Hello Neighbour is a purely research-based project and one of my first. As an expat myself a few years ago, I was alienated from the community mainly because I was too afraid to say hello to someone who lives next door. So it's easy to understand for me that 1 out of 4 people lives somewhere with no sense of community. Sorry, the source leads to another source, but let's say this is true.

While many wouldn't consider their neighbour as a friend, a large portion are still willing to ask a favour or two, like feeding a cat. That makes me think that people are eager to start a social connection with their neighbours. However, there might be a missing medium that would help maintain this connection.

Problem statement

How might we help people to be active members of the neighbourhood community and how to encourage them to be more involved in the neighbourhood community?

First things first

I based my process on the double diamond theory, which probably every UX noobie knows. I first started with the interviews to learn what type of medium people need and what kinds of individuals you can find in communities.

Then, I phrased my hypothesis and started to look for opportunities and challenges related to the idea of the community medium. Lastly, I began to empathise my projects with personas and sketched some low-fi wireframes on paper.

Discovery Phase

Interviews

With the knowledge of the design process and the image of online communities, I conducted interviews with people who live in large neighbourhoods and tight-knit communities as well.

Goals of the interviews

• Define people’s common behaviours interacting with neighbours
• Define people’s common behaviours in local online communities
• Determine what people like and dislike about the neighbourhood
• Determine what people like and dislike about local online communities

Based on the responses received, I was able to cluster them in common themes and patterns with affinity mapping help. Below you can see the main findings that I was able to pull out from the interviews and which later I'll be able to change in actionable items.

Findings & Insights

➡️ #1 interview insight: People struggle with social interactions.
People usually feel more confident online rather than in real life. A large portion of my interviewees said that they feel better if they first meet the person online.

➡️ #2 interview insight: People hardly know their neighbours.
This insight only confirms that the people living in some neighbourhoods usually don’t know their neighbours and see them only a few times a month. Almost half of my interviewees told me that they wouldn’t recognize their neighbours face on a street.

➡️ #3 interview insight: People need a community leader.
A large number of interviewed neighbours said that they would like to be a part of the community. However, they want to have less responsibility to make this community go.

➡️ #4 interview insight: People are motivated by others.
People are more likely to attend a social event or participate in charity fundraising when they are motivated by other people.

| “I prefer to do things with others. That’s is what motivates me. I’m not a self-starter.“

➡️ #5 interview insight: People like to be informed.
A fast spread of information can increase people’s reactions to events happening in the neighbourhood. Three of my interviewees said that they find it difficult to learn about the event after it happened. The same amount thinks that having information about crimes in the neighbourhood on hand will increase their sense of vigilance.

➡️ #6 interview insight: Generation differences in the use of digital tools might lead to exclusion.
Some of my interviewees find it difficult to use mobile devices and complex apps.

| “I don’t want to be excluded only because I’m a bit older.“

Define Phase

Bear with me, I know that there is no pleasant iconography or images. But sometimes, well it doesn't have to be... 🤷

Opportunities & Challenges of Community Medium

At this stage, I already know that to bring people together, there must be a faster and more comfy medium than words of mouth and a friendly smile. Online medium would be an area I'd like to focus on.

I believe that creating an efficient mobile app that provides services suitable for initiating and maintaining contact with neighbours, for those people, will achieve a higher rate of community involvment.

I'll know that this is true when I see a weekly number of posts to be 15 at the end of 6 months period after launching the app.    

➡️ #1 Opportunity: Increase a sense of identification
Local community apps may increase a sense of identification with the neighbourhood and increase a feeling of belonging. The user who uses the app will perceive their neighbourhood environment more positively.

➡️ #2 Opportunity: Community preservation
The sense of belonging can also lead to a need for supporting the community by creating dedicated funds for open space preservation, preservation of historic resources or development of outdoor recreational facilities.

➡️ #3 Opportunity: Faster and more convenient access to information
Well build community medium can share the necessary information for the users in an instance, for example, area development plans. That can allow a faster reaction of interested people in topics they are interested in.

➡️ #4 Opportunity: Engaging the local community in social actions
Locals are keener to participate in neighbourhood social actions and events. An online community, for example, can help with charity fundraising in a neighbourhood that could never start without it.

➡️ #5 Opportunity: Safety as a part of a strong community
A developed sense of belonging can also lead to keeping the neighbourhood safe. An online connection can help with organising neighbourhood watch groups and preventing crime.

➡️ #1 Challenge: Lack of moderation
Lack of moderation is one of the problems in online communities and sometimes leads to giving up in a desire of being a part of this community. Social media has the power to affect social change in society.

➡️ #2 Challenge: Fuelling community vigilantes
Social media and online communities have the power to affect social change. Some people find social media an excellent place to undertake law enforcement in their community without legal authority.

➡️ #3 Challenge: Showing depressing part of the community
Access to an online community can distort the image of the community that the person lived in.

➡️ #4 Challenge: Elderly exclusion
Online access to the community can lead to exclusion in aged people who in many cases are mobile and computer illiterate.

Building an Empathy

Using the quantitative and qualitative data from interviews, I defined the three target group profiles, Edward (Pensioner, 55), Julia (Designer, 25) and Alyanna (Student, 20), to better empathize with my main user groups and prioritize goals according to their needs.

I referred to them throughout the entire product development process. Each persona had a scenario that identified the user's realistic goal when working with this app.

Develop Phase

I've created a low-fidelity prototype with the application's general structure to test its usability quickly. I could make adjustments to the prototype without costly digital implementation.

Below you can see some of the scenarios and findings from the first iteration of the designs and usability test with the primary users.

• Add a new „For Sale” post;
• Invite a new neighbour to the community;
• Search for „Neighbour Tips and Tricks”;
• Choose the Advocate role.

I asked participants to continuously speak out loud about what they were seeing and thinking – this was treated as a conversation.

Aftermath

#1 Remember to be inclusive
Creating your personas and knowing who your users are is extremely important. This way, you won't miss anyone while you start building your prototypes.

#2 Keep in mind comfort and intuitiveness
When you build and place components on your screen, always keep in mind how the user will interact with them? How are they usually use their mobile? Arched sliders might look pretty and cover available white space, but they are incredibly uncomfortable for the user to use.

#3 Give your users support when they need it
Please don't waste your users time on a lengthy onboarding that they might not remember at all. If you find some situations or components where the user might feel confused about something or need to know about something before they continue, right there you can put helpful information, and that's, in fact, something the user will read.

Background

Stropro began redesigning its entire platform with a vision of becoming Australia's biggest self-directed wholesale investment platform and community.

After carefully assessing the steps needed to upgrade the platform's experience, my team and I decided to start with changes in the onboarding process.

My goal

Apply an evidence-based methodology that involves end-users throughout the design process to design a solution that is trustworthy and simple to use.

Challenges

➔ Creating a simple & intuitive experience for different types of users.

Typical wholesale investors in Australia are two different personas. While building the onboarding experience, I need to think about a reserved, cautious planner who is usually not tech-savvy and, on many occasions, needs help on every step of the onboarding. There are also impulsive, growth-oriented users who use their mobile phones daily and care about their time, so the access to the platform should be instant.

➔ Obeying the law & due diligence.

As per Australian law, Stropro must conduct a thorough and precise AML/CTF process. Additionally, as a company dealing with large volumes of transactions, we decided to rank our risk as high. Due to this fact, we require our clients to provide two identification documents.

Process

My process is based on a design thinking toolkit. I aim to incorporate the key phases of Understand, Define, Ideate and Implement in my projects with end-to-end cooperation with stakeholders, PM, developers and users.

Personas

As I mentioned, one challenge was creating an experience for different types of users. The world of wholesale investing is highly diversified but let me introduce you to one of the most common personas and types of the users I had the pleasure of dealing with.

Affinity mapping & user flow

Interviews and usability tests on an existing onboarding experience helped me understand the main pitfalls of the current experience. I clustered initial insights into a common theme. That helped me to move to the user needs statements.

Affinity map

User flow

User Needs Statements

➔ Anna, a new prospective client visiting the website, must be sure that the CTAs on a website will be displayed and explained to her correctly to proceed with the registration and onboarding process.

➔ Damien, the advisor of five clients that is not tech-savvy, needs to visualise the onboarding process's steps to estimate his time and effort to finish it.

➔ Cam, an experienced investor with multiple accounts around investing platforms, needs to receive feedback from the platform to feel confident in proceeding with the onboarding process.

➔ William, a time-saving investor, needs to know that his actions of adding a new trading account are saved to continue the process later.

➔ Jun, advisor of six clients with multiple trading accounts, needs to be sure that he doesn't need to input the exact details many times for the same client to save time and start servicing them on a platform.

➔ Vanessa, a newly adopted wholesale investor, needs to know upfront what documents she needs to add to the platform to be prepared and finish the onboarding without needing to look for them.

Usability tests - insights

User needs statements allowed me to draft a few users flows that I later translated to low-fidelity prototypes and ran tests with the same sample of the users I worked with previously.

At this stage, I presented my findings to the company's stakeholders to find common ground and understand the user and business needs.

Design decision

One of the design decisions I've made was allowing the user to assess their eligibility before providing all the registration details. That allowed us to receive a higher rate of satisfaction from the users.

Final prototype

I created a final prototype and UI library for the developers and company's stakeholders and later participated in the Quality Assurance of the project.