Civic Suds: Research, Ideation, and Iteration for a New Booking Flow
By: Elise Quivey
Tags: User Research, Nonprofit, Competitive Analysis, Ux Strategy, Prototype

Background

Civic Suds is a nonprofit organization bringing learning opportunities to people who rely on laundromats. Civic Suds provides clean laundromats with 24/7 internet access, classrooms, and conference centers. They partner with other local organizations to provide free informational classes. We were tasked to create an intuitive booking component to ensure seamless scheduling for these partners. We were given three weeks to do the research, synthesis, ideation, and iteration.

Research

After discussing the initial ask and doing some company research, my team of designers focused on two topics for our research: our target audience and our competitors.

What are Civic Suds partners’ wants, needs, and pain points?

Through our initial company research and and discussing the task at hand, our team decided the target audience for the booking component would be potential partners. These would include nonprofit owners, event planners, and socially aware citizens with personal knowledge and skills they would enjoy sharing with their community. We would learn about these partners wants, needs, and pain points through surveys, interviews, affinity mapping, journey mapping, and more.

What is and isn’t working for competitors?

We deducted that our competitors were broken up into two sections: other nonprofits with impressive landing pages and booking calendar systems. We looked at both of these with an analytical eye. We used research methods such as competitive analysis, task analysis, and usability tests to get a better understanding of what was and wasn’t working for our competitors.

We focused on various research methods such as surveys and competitive analysis.

We started off with sending two surveys out on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, and Instagram. One survey focused on those who rely on laundromats to gauge their habits. The other survey focused on people who had experience scheduling an event, class, or workshop for an organization. Total, we got 96 responses and extremely useful information.

For our interviews, we spoke with 6 professionals who had experience booking events online. They were located variously throughout the United States, so the interviews were conducted virtually over zoom. Here is some noteworthy information from our findings:

Useful stats from our survey

The biggest takeaways were that integration, confirmation, and a sleek booking system were our biggest priorities when it came to design. One interviewee, a professional who works directly with nonprofits, said:

“I am so inefficient because I cannot be a master of all of these tools. How do I find the best tools that integrate the best, so that our work can be the most efficient?”

After taking notes from each interviewee and discussing them as a group, we decided to make an affinity map to help narrow our focus on which problems mattered most to the users. Most of our interviewers relied on a larger calendar platform, such as GCal or Apple Calendars, and found it crucial to easily add their event through any booking platform. Other trends that popped up needing multiple reminders, confirmation pages, and easy booking.