ConnectJew
The Basics
ConnectJew is a non-profit organization with a mission to cultivate a vibrant and accessible collective for Jews in the Washington, DC metro area who are seeking more connectedness to their community. By utilizing advanced digital analytics, they help individuals find the right spaces that align with their interests, skills, and values.
My Role: UX Research & Design Consultant
Project Timeline: 5 weeks
Tool: Balsamiq
Other Team Members: Org Director, Community Integration Lead, Graphic Designer, Project Manager
Project Goals
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Define ConnectJew's product strategy and core differentiators
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Conduct user research to assess product viability for user questionnaire and recommendations feature
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Design, test, and handoff preliminary low-fidelity wireframes encapsulating ConnectJew's primary product offerings
Formulating a Product Strategy
Phase 1
The first iteration of ConnectJew's website is a basic calendar that aggregates upcoming Jewish-related events happening in the Washington DC metro area, such as high holiday services, Friday night dinners, and professional networking opportunities.
The site is currently hosted on WordPress, but will re-platform to a customizable backend architecture that affords more versatility and room for growth/scalability.
Phase 2
We are here
As it currently stands, ConnectJew's online event calendar does not offer anything unique from its competitors. A core differentiator for the next phase of the website will be a logic- and data-driven feature that recommends certain Jewish organizations and events for users to attend based on their interests and beliefs, which will be gauged via a Buzzfeed-style questionnaire. I joined the team to explore what this feature could look like.
Design Objective
Build a tool to assess users' Jewish interests/beliefs and use that data to curate a list of upcoming events that users are interested in attending.
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Survey Design
Given my narrow contract timeframe of 3 weeks, I decided to research market-based best practices before conducting direct user research to assess users' wants and needs. I looked to existing models with similar underlying user stories, such as dating apps, since their primary function is to match users based on a pre-defined set of criteria. I also researched survey best practices for building out the questionnaire.
Survey questions worded succinctly and intuitively
Questions categorized as informational or dealbreakers to drive logic behind recommendations feature
Survey broken out in multiple pages reduces mental overload
Minimize number of questions to reduce user drop-off rate
Question formatting varied across survey to maintain user engagement
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User Interviews & Testing
To maximize the time spent directly speaking with users, I combined the user interview and usability testing stages. The designs were borne out of conversations with the product team, the grant proposal details, and insights from market research. I tested with 4 people, 2 had used ConnectJew previously, and 2 had not, but fit into ConnectJew's target demographic.
Key Findings
“I always want to see all possible options and choose for myself” - User 3
Users liked getting data-driven recommendations, but said they'd still want to the ability to see all upcoming events so they could self-filter. They are also skeptical an algorithm will provide better recommendations than self-filtering.
"I usually just go to the events that my friends tell me about... I don't go out of my way to seek them out" - User 4
Newcomers are more likely to rely on the internet to find Jewish events to attend, whereas those who are ingrained in the community find events mostly through word-of-mouth.
“I’m going to forget about an event I signed up for unless I’m getting a notification on my phone” - User 1
Users primarily want to interact with the tool using their phone and be able to add events to their personal Apple and Google calendars.
"No one is loyal to just one organization" - User 1
Users attend events hosted by different organizations and tend to prioritize events based on who is going and the event itself, not the organization hosting them.
Design Iterations - Recommendations Feature
Recommendations View - Version 1
Metadata tags increases transparency and trust in matching algorithm
Hierarchical design focused on matching users to organizations, not events
No calendar view
Recommendations View - Version 2
Features "suggested for you" and "all" views
List and calendar views available
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Design emphasis is on upcoming events rather than organization hosting events
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Advanced filtering options available
Impacts & Outcomes
While this feature has not yet shipped, my involvement had a big impact on the trajectory of ConnectJew through:
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Acquired Figma licenses. I convinced to the President the value of using Figma as the main design tool to establish an authoritative design system and handoff designs to developers, and he bought several subscriptions.
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Appreciation for the importance of incorporating UX principles into every stage of the design process. Initially, I was onboarded to just design some wireframes and call it a day; but my user research led to some surprising findings that changed the course of the original designs.
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Streamlined ConnectJew's internal processes by advising sprint and meeting cadence and structure and advocated for bringing a technical perspective to product- and design-related discussions.
Next Steps
Given that this was only a 3-week assessment activity, I was not able to do a full-blown research and design phase and hand of a "finalized" product. However, the work I did successfully helped the ConnectJew team reassess and reprioritize internal tasks and site features to explore further. I see the next steps as:​
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Refine and test the questionnaire and determine the right number of questions to ask to strike a balance between gathering enough information to enable the algorithm to generate accurate recommendations without excessive burden to users.
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Clarify ConnectJew's target user base. Based on my initial research, the product may not appeal to people who are more "plugged in" to the existing Jewish community through other channels, like word-of-mouth and social media. Instead, ConnectJew should look to engage people who are newer to the area or those who want to get more involved but don't know where to start.
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Test Version 2 of the Recommendations page with users and continue to make iterative design improvements that will make the product more intuitive and valuable.
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Engage with developers to better understand the technical limitations of what is feasible in the short, medium, and long term and coordinate with product team to reprioritize features, as necessary.