Project CORE
: a management tool serving as a handbook and a check-in system
MY ROLE
Design Research & Synthesis
Mid-fi Wireframing
User Testing
Project Management
THE TEAM
THE CHALLENGE
THE SOLUTION
How might we provide support to Ocean Leaders through the largest stages of their hub lifecycle?
i.e. Onboarding and Day-to-Day operations
Buoy, an extension to the existing digital platform of Sustainable Ocean Alliance is a one-stop source for everything you need to know as an Ocean Leader. It is a management tool that helps an Ocean Leader get going with their daily responsibilities.
Read on to learn more about these terms
THE CONTEXT
SOA (based in San Francisco) is an organization that nurtures the development of ocean health solutions. Through their Ocean Leadership, they mentor young global members called Ocean Leaders, to run campaigns, host events, and affect policy change in their local communities. Ocean Leaders can spearhead these ocean projects individually or develop high-school, university, or regional-level groups called ‘Hubs’. The SOA mentors stay in touch with these global leaders through digital mediums and send out action items, tasks, and newsletters regularly.
The team stands by #DefendTheDeep
Ocean Leaders (active in 80+ countries) are often university students who start local chapters while in school and continue with the initiative after they graduate
Heroic efforts are necessary to save the world from catastrophic climate change."
-Daniela V. Fernandez ( Founder, SOA )
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THE PROBLEM
OTHER ISSUES
SOA communicates with its Ocean Leaders through an engagement platform called Mobilize.io. They send out the essential material and try to maintain personal communication with as many Ocean Leaders as possible (even though they are a small team). The Ocean Leaders still felt underconfident and miscommunicated due to poor planning. The useful topics were being overlooked and the leaders felt increasingly directionless.
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SOA was finding it difficult to connect to build an online community where all the leaders connect with each other.
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Since the Ocean Leaders are spread across the globe, it was difficult to maintain a continuous conversation given the timezones and work routines.
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A common onboarding process for the new members was lacking. They often did not know what to do next and how to proceed further.
THE SOLUTION
Logbook
Helps record everything related to their Hubs and their projects in one place.
Ocean Community
Connect with other leaders, mentors, scientists, bio experts, etc. to build a strong ocean network.
Through Project CORE (Community Outreach, Refinement, and Engagement) we found out that the Ocean Leaders needed an information inventory better than what was being currently offered through Mobilize.io. So we designed a system to improve communication across Hubs, within Hubs, and between Hubs and SOA.
Hub Orientation
Complete the orientation and read through the necessary text to get started with your Ocean Leadership.
In Other News
What is SOA up to? What are the latest happenings in the ocean world? Read more about the current advancements on the platform.
DESIGN PRINCIPLES
MINIMAL MAINTENANCE
FOSTER INTERCONNECTION
CONTINUED
MOTIVATION
Design for SOA's limited bandwidth and a small team size.
The solution should facilitate connections between Ocean Leaders and SOA stakeholders, however it should not act as a communication platform.
It should provide onboarding, financial, human resource and task support besides inspiration.
SUCCESS METRIC
SOA can measure the success of Buoy through quantitative data, such as
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Number of sign-ups
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Number of active accounts (analyzing percentage completion of orientation)
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Number of hubs and projects maintained on the portal
Qualitative data can be collected using interviews and surveys to know more about their experience.
THE PROCESS
A funny take on my design process 🤭
RESEARCH PLAN
INTERVIEWS:
SOA Team
Ocean Leaders
Ocean Accelerators
ACTIVITIES:
Empathy map
Hub theme song
SECONDARY:
External websites
Competitors
Newspaper articles
Research papers
TOOLS:
Trello
Slack and Zoom
Google Suite
Keynote
Pen and paper
The team preparing an executable-within-10-weeks research plan
SYNTHESIS & NEEDFINIDNG
After the initial kick-off meeting with our partner, we now knew the three key areas that they wanted help in-
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Engagement: SOA experiences challenges in communication and engagement with their Ocean Leader community. They want to provide them with a more educational curriculum.
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Organization: Even though they are a small team they have a global reach and this creates limited bandwidth.
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Aspiration: SOA wants to utilize all its resources in order to grow and become the number one ocean organization in the world.
Our interviews with the Ocean Leaders further confirmed the themes shown alongside-
Following were the themes identified: Before starting the Hub, Onboarding, Mobilize.io, SOA' s support, Ocean Summit, Outside SOA, Future goals
WHAT THEY SAID
“I did not understand how to start the process of becoming an Ocean Leader.”
CHRIS, 22
“Working with SOA is great. General ideas about stuff we could do would be valuable.”
HENRY, 24
"I would like some tips on how to keep my Hub growing."
ALEXIS, 22
“We don’t get in touch on Mobilize.io. Our main communication is WhatsApp.”
DAVE, 23
INSIGHTS
Ocean Leaders need regular motivation and assistance
Ocean Leaders have been winging it and innovating on the go
Ocean Leaders need help as their Hubs grow and change
Hubs don't want to change the way they communicate with each other
OPPORTUNITY
Onboarding support
Task support and inspiration
Financial and human resources
External mobile apps have to be avoided
REITERATING OPPORTUNITY
How might we provide support to Ocean Leaders through the largest stages of their hub lifecycle?
i.e. Onboarding and Day-to-Day operations
DESIGN IDEATION
Rapid Prototyping and Wizard of Oz helped shortlist key ideas
INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
Right & Left: Doing a session of Rapid Prototyping with fellow classmates to understand the perspective of new users. The low-fidelity paper mockups were a good start to the prototyping process.
Within low-fidelity mockup, the next step was to define the goal and the flow of information
WIREFRAMES
USER TESTING
The mockups were detailed out to better the flow
The low-fidelity mockups were then tested with the SOA team
STYLE GUIDE
NEXT STEPS
In order to save more of our ocean life, the following hierarchy of steps should be taken -
1. Usability Testing (high-fi prototype) with Ocean Leaders
2. Gathering content for respective headings
3. Back-end development
4. Usability Testing (Round 2)
TAKEAWAY
What worked?
I believe that Buoy will provide Ocean Leaders with the support that they need to make a positive change in the ocean sustainability space. It will act as a guide through Ocean Leaders’ onboarding process, will connect them to SOA’s global network of influential people, and help them track their Hub progress. In return, SOA will have access to this information, allowing them to stay informed and engaged with their Ocean Leaders.
What could change?
For the research phase, I would have liked to introduce more activities giving qualitative outputs. The emotion-centered design needs should be further emphasized through the visual language.