Girl Scouts Toolkit

šŸŖ First internal toolkit to help employees at the NGO build digital products based on customers' experience. As the UX designer, I drove user experience, user research and customer experience.
Team: 1 Design Manager + 4 UX Designers
Role: UX Designer
Platform: Website + Keynote
Duration: Sep 2019 - May 2020, 9 months

Overview

The Result

Positive
Feedback
More than 300 employees expressed their appreciation for this toolkit
Increase
Income
Using this toolkit, new websites drove 2% of all activity and 1% of all revenue on the Girl Scouts Shop online
Save
Time
Using this toolkit, Girl Scouts produced a new website within 2 weeks
Engage
Customers
Using this toolkit, new websites received 250,000 unique visitors and 1,000,000 page views in its first 4 months

Personal Accomplishment

I was an early member of the team. Working as the UX designer, I conducted user research, created persona, brainstormed, built information architecture, made prototype, presented prototype, did user testing and reiterated the toolkit. I spent 9 months building the toolkit from 0 to 1. First version of the toolkit was implemented in April, 2020.
Leadership
I led the most important project and mentored other UX designers.
Collaboration
I worked cross-functionally with product managers, researchers, engineers, and other departments.
Product Iterations
I improved the user experience significantly by iterating the designs based on data.

Problem Statement

Decision makers failed to identify customers' needs accurately and efficiently.

Discover

Current Situation

Girl Scouts of the USA, like many other organizations, is going digital. After investing much money into building digital products, now we have more than 50 digital products based on different platforms, including voice service, iOS, Android, and website.
We spent a lot of time and money on building digital products, why customers don't want to use them?
Most digital products at Girl Scouts had a low download rate, low return rate. They were beautiful but useless. Product owners failed to address customersā€™ needs and these products didnā€™t solve real problems.
Our goal: help employees understand the experience of customers, so employees can conduct design practices and advance business objectives.
Target users: employees at Girl Scouts who are decision makers in customer experience office, such as product designers, product managers.

Background

Girl Scouts of the USA is a 109-year-old Nonprofit Organization that empowers girls through activities involving camping, community service, learning first aid, and earning badges by acquiring practical skills.
When you think of Girl Scouts, you might think of cookies šŸŖ, but thereā€™s so much more to it!
Learn more about Girl Scouts ā†’

Research

Surveys
I handed out digital surveys, failed to collect results.
Focus Groups
I facilitated three workshops and recorded the reactions.
User Interviews
I performed more than 20 formal scripted user interviews with employees.
I started the research by conducting online surveys with employees. However, no one responded to my survey. That's disappointing so I reached out to my manager and had a discussion. There were 2 possible reasons:
ā€¢ People are used to their old ways of working and don't want changes
ā€¢ We were a new team and employees doubt our reliability
ā€
I facilitated 3 workshops for employees of Girls Scouts. They were asked to engage in a group discussion and come up with what are customersā€™ experience over time.ā€˜read between the linesā€™ and recognize both verbal and nonverbal cues to discover what users want from the toolkit.
From observing the focus groups, I can tell from their verbal and nonverbal cues that employees are really passionate about providing great digital experience to empower girls. However, I noticed that their understanding of customersā€˜ experience had a lot of issues. For example, our employees donā€™t know how customers are experiencing our digital products, and what needs they can address.
ā€
Based on the result, I conducted 1-on-1 user interviews with more than 20 employees.

Analyze

Research Insights

I analyzed the research findings and built a persona. I used the power of personas to ground and humanize user insight while keeping different human attributes distinct. I used these spectrums to ideate and iterate in the design process alongside a series of physical, social, economic, temporal, cultural contexts.
Our employees don't know about the big picture, use inconsistent methodologies in different teams, and are mission-motivated.

Don't know about the big picture

Even though some employees have been working at Girl Scouts for 10 years, they only focused on some aspects.
I didn't know our volunteers need to do so much work. It's almost like a part-time job!

Use inconsistent methodologies in different teams

Every team used their own way to make design decisions. There is no design system within the organization.

Mission-motivated

Employees want to empower girls and help them become better women.

Competitor Analysis

I then observed other products that provide similar service. Through competitor analysis, I understood how others were managing their business and knew about the mistakes they are making so that I can avoid them proactively and save our toolkit from possible setbacks.

Ideate

Brainstorm

Employees were invited to brainstorm with us. They knew their voice were heard and built an ownership of the new toolkit, which is very helpful for the final launch.
We came up with more than 100 ideas. Then we analyzed each idea and selected 20 of them as the ones we want to keep developing. The best part of designing a toolkit for your own organization is that users are engaged directly in the design process.
We began narrowing down process by carrying out the Jakob Nielsenā€™s heuristics to have something more quantitative to work with. Our criteria were based on our desired outcomes along with two extra criteria: was the concept feasible and were we excited about it? We want to apply four principles when designing the toolkit:

Information Architecture

After the information architecture of the toolkit is clear, I started to work on the WHAT toolkit. Since different kinds of customers will be involved in the transaction, I proposed to the team that we should separate the overall user flow into several sub flows so that it would be easier for us to design and manage.

Design

Branding

I adopted the design style from branding design at Girl Scouts. We used this style guide to make sure that our design on different track is consistent.

Platform

This toolkit was built on Sharepoint, because the whole organization was using Microsoft Office. It would take much time and effort to adopt to a new platform or build a website.
We also provide pdf version because many employees want to print it out and use it.

Draft

The first draft was created to meet the real world. Itā€™s inspired by stickies and we regrouped different element to reduce the cognition load. When the draft was finished, everyone was shocked that our customers need to finish so many tasks, which indicated the draft can help our employees better understand our customersā€™ experience.
One feature we decided to include in further versions is the TIMELINE. All activities at Girl Scouts come in a year-round. The structure is similar and details may differ based on girlsā€™ age.

It's text-heavy and contains too much information. So I tried different methodologies to make it simple and easy to read.

Prototype

This is the first version of WHAT toolkit. We put all the important features into one map: timeline, ideal life cycle, digital channels, data, emotional change, and a persona. They are presented in a way to show their connections.

However, when we filled the content, we realized itā€™s impossible to include all the important information in one map. So we generated three layers of maps, from general to specific.

Key Pages

This page shows the general view of whole experience. Because there is so much information, I created different versions to include the most important features and tested with my colleagues to choose the most reasonable one.
This map shows the digital channels for each stage and our customersā€™ emotional change. I put much effort into find the balance between different elements.

Specific Experience

Life Cycle is the first part of the toolkit and it provides an overview of the whole experience our customers interacted with Girl Scouts. We've been thinking about how to better visualize our design intent since the very beginning. Finally, we decided to set different layers to reduce cognition load.
Detailed Experience Map shows how customers are experiencing our digital products, and what needs we can address.

Reiterate

The prototypes were introduced into the organization through meetings, emails, and personal connection.
The toolkit is a new thing for employees. So we need to show them why we should use this tool, what features are included and how to use this tool before conducting user tests.
(picture: I was presenting)
Design document was updated for every weekly-meeting in Google doc. All the employees can see their ideas are taken seriously and the toolkit is modified based on their feedback. It's easy to track every design decision.
(picture: part of the documents)
Design document was updated for every weekly-meeting in Google doc. All the employees can see their ideas are taken seriously and the toolkit is modified based on their feedback. It's easy to track every design decision.
(picture: part of the documents)
Based on user's feedback and our own observation, I polished the prototype and added tutorial to make this toolkit more easy to use. We receive many positive feed back from employees

The Result

Future

Generally speaking, I'm super proud of what I've achieved during the 9-month project. The toolkit was released in April and I heard many positive feedbacks from our employees!

This hand-on experience also offered me a great opportunity to understand the way how UX designer should work in the industry. I had the great pleasure to work with our team members and most importantly I learnt different ways of communication with people like product managers, designers and developers.

In terms of what's next, we would definitely need to build the whole toolkit structure to make sure that our toolkit would reach employeesā€™ expectation.

UX Design is an endless journey and I'm ready for it!
OVERVIEWDISCOVERRESEARCHANALYZEIDEATEDESIGNREITERATEFUTURE
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