Lifting Wounded Vets in New Directions
When America talks about transitioning veterans, the conversation is about jobs. But studies show most veterans quit their first job within a year.
Though overall veteran unemployment is low, there is emerging research indicating that many veterans are experiencing “underemployment” or facing challenges in finding meaningful, post-service employment.
This is our story of redesigning Lift & Shift’s website—a foundation that advocates for Veteran inclusion in science and technology by getting their hands dirty building open source robots!
Prototype for an immersive experience with one of Lift & Shifts featured events, Battle of the Bots."
My Role
This project took place over four weeks. I was part of a small team including three other designers and I was responsible for the research and design strategy.
Finished mBots at a Lift & Shift event, sponsored by Flatiron School - from Lift & Shift.
The Challenge
Supporting Veterans in Transition
Lift & Shift approached us with the primary objective of automating and digitizing all of their current manual processes;
Account creation and maintenance of all three user types with backend development.
E-commerce functionality to accept and process monetary donations.
Event registration of organizational functions.
Volunteer interest form.
Their immediate need, however, is a review and overhaul of the site’s navigational and information architecture and the user paths and related conversion points. This involved restructuring the Lift & Shift website that clearly addresses each of three main user types: veterans, donors, and volunteers.
With a one month timeline we focused on delivering a clear and simple user journey that increased awareness to the Lift & Shift foundation and its events, as well providing integration of ID.me so veterans could verify their service.
Veterans are working through projects like this Arduino/mBot hack at Lift and Shift - from Lift & Shift.
The Approach
Focus on the Shift
Our lack of knowledge in veteran support services meant we needed to understand the nature of their roles, support, and emerging trends thoroughly and quickly through exploratory research. We approached all aspects of the project collaboratively and spent most of our time speaking to subject matter experts to gain a deeper understanding of the aspirational models in the veteran support sector.
Throughout the project we conducted ethnographic research and used participatory design methods. This approach was necessary to understand needs, goals, motivations and frustrations each user type would face.
To access our prospective users, we had our client put us in touch with SME and Veteran users alike. We also recruited other SMEs and users such as directors of nonprofits, as well as donors and volunteers outside the veteran support landscape. This allowed us to quickly understand the overarching challenges of running a nonprofit, as well as why veterans join specific services, what makes someone volunteer, why someone donates and to understand veteran’s experiences in transitional services.
Vets and their families learning how to build open source mBots - from Lift & Shift.
Deep in Transition
For a more comprehensive understanding of the wider challenges faced by veterans looking to transition to civilian life, we spent a lot of time buried in the research and literature that already existed. Our research revealed that most transition programs (over 45,000 of them exist in the US) have a narrow focus and don't consider the overall wellbeing of veterans. We also examined the closest related VSO’s to Lift & Shift to help assess their overall strengths and weaknesses. We found that a lot of these organizations with similar goals end up working with each other, not necessarily against each other.
The Discovery
A clear mission statement is a crucial driving force for nonprofits
and volunteers and donors are critical in spreading that awareness.
Insights from our discovery work indicated there are two problem spaces that need to be addressed for our web based solution to provide success for the organizations user base.
We discovered that while “advocating for veteran inclusion in science and technology by reducing their psychological barrier to entry,” is a wonderful theory, without a clear message as to what Lift & Shift actually provides, vets and supporters alike aren’t likely to get involved. Lift & Shift has events, like Battle of the Bots, but they have only had a couple of them and it’s not entirely clear as to what these events actually entail. Given that “Bots” is the primary method of veteran outreach, there needs to be ways to get involved, albeit donating time, space and equipment or just wanting more information.
If we truly wanted to make a difference to the lives of veterans, volunteers and donors, we needed to provide a more ground up solution that considered our users needs relating to:
Veterans need to understand the Lift & Shift message in order to be part of a program that encourages new passions and skills that positively impact their lives.
Individuals donating time or money to Lift & Shift need to understand the company mission in order to spread awareness and give back.
These insights began pointing us to a solution that prioritized the appropriate information for how and why each user gets involved with Lift & Shift.
Personas
After mulling over our Research, we created two unique User Personas In order to further empathize with our users.
Our Primary Persona is Dana, a 29 year counselor.
Support communities of people suffering from trauma-related mental health disorders.
Supports the causes she cares about.
finds choosing an organization to get involved with frustrating.
strong family connections to the military.
Our Secondary Persona is Stuart, an Army Veteran.
31 years old - served immediately after high school.
Found the transition to civilian life difficult.
looked at well known VSOs for support.
Spends time with his family.
Fascination with Science & Tech.
“Your budget is a written document of your vision and values. I think the values of the organization and the mission have to drive every single thing that you do.”
Jef Hal Flavin - Director of The Tennessee Williams Theatre Festival (2007-2019)
The Vision
VISUALIZING END TO END
Tom Smoot CEO teaching vets and their families how to build mBot open source robots - from Lift & Shift.
Our vision was to create a simple and clear solution for our design strategy that gave Lift & Shift a foundation to grow on. We had to evaluate the benefits and limitations of different insights we’ve collected. With the users preferences at the core, we envisioned a progressive and motivational information system that allowed Lift & Shift to share their community experiences and learn from each other about exactly why users support the foundation's mission.
The Requirements
Think Long-Term, Act for Now
Although our vision was to create a learning and sharing environment for a community of L&S users, we discovered that there were too many users to tackle every problem within our short timeline.
Our research highlighted that it was critical for volunteers and donors to act as constituents and spread awareness to the organization. We knew that if our solution required heavy time investment from these users or didn't provide an easily perceived tangible benefit, it would fail.
Knowing this, we sharpened our focus to assist donors and volunteers in understanding why they’d join, participate and how to do so.
How do you find volunteers? You find them by the people who have already found you. You want to talk to them first to learn about what it is that makes your participants tick...
Jef Hal Flavin - Director of The Tennessee Williams Theatre Festival (2007-2019)
Visual Storytelling
In order to get users excited about what they could expect from a L&S event, we tested a platform that utilizes visual and interactive design.
Choose your Experience
This platform allowed users to choose their user type, giving them access to concise and relevant information regarding the mission of Lift & Shift.
Donation Goals
A platform specifically targets potential donors by showing the impact they’ll on Lift & Shift programs. Donors have the option to donate specific amounts based on the business needs and goals.
Robot Onboarding
A platform that on-boards the user into the Lift and Shift ecosystem by collecting their information. Each step of the process collects a different piece of information, while a robot is being assembled in tandem.
Prototyping and Usability
We worked closely together to bring our designs to life as four working prototypes. We constantly discussed constraints and possibilities of solving the Interaction Design. We tested constantly and iterated progressively to create our converged design.
“I would volunteer. Battle of the Bots seems interesting. To be able to support a good cause and have fun as well, doesn’t seem boring or bothersome."
Erik Mohr - Veteran
The Framework
Structuring Content
Before settling on any one design solution, we spent a great deal of time sketching out possible paths based on our top findings from our divergent testing. In particular, we faced serious challenges with just the terminology. We found that the language itself needs to be specific to common practices in order to find out the preferences within the joining, signing up, and donating nonprofit landscape. Mapping out the workflows was also challenging as each user type might prioritize different goals. The paramount finding was that users still want to learn as much about Lift and Shift as possible in order to buy into the mission.
More actionable items;
Utilize visual storytelling.
Volunteers and donors get excited about Battle of the Bots events, but need more information before they decide to get involved.
Veterans want an organization to verify their status because it gives them trust that they are a legitimate foundation.
Users want to easily be able to donate as well as see what their donations are providing for the organization.
Users need to know specifically what signing up entails before providing their contact information.
Integrate testimonials to both showcase and build upon the Lift and Shift community.
“As a volunteer, I'm not gonna reach out to contact someone if I don't know more. Are there any events coming up, you know? Is there anything nearby me? So my first instinct isn't going to be to contact someone to find out if there is. It would be more like: is this even possible for me to participate in the first place?”
Ryan - Veteran
Introducing Lift & Shift
Dreaming up a vision and allowing it to drive the goals...
Mission Driven
We designed a platform that increases awareness of the Lift & Shift vision and values.
Allowing the mission to drive every single thing L&S does for the community and who it serves, allow users to feel comfortable and excited to get involved.
Learn about Programs
Users are taken through an immersive experience that paints a clear vision of a Lift and Shift’s featured event. These vision help drive the goals of the foundation.
Donating Resources
Build trust with potential constituents by allowing them to donate to your vision and values. Find out what motivates them, then show the public what they're giving to, where the money is going, as well as rewarding them with a featured donor list.
Veteran or Supporter Sign Up
Develop and maintain your public facing community with a convenient signup method. Your volunteer is your donor, your advertiser and your constituent. For veterans specifically, they are also given the option to verify their military status with ID.ME, further establishing trust and credibility.
Someone had to dream up a vision, and it was the board's job to say, Well, how do we get there? Then it's this negotiation between reality and the dream, but it's all mission driven.
— Jef Hal Flavin - Director of The Tennessee Williams Theatre Festival (2007-2019)
What We Learned
Users found the overall site intuitive and easy to navigate, with concise and to the point messaging, but found the process intuitive, they reported that they felt that it took too many steps to get to the program information.
Overall, the donate page did give users enough information in order for them to feel comfortable donating to Lift and Shift. However, users felt that the donate button should be more easily accessible throughout the site.
The biggest win was that veteran users found ID.ME verification important to establishing credibility.
But although users found the over sign up process simple, they reported wanting to know more about what joining actually entails. In addition, users wanted clarity as to what it means to sign up as a veteran versus a supporter, and where volunteering fits into this. Lastly, the users who failed this task actually didn’t recognize the ‘join today’ CTA, so we should probably reconsider the verbiage and/or placement of this button.
The Wrap Up
We set out to create a clear and simple user journey by improving the site’s information architecture and user flows.We ended up designing a site that users found intuitive and easy to navigate, with concise and to the point messaging.
We also wanted to clearly address each of three main user types while automating more organizational functions.
Research has shown that our platform builds trust with potential donors by providing thorough information. In addition, it allows veterans and volunteers to sign up and be part of the L&S ecosystem.
Lastly, we set out to design a website that increases awareness of the organization and its events.
So our platform takes users through an immersive experience that shows them what it’s actually like at Lift and Shift’s featured event.
Future Recommendations
After gathering our user feedback and synthesizing our key takeaways, we recommend the following next steps for future iterations:
ID.me back end is of high value, but needs further exploration for integration to lift and shifts website
Exploring possible fundraising opportunities and incentives
Flesh out the resources page with additional Lift and Shift content.
Conduct further research as to how much information users need before donating.
Conduct further research to understand where veterans and volunteers overlap.
Research what is involved with automating event sign up and integration
Taking these recommendations into account for further iterations will help L&S improve the development of their website and generate a better user experience. This will ultimately aid in users building an active and tight knit community around the Lift & Shift mission.
You really don’t have to spell it out for me. I get it - you’re supporting vets. Great, now where are the robots?!
A garden-variety Arduino and a cheap Bluetooth interface board to talk to Google Chrome.
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