Tech Fleet is a remote-based design group that does pro bono UX design and product work for non-profit and impact-driven organizations. In September, the first project started, for slavefreetrade, a non-profit organized based in Switzerland working on ending modern slavery in organizational supply chains around the world.

SLAVEFREETRADE

Slavefreetrade was developing a business app encourages users to initiate and join campaigns urging companies to adopt slave-free practices in their supply chains. They want their consumer-facing app to enable users to create and join campaigns encouraging companies to adopt slave-free practices in their supply chains and allow users to scan products in-store to check for slave-free certification by slavefreetrade.

Our project involves user research to define user goals, needs, and characteristics, informing the app's design and features, ultimately leading to a testable prototype.

PROCESS

Tech Fleet utilizes the Agile method, specifically following the Google design sprint process. We broke up our work in focused sprints over the course of 8 weeks. The team consisted of a Project Lead / Design Sprint Master, a Product Owner / UX Strategist, Project Coordinator, and UX Design and UX Research leads and apprentices.

Background

My Role: Lead Academic Researcher

I was recruited to conduct literature reviews on the topics of our research, in order to help inform and direct the research goals.

My contributions to the project included:

Lead Academic Researcher, conducting literature review each week to supplement the UX Research.

Attended weekly meetings, discussing my weeks worth of research to help explain or direct research. After each meeting, I would reach out to every team of the project to discuss with them what they needed from me in terms of literature review.

Presented academic research in client presentations, talking to the clients about what current academic research says about possible directions of their product.

Role

Timeline/Planning

SPRINT PLANNING

Before we started, we created questions for the slavefreetrade stakeholders using Jamboard. The team leaders narrowed down the questions through affinity mapping and had two meetings with the slavefreetrade team to understand the goals of their organization. We used Trello to assign everyone their tasks and used a slack channel to correspond with each other.

My Contribution:

I participated in stakeholder meetings and daily sprint meetings, including brainstorming, discovery, and stand-ups as well as the How Might We workshop
I was put in charge of the academic research, to study what makes consumers care about causes and provide academic insights to each teams tasks

Literature Review

In sprint one, we continued with the interview with slavefreetrade stakeholders to understand their goals. The UX Research team researched other cause-related apps and websites that included campaigns, awareness, and engagement. We also conducted a “How Might We” activity using Miro, to further brainstorm how to move forward.

My Contribution:

I listened to each meeting, and created a list of search terms and topics to conduct academic research on.

I conducted literature reviews of different research papers on ethical consumers and topics related to what makes people make ethical decisions.

Literature Review

Sprint One

Creating User Interviews

In Sprint Two, we categorized How Might We questions into themes: audiences, communication, engagement, awareness/education, and social. Using a digital "dot" method, we prioritized the top five questions, which were then quantified as research goals by the Product Owner.

These goals revolved around understanding potential users for the app, their knowledge of modern slavery, ethical consumption habits, sharing behaviors, and motivations for caring about social issues. We opted to target ethical consumers and those who considered ethics in their purchases.

Our approach involved conducting user interviews and creating proto-personas based on our assumptions to delve deeper into the user base interested in supporting the fight against modern slavery.

We also did an activity called the 4 L’s; a retro on what we liked, learned, lacked, and longed for.

My Contribution:

During this sprint, one team focused on the competitive analysis research, while I focused on conducting academic research into what motivates people to care about social issues and to care about consuming ethically.

I also helped craft the survey questions, making sure the questions were asking what we wanted them to ask.

Survey Questions

Sprint Two

User Interviews

Sprint Three consisted of conducting 8 different user interviews with 8 participants over Zoom. Each interview had one facilitator and one person to take notes. We then organized the notes on a chart in order to determine whether each user confirmed our assumptions. At the end of the week, we met with the client and presented our progress, including the research results, competitive analysis, literature review, and initial user interview results and recommendations.

My Contribution:

I observed the user interviews, taking notes on what the users said.

I attended meetings in which we discussed what we heard, and contributed to possible new directions of the product.

I brought up some of the academic research that I conducted, when it helped confirm or contradicted our ideas.

Literature Review 2

Sprint Three

Sprint Four

Presenting User Interview Analysis to Client

During Sprint Four, we met with the client to discuss the results of the user interviews to determine the next step of the project.

Our analysis of the results found that:

1. Users would be willing to make decisions to combat modern slavery, but they did not have trustworthy and easy to access sources to make those decisions.

2. While ethical consumption is an individual act, people engage in it socially with close friends and family, both in real life and online.

3. Having a personal connection to an issue makes someone more likely to act on that issue.

Literature Review

4. Important factors in ethically purchasing are: price, quality, and the company values

Presentation Script

We decided that the next steps of our project was the following:

1. A card sort in order to gain an understanding on the priority of factors when it comes to ethical consumption.

2. A survey with both quantitative and qualitative questions to get a better understanding of their conceptions of modern slavery.

Persona Workshop

We also had a Persona workshop in order to contribute to the development of the personas with sketches. We learned about two diferent types of users:

Innovators: those who take a leadership role and lead and share campaigns.

Ethical Consumers: passive role in ethical consumption.

My Contribution:

I presented the academic research that I found about Gameification to the clients at slavefreetrade (slide pictured above).

Persona Workshop

Sprint Five

Research Insights

In Sprint Five, after completing interviews, we used Miro for insight activities over three nights.

First night: We organized research insights by method, color-coding them and grouping them.

Groups:

Goals
Unmet needs
Pain points/problems
Behavior
Miscellaneous.

We discussed each group's insights to reach a consensus.

Second Night: We crafted conclusion statements, resulting in 17 distinct conclusions with representative findings and potential design implications.

Third Night: We focused on prioritizing insights using the MoSCoW method. The "must" conclusions involved simplifying campaign creation, showcasing impact, enabling social sharing, and establishing trustworthiness in ethical consumption information.

We also finalized user personas for the various journeys. At week's end, we presented this comprehensive information to the client.

My Contribution:
I contributed to each night of the activity, contributing different insights and commenting and discussing the insights of others.

Prototype Design

In Sprint Six, we incorporated research conclusions, personas, and user journeys into the prototype design.

We collaborated with the client to define the Minimal Viable Product (MVP), Minimal Marketable Product (MMP) goals, and future product ideas.

We conducted a Crazy 8s exercise (shown above), where everyone sketched 8 ideas in 8 minutes. We explored questions related to campaign engagement, influencer impact, and user motivation.

Through a blind sketch evaluation with red dots representing interest areas, we discussed and rationalized the sketches. We concluded by voting on the sketches and presenting our progress to the client at the sprint's end.

My Contribution:

I participated in the Crazy 8's exercise, coming up design ideas for the product.
I drew up a possible product design for a design aspect that included gamification (shown below).
I voted on which other design sketches I thought were good design ideas.

Sprint Six

Workflows

During Sprint Seven, the design team created workflows (shown below) of the action’s users would need to take in the app, based on our research and group discussions. We also discussed the questions and concerns we had on the workflows.

The design team also developed the prototypes using Figma that we all looked at and gave feedback.

We also presented our work to the client at the end of the sprint.

My Contributions:

I was in the meetings with the design team and helped create the workflows of the users actions, making comments, questions, and concerns for the design mechanisms.

Sprint Seven

Sprint Eight

Presenting Low Fidelity Prototype

In the final sprint, the design team continued developing the low fidelity prototype for the slavefreetrade app.

The research team also discussed the possible future directions for the next project, after being asked by slavefreetrade to continue working past our original project goals.

We presented to the client at the end of the sprint, and discussed the next part of the project, which will include more low fidelity prototypes, user testing, high fidelity prototypes.