template-based websites such as Wix, and found that one small, relatively new one, fit very well. Peerboard is website designed for creating simple and streamlined discussion boards. Typically used privately within the confines of a particular group or company, Peerboard seemed like a great option that was devoid of any unnecessary frills that might dissuade the less technologically-inclined.


As the third leg of a four-part relay, my team and I realized just how much catching up needed to be done. With our first meeting with the clients coming up, I took to the drawing board to draft as many useful questions as possible.

The first meeting.

With a hefty list of questions to ask, I entered the first client meeting ready for this great cloud of mystery to dissipate. I needed clarity. I needed to narrow down as much of the mystery as possible so I could dive into working on deliverables. So, my team and I asked away.


  1. What deliverables do you want in hand by March 17?

  2. Do you have examples from other government institutions that you're trying to imitate?

  3. With Code for Hawai'i actively assisting, why aren't you building a discussion board from scratch?

  4. What is your expected impact from this project? What do you hope to gain?

  5. What particular groups of marginalized people are you hoping to access?


I could go on and on.


It didn't take long to figure out that, despite the past research efforts that had been made, the HIERR group itself still wasn't married to many decisions. They weren't sure how they wanted their in-person sessions to look. They weren't sure exactly what part the discussion board would play in the whole process. They weren't sure what their polling system would look like as Code for Hawai'i was still creating it, despite us being expected to create documentation on it.


Despite our efforts to dissect this project, we were left with more questions than we had to begin with. But, at least we had a couple of leads. The HIERR team provided several additional detailed documents that illustrated a great deal of the work that came before.


While these past studies that were conducted were quite sound, there was one glaring issue. All the data presented to us was secondary. Each study analyzed information from past, outside studies in order to create a new coherent conclusion, but at no point was a member of the targeted user audience asked a single question. Sure, their studies were correct in a scientific research context, but as a UX designer, what am I supposed to do when not a single piece of evidence came from the mouth of a Hawaiian resident?

The second meeting.

And so I entered the second meeting with caution. The HIERR project existed many months before my involvement in it began. How could I possibly explain to them that some of the major decisions they have made up to this point aren't founded in primary user research?


I didn't want to demoralize or downplay any of the past HIERR efforts. While little user research was presented to us, it doesn't take away from the fact that their past research did help set up some much needed context to the project. So while I treaded lightly, it had come to the fourth day of the project and my team and myself still did not have the direction we wanted. And so I sought out that direction.


  1. What kind of user research has been conducted by the other research groups?

  2. What research led to the conclusion that in-person workshops would be the best option for community engagement at scale?

  3. Based on the case studies provided, it seems that sample discussion boards were created on Wix and Peerboard already. For what reason were those not used? Can we see them?


And then there was light.


No, there had not been any user research conducted. The audience was considered throughout the process, but decisions were reasoned through based on assumptions from secondary research. While the Anthology Marketing Group did meet with several community leaders, this was to identify broader themes of experienced hardships; they are not representative of our users.


Then why does HIERR believe so deeply in the in-person workshops? If users are meeting in person to learn how to use online tools, why not cut out the middleman and just have users describe their experiences and opinions in these meetings?


The HIERR team explained: with the sub-communities of Hawai'i being so diverse, they simply do not know how they could access them through a strictly online medium. HIERR would approach key community leaders to provide the materials for setting up these meetings, but the hope is that the representatives from each community can tailor the experience in a way that makes the most sense in the context of their lives. From there, information can be spread by word of mouth, and with the learning materials being available in both an online and in-person setting, anyone who is interested in contributing to the HIERR project has the means to learn how.

User Research.

While the ethos of HIERR was becoming more and more clear, it didn't discount that fact that they lacked substantial user research. Yes, their ideas follow a logical flow. Yes, their ideas are support by some secondary evidence. But, we need to hear it from the horse's mouth.

We interviewed 8 users.

We asked the users questions about their past experiences with online discussion board, their general level of comfort with technology, their preferences for learning how to use new software, features that led to engagement, and examples of instructions that they found easy to use.


In all honesty, I was surprised by how positive the user research results were.


In general, users will utilize multiple different platforms to learn more, even if they have a particular preference of one or two. This trend seemed to be completely independent to the level of technological proficiency of each user. Most notably, almost every user indicated a strong preference for in-person, personalized learning. This held true even for those who identified as highly technologically proficient.


Users noted how important personalized notifications, forum moderation, post sorting, and comment threads are to maintaining high engagement, as well as keeping engagement generally positive.


Additionally, they offered up examples of platforms they used in the past that were likeable: Twitter, Reddit, Discord, NextDoor, LinkedIn, Facebook

Now, with primary user research data in hand, I felt much more comfortable beginning the process of creating HIERR's deliverables.

Personas.

In order to visualize what kind of product we needed to make, we had to understand the users that it would be designed for. Utilizing the data acquired through our primary user research, we developed two personas that capture the preferences of different user types, and the journey that they take to reach their desired outcomes.

Persona 1 - Jason

Persona 2 - Katie

The discussion board.

With Code for Hawai'i primarily focusing on integrating the Pol.is polling system, we figured that the next product that needs to be worked on is the discussion board. After all, the moderation guide cannot be created without the subject of the workshop.


We explored Peerboard, HIERR's current preference, and found that it worked fine. It did exactly what was asked of it: host a place for discussion.

Comparative Analysis

However, with the many suggestions that arose in the user interviews we conducted, we wanted to cover all bases and explore other options. One common issue that kept popping up is that all the above places of discussion are not just discussion boards, but more so social media at the core. Immediately, this creates a barrier to new users. If someone has never used Reddit in their entire life, why should I believe that they would create a Reddit account and learn the intricacies of the platform just to discuss about the single topic of the pandemic in Hawai'i?


Furthermore, all of the above websites host much more than a single community. While yes, pages do exist within the website for specific communities, the user is constantly being bombarded with suggested posts from adjacent communities.


While Peerboard certainly hosts a wide array of discussion boards, the beauty of it is that each board is a discrete entity, requiring unique login/account information to participate. You won't stumble upon some college class' lab discussion while exploring the HIERR discussion board. Each Peerboard page is a standalone unit that can be customized to the preferences of the community.


On top of that, in comparison to other similar services, Peerboard offers a completely free version that fits the needs of the HIERR team. If they decided they wanted to access one of Peerboard's paid premium tiers, the base level paid tier is still well within the rather constrained government budget that HIERR has access to.


It felt as though Peerboard's main downside - simplicity - presents as a strength with the target audience at hand.

Creating the discussion board

And thus, the discussion board was born. Peerboard is highly templated and offers only the essential customizing, making this portion of the project primarily plug and play.

Usability Testing.

We conducted usability testing of the Peerboard discussion board in order to better understand our design choices and how users interacted with them.


In the first round of testing we asked participants to complete three tasks:


  1. Create a new post

  2. Like a post

  3. Comment on a post


The majority of our participants found that the Peerboard site was simple to understand and to use. Our participants had a success rate of 83%. We found that the participants were able to easily navigate the website without the presence of a moderator and without referencing the user guide.


Initially, we had stylized the button to create a post by labelling it "Share My Story". One participant found this confusing citing how they "scanned the page for a button that said something like 'post or create post'". We opted to follow their suggestion and change the label as the stylization offered little value, and we wanted to ensure that this discussion board was maximally accessible.


However, 80% of testers did reveal that they were confused by the term “Spaces” which is a label Peerboard uses to describe different topics on a discussion board. One of the drawbacks of the simplicity of Peerboard was our inability to edit this label. We amended this by adding a little note in our user and moderator guides that explained this language.

Creating a Moderation Guide.

Our clients at HIERR were adamant about hosting in-person seminars to advertise to, introduce to, and teach Hawai'ian citizens how they can use the discussion board and Pol.is polling system. This tactic was effective in multiple ways, it brought citizens together, offered basic technology literacy lessons, and encouraged citizens to offer feedback. Thus, they requested a moderation guide that volunteers from different communities could easily access and teach attendees with.


The HIERR team initially requested the moderation guide be submitted in a PDF format, and while it would be simpler to do so, we opted to create the guide in a Google Doc. This posed challenges with formatting, but ensured that it was hosted on a platform that the HIERR team was familiar with and could easily edit for future use - a fantastic tradeoff.


Furthermore, we opted to create a user guide accessible directly from the Peerboard website for users who were a little more tech savvy and wanted to explore on their own.

The guides in question

Our intent is for this copy to be given to the workshop hosts to study and teach from, and so it’s very detailed and written almost conversationally.


We took inspiration from our comparative analyses and designed our images to reflect some of the features you’d typically see in something like an IKEA manual, where each step can be completed without reading a big wall of text, although we do have the text accompanying it.

Our intent is for this copy to be given to the workshop attendees to follow along with. As they have the moderator explaining each step in detail, we opted to keep things as simple as possible, and to only have this guide used as reference. But, this will also be available online for Hawai’ians who want to contribute to Pol.is and Peerboard without attending a workshop.


You can see the same style instructional image used in the moderator’s guide, with an example of our very limited and direct accompanied text. This is also where we left our little note describing what Peerboard’s “Spaces” are, based on feedback from our usability tests.

Conclusion

Our clients at the State of Hawai'i Office of Planning & Sustainable Development were very satisfied with the deliverables we handed them. They plan to incorporate all of the materials in their project.


This project was not like any other I had been a part of before. I'm a designer that loves to get into the nitty gritty with wireframing and prototyping. However, due to the nature of the project, the graphical aspect of this design project was really quite limited in scope. This project presented me with the opportunity to delve much more deeply into the research and discovery phase than I ever had before. A significant portion of the 2-month contract was spent simply understanding what it is that the HIERR team needed from us. In truth, they didn't quite have the answer to that themselves. However, I relished this opportunity for the intense training it offered me in research and client management. After all, for the design to exist, we must first uncover the purpose of the design.


My deepest thanks to the HIERR team and my companions: Mounika Sammiti, Joseph Caouette, and Christopher Rini. This was far from a one man show, and the contributions of my partners were incredible.

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