South Side Weekly Dashboard

The opportunity

South Side Weekly (SSW), a nonprofit newspaper dedicated to supporting cultural and civic engagement on the South Side of Chicago is produced by a mostly volunteer editorial staff from across the city.

Currently, much of the information about what volunteers do is tracked informally or not at all, making it hard for volunteers and staff to see, at a glance, what volunteers are doing and to give some definition to their work.

Research

Information gathering

• Artifact analysis on SSW’s writer’s guide and Airtable account

• Competitor analysis on 2 other volunteer-based organizations

• 8 Interviews to understand volunteer’s background, involvement with SSW, current practices and pain points

• Assumption list based on personal experience and previous interviews

• Survey created to verify assumption list (postponed due to COVID-19)

• Participatory design to understand volunteer's workflow

Findings

1. The process of claiming pitches have not been standardized

2. Multiple communication methods make communication and progress tracking hard

3. The reporting process is unclear due to the organization’s lack of hierarchy

4. File sharing between volunteers of different roles is inefficient (writers, illustrators, photographers, fact-checkers, etc.)

5. People want to join SSW to learn, grow and meet people

6. Not everyone shares the same onboarding experience which makes the process informal

7. Volunteers find it hard to connect with people due to a lack of face to face interaction

8. Volunteers learn as they go and have to put in lots of effort to feel engaged

Design process

Priority listing

To figure out which findings to focus on (bolded in findings), we drew an impact effort matrix (image on right). Afterward, we came up with a list of solutions, categorized and prioritized them into the list seen below.

Brainstorm sketches

Wireframes

Prototype

Style inspired by SSW’s website

User testing

We asked 5 testers with volunteering experience to test out our prototype through Zoom screen sharing. They were tasked with 4 main tasks including describing what they see and feel about the landing page (“projects”), where they’d find a pitch to write for and how they interpret the word “pitches”, how they’d edit their communication preference and where they’d find a contact’s email. Some feedback is listed below:

• Want to see summaries such as "number of likes, shares, reposts"

• Not intuitive for current projects and past projects to be on different projects

• “Browse pitches” and the + sign doesn’t match up cognitively

Final product

Suggestions

for findings that were out of scope

1. Create a more welcoming atmosphere in the office where onboarding happens

2. Refine information provided during onboarding to help newcomers understand first steps, workflow and expectations

3. Host office hours more frequently to help increase face to face interaction and answer questions

4. Rename “office hours” to a more friendly and inviting name

5. Host events to encourage interaction and bond between volunteers

6. Introduce a mentor/mentee program for more experienced volunteers to guide newcomers