UX and visual design for CESF - a non-profit org.

UX/UI Process:

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Role

Product Design, UX/UI: Product Strategy, User Research, Storytelling, Information Architecture, Guidelines,

Interaction, Visual Design, Wireframing, Prototyping & Testing,

Year

2019 - Present

CESF is a Brazilian non-profit organization that means "Spiritist Center Without Borders" in Portuguese. CESF is a platform 100% virtual that facilitates groups to study Spiritism, provides spiritual counseling, creates content for Youtube, and, provides emotional support through the philosophy of Spiritism.

This is a project in that I coordinated with the team that contributed to building the vision and goals of the organization.

Understanding the user needs

With the hit of the Covid-19, the Spiritist's Centers around the world had to be indefinitely closed or shut down. People were still looking for the activities an on-site center would have: comforting through spiritual conversations, spiritual healing practices, group prayers and meditation, studies, and public lectures.

Seeing all that demand, the director of the Brazilian Spiritist Federation and other Spiritists centers group's directors as Los Angeles and Huston, together with a democratic decision-maker group they called "collegiate" invited me to contribute as a volunteer worker in this non-profit organization and start a great project helping spiritist and spiritist-friendly around the world.

Cesf wants to bring an understanding of what they call a mix of Science, Religion, and Philosophy and comforting insights regarding this beautiful doctrine.

Data:

“The impact of COVID-19 is widespread, and it will shape business and consumer behavior for months to come. And while the humanitarian and safety-related aspects of this outbreak are top of mind globally, it’s unquestionable that social distancing, quarantining, and staying home have had significant effects on media consumption."

Nielsen Insights Article 06-16-2020

"Spiritism, spiritist doctrine, kardecism or kardecist spiritism is a spiritualist and reincarnationist doctrine established in France in the mid-19th century.

According to the International Spiritist Council, spiritism is represented in 36 countries around the world, being more widespread in Brazil, where it has about 3.8 million adherents, according to data from the Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística (IBGE), and more than 30 million sympathizers, according to the Brazilian Spiritist Federation (FEB)"

Wikipedia

We listened to 12 members of Cesf,

And discovered that the biggest frustration was the indefinite interruptions of activities. Especially because they were part of a routine in a community with activities involving family and friends.

So we focused on answering the following questions:

How do you manage to keep the Spiritism Studies without a physical place?

Are you still in touch with the community?

Do you still participate in possible activities or did you give up?

What activities do you miss the most from your local Spiritist Center?

After reviewing those answers and their needs,

We created personas that helped us to recognize some possible challenges we might have.

Joana represents 43% of Spiritism followers. The majority are women, in and outside Brazil.

We discussed and brainstormed as many ideas and solutions as possible to create the product vision and solve its problems based on users and personas. We listed, organized, and refined all the results that we had come up with.

Product visions:

UNIVERSALIZE THE STUDY OF SPIRITISM:

We want to offer activities and studies to everyone who has interested in knowing about the doctrine.

FREEDOM IN ADHERING TO THE PROGRAMS:

We want to provide multiple scheduling options so the activities fit their routine and custom fraternal service with families and individuals.

We want to offer Spiritism activities and care to everyone, of any social class, religion, beliefs, race, gender, and sexual option.

EASE OF CULTURAL EXCHANGE AND COLLECTIVE CONSTRUCTION OF KNOWLEDGE:

We want to provide subtitles and language of signal for public lectures and recorded studies.

We want to make everyone comfortable enough to express their concerns and have an understanding of the answers regardless of culture and or language.

ACCESS TO CONTENT VALIDATED BY SCHOLARS OF SPIRITIST DOCTRINE, TRUSTED FIGURES IN THE SPIRITIST WORLD, AND PROFESSIONALS THAT FOLLOW SPIRITISM:

Many Spiritists Centers are not able to invite scholars of the doctrine to speak or lecture about Spiritism without personal opinions and lack of knowledge in certain subjects. Most of the time, the local followers and volunteers help with the Study, and sometimes they don’t have the proper instructions, leading to a shallow understanding of the intellect-moral Spiritism values of Spiritism.

With an online, open-to-the-public lecture, we can reach the experts in each subject and provide clarity with more truth to their questions and concerns.

EXPAND SPIRITUAL HELP AND COMFORT THROUGH ACTIVITIES DIRECTED AND ACCOMPANIED BY A MEMBER OF CESF:

All that, in the comfort of home, without the need of going to a physical Spiritist Center.

The in-person activities had a lot of obstacles because the Spiritual Counselors volunteers weren’t able to go to all requested Centers to implement in-home study/activities. Also, they couldn't council all people due to a restricted time window for the activity.

User Flow and MVP:

CUSTOM ACTIVITIES:

Allow users to set their desired activities and guide them through the best options based on a brief questionnaire answered by them.

LIVE CONNECTIONS:

Live meetings with spiritual councils for those who need attendance. 1-1, Families, Couples, Friends, etc.

CONTENT ACCESS BY INTEREST:

Data bank with all Spiritist literature and filter by keyword or subject. Availability for free download.

TRACKING OF DEVELOPMENT:

View your progress of study with personal notes for future reference. Track progress of spiritual counseling.

OPPORTUNITY OF WORK AS A VOLUNTEER:

Free workshops and training opportunities to become a volunteer in the Spiritist Center.

Guidelines:

Low fidelity wireframe:

UI & High fidelity wireframe:

User testing:

I selected a particular path to test the app's usability and understand if the interface design matched the expectations of the possible users accordingly to their mental models.

We redesigned components to serve the path's purpose and restructured the components' position on the interface based on their feedback and performed a second test with 70% of direct success.

Changed copy to identify more clearly where they are and where they should click to access the content.
Explicit the "log-out" button.
Changed the main access icon from "profile" to"settings".
Substituted the log in option "phone" to "email".