My Role
As the Senior UX Designer in the project, I led the design, prototyping and development efforts. I also was one of the three core members of the testing and iterating process of the project.
Background
Anthro-Tech had previously done extensive discovery and research work with the DCYF team to identify what can be done to improve home visitors' wellbeing and retention rate through a series of stakeholder interviews, secondary research, interviews with subject matter experts and by conducting 4 design innovation workshops that included home visitors generating ideas and conceptual prototypes for a design innovation to better support the home visiting workforce as they work with families experience substance abuse, domestic violence and mental health issues.
Design innovation workshops were held with the participation of home visitors to identify ideas and solutions about how to better support the home visiting workforce and their wellbeing.
Roadmap
I joined this project as the Anthro-Tech team was reviewing all the ideas that came out of the 4 design innovation workshops. We started by planning out our timeline, deliverables and milestones for the project. We put together a roadmap of all the steps, milestones and deliverables that we envisioned for the project.
Roadmap for our engagement with DCYF to leverage a Human-Centered Design approach to identifying, designing, prototyping and iterating on a solution to help the home visiting workforce with their professional wellbeing.
Vision and narrowing down ideas
A total of 948 ideas were generated by home visitors and supervisors during the original 4 design innovation workshops. As we reviewed all the data, we were able to identify five top ideas from the design workshops. To help us narrow down the ideas, I created rough storyboards for all five top ideas that we then presented to the DCYF committee. We conducted a workshop with the committee where we narrowed down the ideas to two final ideas. We leveraged the "three lenses of innovation" exercise to help us narrow the ideas down.
In-home usability studies
Storyboards
By assessing the desirability, viability and feasability of the top five ideas, the committee was able to narrow down the choices to two final ideas. I storyboarded out what these two final ideas could look like and we held four focus groups with home visitors, supervisors, administrators and subject matter experts to decide what the winning idea would be. Through our focus group, it became clear that the majority of the participants were leaning towards the "Professional wellbeing" solution that they would like to focus on.
Design
Once the "Professional wellbeing" idea was chosen, it was time to start designing. We spent many hours as a team reviewing all the research data and revisiting our notes from our workshops, interviews and focus groups. What we heard all across these platforms from home visitors, supervisors, administrators and stakeholders is that the solution has to to take an organizational approach to professional wellbeing rather than trying to find a "one size fits all" approach. The organizations varied from each other in size, location, and accessibility to technology. We also heard that "Professional wellbeing" means a lot of different things for different people and there is no way to prescribe one thing for everybody. We started focusing on a prototype solution that helps programs implement workplace wellbeing practices that will better support their home visiting staff: A toolkit that provides a step-by-step approach to assessing the organization's readiness for professional wellbeing, facilitating a design workshop for all team members to identify problems and ideate and implement the solution.
Brainstorming sessions on designing a "Professional wellbeing" toolkit.
Prototype
Many organizations and home visitors expressed their need for both a digital and a physical prototype. Some of the organizations were located in Alaska, in places where wi-fi connection is very limited and home visitors don't necessarily work out of an office. I designed a toolkit that would be easy to print in the office but that can also be easily shared used as a soft copy.
May home visitors told us that a lot of their stress comes from being overworked and having to deal with too much paperwork. To avoid the idea of providing tedious material to read through, I designed a toolkit that is a quick read, easy to follow and very practical in how to implement a design thinking workshop. I used bright colors, bold font and large margins to make this toolkit feel like a light, interactive and playful guide that the home visitors would enjoy going through.
Testing with users
We tested the first prototype at a few different organizations with home visitors and supervisors. We iterated several times on the prototype based on user feedback.
We traveled to an organization in Aberdeen, WA to test the first prototype
