Afrikan Mbiu - A challenge-based community
AFRIKAN MBIU
A Challenge-based community
Overview
Afrikan Mbiu (Mbiu (n): Horn. A common communication tool in the past)
This is a Kenyan organisation that aims to reduce the rising cases of psychological illnesses using a natural and fundamental human need: Community/ Belonging.
Goals:
- Leverage African heritage and the culture of ubuntu to provide strong points of identity.
- Identify behavioural KPIs that are aligned with business goals.
- Identify and reduce barriers to user-desired behaviour.
- Design and test wireframes to improve adoption.
- Develop a design system
Scoping and Defining Business Goals
We ran a short workshop with the business to identify clear goals and root causes of key challenges in the design and execution of the product.
We scoped the project to key daily revenue sources because this would be ideal to design for frequent behaviour.
The business goal would require:
- Users to participate in challenges daily.
- Users to share challenges after each successful completion.
- At least 20 users to create challenges every day.
Moving from You-ser to User
Interviews
In order to understand what a meaningful experience is, I conducted 2 different sets of interviews.
Discovery Interview: Where do you look for social experiences?
- We interviewed 10 users and segmented them into young professionals and university students.
- On average, social media was associated with superficial and commercial experiences such as entertainment and sales respectively.
- 7/10 respondents reported feeling "pressure" while using social media and requiring some time off.
- Interviewees shared that comparing themselves to others was a fundamental cause of social media pressure.
Understanding Interview: What makes up deep and meaningful experiences?
- Being seen and heard was a popular response from the users.
- Vulnerability and being accepted was an enabler to form deep and meaningful bonds.
- Sharing common interests was a popular enabler of deep and meaningful bonds.
- On average, a deep and meaningful connection was preferred to superficial experiences.
Personas
After the interview, we segmented the users into two groups based on goals, source of meaningful experiences.
"If you and I don't have something in common, it will be very difficult to become friends",
~Sasha, the 2nd Year BCOM Student
"I like the challenges because it's a moment in the day where I can be goofy. It's fun and things don't always have to be serious!"
~Alice, the Makeup Artist
[Image- Personas]
Behavioural KPIs
After completing the user interviews and creating personas to clarify user needs and wants, we identified key behaviours to measure and design for that are aligned to the business goals.
User Journey
The user journey was informed by the Behavioural KPIs. We also leveraged their most frequent experiences on digital platforms to follow familiar paths from discovery to task completion (Also known as mental modelling).
The user journey was designed over 3 iterations with the help of 15 user. We ran 5 tests and iterated with changes after each group of 3 users.
We mapped the final two versions and picked version B.
User Flow A
We began with a baseline user flow that we tested by engaging 5 users in a usability test where we invited them to perform a task.
Streams
To improve user flow based on the findings from the user tests, we included various streams in order to enable product-driven conversions.
User Flow B
After testing with 5 users we implemented changes to reflect business goals and user needs and indicated the behaviours we are designing for and ought to measure (Behavioural KPIs)
Lo-Fi Prototyping and Usability Testing
Due to constraints with time, we experimented with a new model of usability tests: segmented usability tests.
We engaged with 15 participants, in groups of 3. This allowed us to have 5 iterations.
Group 1
- Ease of accessing and creating challenges
Group 2
- Edited user path to access and create challenges.
- Ease of access and interactivity of tribe dashboard
Group 3
- Edited dashboard experience based on feedback.
- Rewarding user-desired behaviours.
Group 4
- Edited user-desired behaviours to align with intrinsic motivations and reducing rewards to extrinsic motivations (visibility, mentions, etc)
- Recommendation design and enabling sharing channels (Social Media shares, copy and pasting links, inviting fellow tribemates)
Group 5: Quantified using Preely
Preely is a task-based usability testing platform that captures mouse movements and eye-tracking based on an imported prototype from Figma, Sketch, Adobe XD, etc.
- Heatmaps to track user eye movement.
- Timed tasks to measure ease of use.
Design System
Creating the design system in Figma as a library was the final step that allowed us to provide the client's team with the necessary artefacts to implement the high-fidelity prototype.
This would be done by following the Lo-fidelity prototype design and interaction patterns
Lessons Learned
- Behavioural KPIs improve the user journey map by providing priority activities as origin points.
- Remote interviews are more effective when users and interviewers have their cameras on.
- A measure of an effective interview process is when users discover something new about themselves. An interview is an opportunity to serve the user.
- Design and test digital usability studies to extract more data points.
- METUX framework is an effective tool to identify barriers to intrinsic motivation. Couple this with the COM-B model to enable users to perform their desired behaviour with ease and satisfaction.
- A daily update manages expectations and reduces information silos among stakeholders.
- Forms, forms, forms for consent, scheduling, feedback and allocating the right research resources to the right group (virtual and physical).
- Thank your users after every interview and send them a milestone reminder to let them know the impact of their contribution.
20 Iterations - 15 Wonderful user candidates - 50+ Design System Artefacts - 100+ Enjoyable hours of research and design
"It now makes sense"
Clement Obonyo
Afrikan Mbiu, CEO
