GriefShare is a program for support groups helping people work through the difficult emotions of grief. The groups go through a guided 13-week curriculum with videos and a participant workbook. Every participant must register using the Find a Group page.
The Challenge
Redesign the Find a Group page, keeping in mind that it is one of the most crucial and most visited pages on the website.
Design Question: How might we iterate on the current online experience in a way that helps people find the ideal group or event for themselves?
Discover
Currently, users must type in their location before being presented with a list of nearby groups and events. Then the search results did not have a clear visual hierarchy. It was unclear at this point what the motivating factors were for users and how they decided what group to ultimately register for.
Proto-persona
Before diving into the redesign, I needed a deeper understanding of the user's motivations and goals. I developed 4 unique proto-personas for different user types, with the most relevant for Find a Group being the "Pre-Registrant".
Design Audit
Before starting the redesign I needed to understand what already existed. I performed a design audit of the current Find a Group page that included an inventory of on-page components and accessibility check.
Qualitative Interviews
The interviews aimed to understand the decision-making process for users seeking a group. Participants ranked criteria in order of importance for choosing their group. Seven interviews were conducted, transitioning into continuous weekly discovery efforts.
Key Insights
Schedule
A convenient meeting schedule (day of week and time of day) is the most important criteria when deciding on a group for 50% of interviewees.
Format
If the meeting format (in-person or online) matters for a participant then it becomes their most important criteria.
Distance
Even though distance was never ranked first or second, the majority of participants cited looking for a group near their home or work.
Ideate
Prototype
A complete redesign featured vertical filter alignment for easier scanning, redesigned cards with improved visual hierarchy and accessibility compliance, an interactive map feature with radius search capability, and full responsiveness across devices.
Immersive Map
For the visual processors an immersive map view is now available to help users see the distance instead of only reading it.
Card Only View
The Find a Group page adapts to the preferences of the user by hiding the map if they want a more traditional view with cards only.
Reflection
User Feedback is Essential
The importance of speaking to actual users cannot be understated. There are many behaviors in the real world that are not considered in the controlled environment of the design file. Additionally, design decisions are just assumptions until they are validated by users.
Read Between the Lines
What a person says may not always align with what they do, that's just part of being human. It's just as important to ask what a user would like as it is to ask how they actually tried to do something.
Understand Team Constraints
Given the scope of this redesign and developer bandwidth, many of the new features were scaled back for a MVP, opting for iterating on the current design instead of a complete overhaul. The effort wasn't wasted, though, as we now had an end goal to work toward.