creating an app to fight modern slavery

Tech Fleet operated with an Agile mindset, specifically following the Google design sprint process, breaking up our work in focused sprints over the course of 8 weeks. The team consisted of a Project Lead / Design Sprint Master, a Product Owner / UX Strategist, Project Coordinator, and UX Design and UX Research leads and apprentices. I was a member of the UX Research team, which was involved in every sprint. Because this was the founding team, we pioneered all research & design efforts together, learning and creating the processes as well as learning to work with one another in a fully remote context. Our client, slavefreetrade, was an essential part of the process as well, as we were in regular communication during our weekly demos as well as through the sprint.

 

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SPRINT ZERO

As a team, we generated questions for the slavefreetrade stakeholders using Jamboard. The Leads consolidated the questions through affinity mapping and we asked them of the slavefreetrade team in two kick-off meetings meant to better understand the context and goals of the organization. In addition to the meeting with the larger slavefreetrade group, we had individual meetings with important stakeholders within their team. All tasks throughout the project were organized through Trello and we maintained regular communication through a dedicated slack channel for Tech Fleet.

 

My Contribution:

• Active participation in the brainstorming meeting, contributing questions and points of clarification, and participating in meetings with stakeholders

• I conducted background research on our client slavefreetrade and its founder in preparation for the kick-off, sharing it with the rest of the team

 

SPRINT ONE

During Sprint One, we continued interviews with slavefreetrade stakeholders, narrowing in on their goals and unanswered questions, discerning context, and establishing relationships. The UX research team began a competitive analysis of other cause-related apps and websites that allowed users to start and join campaigns, as well as raise awareness and promote engagement with a cause. At the end of the week, we took a look at the consolidated insights from the stakeholder meetings, and engaged in a “How Might We” activity using Miro.

 

My Contribution:

• I actively participated in stakeholder meetings and daily sprint meetings, including brainstorming, discovery, and stand-ups as well as the How Might We workshop

• I researched competitors for the competitive analysis doc, including insights on best practices

• I shared academic research related to what makes consumers care about causes

 

SPRINT TWO

At the start of Sprint Two, we voted on which How Might We questions were most applicable for us to research, grouped under the following themes: audiences, communication, engagement, awareness / education, and social. Using a digital “dot” method, we each chose the five most important questions, and the Product Owner (Decider) quantified the results as research goals. Once we had the research goals, as a team we examined each one, outlined our assumptions and the implications if those assumptions were true or false. The research goals focused on understanding the potential audience for the app, what their understanding of modern slavery was, how they go about practicing ethical consumption, how they share their ethical consumption practices with others, and what causes people to care about social causes and ethical consumption. Our audience for interviews were ethical consumers, or those who consciously think about where a product came from before purchasing.

 

With our research goals in mind, we settled on user interviews as the appropriate method to conduct this exploratory research. We also decided to create proto-personas based on our assumptions about the users who would participate in a platform focused on ending modern slavery. During this week, we also had our first, two-part, retro on what we liked, learned, lacked, and longed for. While this sprint was happening, we also continued to update the competitive analysis research and conducted academic research into what motivates people to care about causes and to consume ethically.

 

My Contribution:

• Actively participated in daily meetings, including How Might We, brainstorm, discovery, and stand-up

• Worked with larger team in refining research goals, and specifically with a partner on outlining assumptions regarding user conceptions of modern slavery

• I was the Lead on devising a fully realized recruitment strategy for the user interviews. This included: leading discussions with the team on who our target participants were, coordinating the technology we would use for scheduling and hosting virtual interviews, creating the participant screener and leading the discussion with the group as we built it together, clarifying consent practices, facilitating discussions on the incentive we would offer, coordinating the schedules of Tech Fleet interviewers and note-takers, identifying  where and how we would find participants, and piloting our method of participant scheduling to check for barriers.

• I contributed feedback on the interview questions, including addition of wording for introductions and clarifying behavior-based questions. Also provided input on proto-personas as we began to generate ideas on how to segment users

• I continued to contribute articles and mentorship for the literature review

 

SPRINT THREE

We began Sprint Three looking ahead to the client demo at the end of the week and how we hoped to present the research we’d gleaned so far. This Sprint mostly focused on conducting user interviews with 8 participants via Zoom. Each interview included a facilitator and a note-taker. After each interview, we added results to a chart organized by research hypotheses and whether or not each user confirmed the hypotheses. At the end of the week, we had a demo meeting with the client to share our progress, including research results so far from the competitive analysis, literature review, and initial user interview results and recommendations. 

 

My Contribution:

• Actively participated in daily meetings including brainstorming, discovery, stand-ups, retro, and proto-persona workshop

• Coordinated interview logistics daily to ensure a smooth process for both the user and Tech Fleet team

• Facilitated and took notes on two user interviews, including sharing results with the team and updating hypothesis chart

• I presented section on our interview research goals to the client in our weekly demo

• Continued to assist with the academic research

 

SPRINT FOUR

For Sprint Four, we looked at the results from the interviews and used them to decide on further research goals for the week. Some of the key findings included: 

• Users were interested in combating modern slavery, but lacked information and expressed difficulty in finding trustworthy sources of information

• Ethical consumption is an individual act but fundamentally a social process, practices are shared with close friends and family in person and through social media

• Users are more likely to act on an ethical issue if they have a personal connection to the issue

• Key considerations in ethical consumption include: price, quality, and the company values

After learning more about what ethical consumers consider in purchasing, we wanted to discover how they prioritized these factors. We also decided we wanted to explore the motivations of less overtly ethical consumers and to further contrast with ethical consumers. To explore the question around factors motivating consumption, we decided to use a card sort method where participants could indicate what factors they prioritize. For the second question, we decided to develop a survey, with a number of both quantitative and open-ended questions exploring goals and conceptions of modern slavery left unanswered about consumers. By the end of the sprint, we had the card sort results, which indicated that convenience, price, and quality, in that order, were prioritized before considering whether something was ethically sourced. 

 

The interview research also helped confirm hypotheses about two types of users: Innovators, or those who take a leadership role in ethical consumption and actively share and lead campaigns and efforts, and Ethical Consumers, who are more likely to follow and take a more passive role in ethical consumption. These as well as other research being conducted and the proto-personas formed the basis of Personas we began to work on this sprint. We had a Persona workshop together where we all contributed sketches on what the personas could look like. 

 

My Contribution

• Actively participated in daily meetings including brainstorming, discovery, stand-ups, retro, and persona workshop

• Conducted qualitative analysis on the interview results, using a rainbow chart to identify themes

• Assisted in the development of the survey questions, ensuring questions were clear, contained singular concepts, were simple to understand, and matched research goals

• Worked to recruit participants for the survey, including stressing the need for more non-American respondents

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Qualitative analysis sample

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SPRINT FIVE

As Sprint Five began, we wrapped up the survey responses and began the process of synthesizing research insights from the interviews, survey, card sort, competitive analysis, and literature review. Using Miro on the first night, we first posted research insights, color coded by method, and then began a process of sorting and grouping the insights. These insights were grouped under pre-existing categories of goals, unmet needs, pain points / problems, & behavior, with another unnamed grouping area for those that did not fit anywhere else.  As the faciliator, I led the team through each thematic area, helping the group come to consensus on the composition of each theme grouping and the creation of new thematic areas and sub-themes. 

 

On the second night, I led the team through each thematic and sub-theme area as we created conclusion statements about what each was telling us. We ended up with 17 distinct conclusions, for which we selected representative findings and ideated on potential design implications. This was followed on a third night with an exercise in feature prioritization. Using the MoSCoW method, we determined which conclusions represented features we must, should, could, and won’t prioritize, laid out in a quadrant chart. The “must” conclusions involved creating opportunities for users to start and join campaigns relevant to their interests and making it as simple as possible, showing the impact and progress of their campaigns, allowing for social sharing, and establishing a trustworthy source of information on ethical consumption. This week also saw the creation of final personas and of user journeys based on the assembled information to date. At the end of the week, we presented all information to the client in our weekly demo. 

 

My Contribution

• Actively participated in daily meetings including brainstorming, discovery, stand-ups, retro, and workshops

• I created and facilitated the two-day research synthesis workshop, including giving direction to the entire team on the process, facilitating the discussion around theming and conclusion generation, and resolving disagreements and points of confusion through the process. 

• I assisted with the persona creation 

• I presented the results of our research synthesis workshop to the client in our weekly demo

 

 

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Research synthesis workshop

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

MoSCoW Method feature prioritization

 

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Persona for "Influencer" user

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

User Journey for Influencers

 

SPRINT SIX

During Sprint Six, we began to focus on implementing the research conclusions, personas, and user journeys into prototype design. We first met with the slavefreetrade team to go over our conclusions, decide on MVP and MMP goals, and discuss potential ideas for the product. As a team, we also engaged in a Crazy 8s exercise creating design ideas based around our assigned research conclusion. The questions we designed around were: How can we break the barrier of convenience and make it more seamless for people to start/join campaigns?; How can we make it easy for influencers to persuade others with high and low motivation to join campaigns?; & How can we incentivize and motivate people to engage with the app and change their behavior?

 

We examined each Crazy 8 sketch for each grouping together, agnostic of the creator of the sketch. During this process, we were each given a certain number of red dots to place on areas of interest in each sketch grouping like a heat map. We also were encouraged to present questions about the sketches and to try and understand what each one was telling us before the creator revealed themself to describe the sketch. Finally, we voted on our favorite sketches, with the product owner having “super” votes.  As usual at the end of the week we presented the work of the sprint with the client. 

 

My Contribution:

• Actively participated in daily meetings including brainstorming, discovery, stand-ups, retro, and Crazy 8 workshop

• Some ideas from my Crazy 8 sketch specifically relating to metaphorical ideas were favored and ended up influencing the prototype design

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Crazy 8s exercise

 

SPRINT SEVEN

During Sprint Seven, the design team developed workflows based on the most important actions users would need to take in the app, based on the research and other work done. As a team, we examined them and posted questions or concerns around different aspects of the workflows.The design team also began to develop prototypes using Figma that were shared with the larger group for feedback. At the end of the sprint, we presented to the client in the weekly demo. 

 

My Contribution

• Actively participated in daily meetings including brainstorming, discovery, stand-ups, retro, and workflow workshop

 

SPRINT EIGHT

During the final sprint, the design team continued developing a low fidelity prototype for the slavefreetrade app. During this Sprint, the research team also got together to discuss potential plans for user testing in the second phase of the project, which had recently been approved by slavefreetrade. At the end of the week, we presented to the client in our weekly demo. We also prepared to embark upon phase two, which will include continuing to develop the low fidelity prototypes, conducting user testing, developing high fidelity prototypes, and conducting another round of user testing. 

 

My Contribution

• Actively participated in daily meetings including brainstorming, discovery, stand-ups, and retro

• Participated in the pre-planning discussion of user testing of prototypes in phase two

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Low fidelity prototypes