Participate is a social learning community platform that brings people together around a topic of interest (exchange programs, volunteering, social justice, video games, you name it). I like to think of it as a learning-focused MeetUp.com. Participate users are working professionals.
The challenge
Communities didn't support cohorts and breakout groups. Without segmentation functionality, admins were forced to share content meant for specific users with a broad audience. In turn, members were left to search for relevant content instead of focusing on collaboration and learning.
The solution
Groups: an easily accessible curated space for users to share conversations, resources, and courses around a specific sub-topic inside their broader community.
While 57% of people adopted the groups feature within 90 days of it launching, after its third release, the adoption rate grew to 80%.
On average, users visit their groups 24 times per 30 day period.
Unique group views grew by 160% from April 2021 to July 2021 following the third release of the feature and its full roll out to community members.
Groups were originally born out of the need for admins to communicate with select subgroups of users in their community. Initial workshopping revealed that both staff and customers were getting pretty creative to make this happen—Mailchimp listservs, intercom custom emails, manual emails, spreadsheet downloads and uploads, and facebook groups.
Sprint facilitator, squad leader, and all things product design (journey mapping, sketching, prototyping, UX testing, and high fidelity UI)
Baljeet Aulakh, Software Engineer
Dan Quayle, Software Engineer
Kendrick Johnson, Marketing Associate
Kimm Murfitt, Education Strategist
Matt Harris, Software Engineer
Early workshopping highlighted the need for small breakout groups within a broader community.
The design aimed to create a flexible table that not only solved the project's immediate goals (adding users, taking actions, and connecting data), but also could fit into a broader design system. A thoughtful code-pairing approach made a rich table experience.
The squad reviewed six designs through a series of sprint activities. The ability to create groups within a table was a key feature we opted to build.
To minimize the creation of another tool on the platform we determined that our announcements feature would be the best vehicle for admins to communicate with select users. The tool had the benefit of being both designed for admins and intended for broad community communication. It also sent emails, something our admins were fond of. Check out the whole sprint process that shaped our solution.
Usability testing revealed that connecting groups to the announcement tool was a great start, but admins also wanted to connect other experiences to groups, such as our discussions tool. Knowing we needed to respect our original project scope we released our MVP in early 2020.
“I am a big a fan of the ability to create groups… I think that will solve for a lot of issues I personally have with it [the platform].”
UX test participant
Our first release for groups was a one-way communication channel. Admins pushing updates to members. Version two hoped to make groups a two-way conversation. Even prior to group announcements we had heard customers ask for “hidden” discussions. A discussion within a community that is not visible to the general community and requires a link for access.
Project lead, workshop facilitator, UX and UI design
Layla Namak, Graphic Designer
Matt Harris, Software Engineer
Sara Howell, Product Manager
Due to scope constraints, we weren’t ready to fully reveal groups to general community members. In an effort to move in an agile manner we decided to start with expanding admin tooling. With an established space for group creation we opted to evolve the admin tool to include creating group discussions. Without a groups member view, we opted to keep group discussions available via link only.
Although V2 solved our immediate pain point for segmented two-way communication, its success quickly became our challenge. User research and customer feedback revealed that community members were getting lost trying to access their group discussions. With no easy way to save the group discussion link, members were constantly losing it or even unaware they were in the group discussion. This new release also sparked interest and desire for more features. Customers wanted everything a community offered—resources, discussions, announcements, members page, etc.
Furthermore, some customers didn’t see immediate value in the tool without a dashboard for members to convene at.
“Can you connect them [groups] to a discussion?... I would love if you could connect them to a discussion or if you could connect them to other features in the course.”
UX test participant
By popular demand and in an effort to fully realize the feature we moved into a third iteration. This iteration focused on creating a fully-formed space for members to connect directly inside the community. A dashboard view was designed to display a summary of the announcements, discussions and content available to group members.
The design also added a page to view group members and the ability for members to create their own group discussions. This democratized tooling and placed the freedom to learn firmly into the user’s hands.
Sketches, low and high fidelity prototypes, UX testing
Baljeet Aulakh, Software Engineer
Britton Tripp, Quality Assurance & Squad Lead
Kimm Murfitt, Education Strategist
Sara Howell, Product Manager
Sarah Fordham, Software Engineer
Tisha Pryor, Head of Sales
The design brought all of a group’s activity and learning opportunities into one dashboard view.
User testing focused on navigation, card design iterations, and ensuring groups were perceived as their own distinct space inside of a broader community.
Early prototyping helped us quickly learn a new card design would be needed to fully realize the group tool.
“Everything is very easy to find. It doesn’t feel cluttered, it feels very streamlined.”
UX test participant
"I like how the announcements are on the left -- those kind of stand out. I like that the pages are broken up into sections. Your eye is drawn to the left so you can see the announcements."
UX test participant
"I like it. Everything. The design, how it’s organized, the colors.”
UX test participant
It takes a village: to get to three iterations it took bringing in feedback from our sales, marketing, UX design, and research teams. Hundreds of data points guided our decisions and implementation. In the process, we also developed a feedback loop for staff to send insights directly to our research database. If it wasn’t for our village, none of this would have been possible.
Prioritizing and project management are an art. There were so many (and still are) features we wanted to implement with the groups tool. We also knew to deliver on time would mean making tough decisions. We were able to move efficiently and smartly using a squad structure. Decisions weren’t left to one person, but rather a team that represented the makeup of our company.
Documentation at the end of each iteration was crucial since we did squad handoffs (new teams tackled each version). This allowed the new team taking over to get up to speed on why specific decisions were made and where improvement could fit in for the next round of work.
.svg){kind=icon}
.svg){kind=icon}
