I took on the initiative of conducting user interviews with parents and students to see how they were coping with all of the changes due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Prior to that, our team was preparing a transition to our spring mentorship programming; however, with safety our students in mind, our organization had to cancel our in-person mentorship programming. Ultimately, parent and student responses inspired the design and launch of a web platform that would serve as an information resource for parents, teachers and students as they navigated through the pandemic.
😰 Where can families get the most up-to-date information regarding their student's education?
🧐 How can Spark adjust our programming to meet students and their families where they're at?
Initially, our intention was to create a shareable resource with Spark families. The final product allowed us to expand our reach to include partners from different schools, supplemental education programs, and local universities. In the first month, we received more than 700 unique views to our website.
Through creating a "Virtual Classroom" page for our students, we were able to advertise for our first virtual Career Panel on the Resource Hub. 21 mentors attended this event, and we maxed out our "classroom" with 50 student participants.
During the beginning stages of the pandemic, my team and I spent time interviewing parents, teachers and students to find out how we could best transition our resources as an organization. These phone calls revealed consistent patterns including the difficulty navigating the adjustment to virtual technology, breakdowns in communication between schools and parents, and frustration in learning and gaining access to general resources.
I established parent experience maps to illustrate and communicate opportunities for intervention with my team. One such example is exhibited in the image, "Parent Experiences, Example 1." This conversation displayed a communication breakdown between a parent and their student's teacher regarding Google Classroom technology. I empathized with both the parent and the teacher; both parties were taking on even more responsibility during the pandemic to serve their children. This conversation revealed an opportunity to incorporate access to technological assistance to better help the parent and take some of the load off of the teachers.
"Parent Experiences, example 2" is a separate example of a persistent issue revealed in initial phone interviews with parents. The parent in this example was trying to obtain a loaner laptop for her son, as promised by school district policy. She complained of the lack of information provided to parents about when and how the logistics of this program would be communicated by school administration. Teachers, trying to adjust curriculum to a virtual space and manage other classroom details, were caught in the middle of this information breakdown. Since it was a repeated complaint, my staff and I saw an opportunity to provide information about this technology program and communicate updates about the distribution schedule as soon as it became available.
To the right, you will see an example of a message I designed. This was apart of an awareness campaign to our parents to notify them about the COVID-19 laptop loaner program.
Feedback on the newsletter was positive. Other after-school partners asked to have access to this information, in an effort to spread this information to their students and families beyond the Spark community. My team and I realized that the newsletter would quickly be out of date. We wanted to be able to continue providing updated information while decreasing time spent on re-iterating issues of the newsletter. In addition, we wanted to provide an easier way to access the information for our extending community. With this in mind, I took on the initiative of spearheading an online version of the resource that could be accessed by both parents and the larger school community.
The Resource Hub, as it became known, was divided into five main sections: Education, Internet, Food, Wellness, and Transportation. This information could be more easily updated than the traditional newsletter format; and, it could be shared with users beyond the immediate Spark community.
I sketched out some early wireframes to clarify that the team and I were on the same page in regards to content strategy and layout.
After sharing the first edition with teammates for feedback, we quickly realized that the sections were hard to read. With the intention of further improving the accessibility, we adjusted the layout. In an effort to further personalize the site, we added an introduction video that supported our written content and provided a personal touchpoint with our staff. As protests broke out in response to the killing of George Floyd, we added a banner to discuss our support for the Black Lives Matter Movement.
Before: Hard to read and navigate.
After: Cleaner design, easier to understand sections and read navigation, "Virtual Classroom" tab added, video explanation of website replaced image.
While working on user feedback changes, my team and I continued to make phone interviews to check in with parents. Both parents and students in these calls indicated their interest to continue communicating with their mentors virtually. Parents reiterated this need for engagement to keep their students active during all their time at home.
In response to these suggestions, our team planned to host a Virtual Career Panel. This event brought together students and mentors across different schools and businesses to engage in an informative, fun, and safe way. It also enabled interested students to continue their engagement in the program even if their mentor was no longer able to participate. In addition, students were able to engage with students and mentors from different Spark programs.
Request about program continuation
Virtual career panel
Due to the unprecedented nature of the pandemic, the environment in which the information was curated for this project was particularly unique and rapidly changing. I was most happy with the extended reach the Resource Hub was able to provide for the wider community outside of our initial intention. After the Virtual Career Panel, I designed and issued a short survey for our families to fill out. Key feedback highlighted the importance of continued engagement for her student and the resourcefulness of the event. One parent had trouble with an audio issue, pointing out the potential for a improved access for future events.
In an ideal world, our team could have taken more time to gather feedback on our first website prototype. I think this could have further improved the relevancy of the information we shared as well as provided important feedback on the usability of the site.
Survey Feedback on our Virtual Career Panel