The JP4 Foundation
The JP4 Foundation enriches the lives of underserved children through after-school and summer programming.
Overview
We conducted stakeholder interviews and secondary research to create a design strategy in order to provide the framework and tools for developing new and existing mission-aligned partnerships.
KEY DELIVERABLES
PROCESS WORK
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MY ROLE
UX Researcher | Design Strategist | Experience Designer
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METHODS
Stakeholder Interviews | Secondary Research | User Journey & Strategy Mapping | Multi Touchpoint Prototyping
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TOOLS
Figma | FigJam | GoogleSheets | GoogleSlides | Zoom | Whiteboarding
SUMMARY
Key Points
Problem: Develop a multi touchpoint strategy for connecting The JP4 Foundation with community organizations and recreation centers
Process: Working as a 4-person team, we examined the existing landscape through stakeholder interviews and secondary research, in order to develop a guiding strategy statement and touchpoint strategy map to direct the exploration of opportunity areas
Findings: Opportunities for increased visibility, maintenance of relationships, and development of community partnerships
Solution: We prototyped a framework and accompanying assets to facilitate client-partner touchpoints, developing a strategy implementation map, digital prototype package, and 10-minute video presentation to deliver our recommendations to the client
Challenges: In order to ensure that proposed solutions were implementable for a non-profit with a lean team, while still being progressive and future-oriented, we developed two sets of recommended solutions: one grounded in actionable present-day steps, and one geared toward a future-state corresponding with additional organizational growth
Reflection: This project emphasized the importance of understanding what is known, unknown, or assumed during the research process, and both acknowledging and overcoming barriers as a practitioner when it comes to understanding and evaluating the existing experience
PROBLEM
Problem Statement
The JP4 Foundation uses a holistic approach focused on healthy activity, healthy meals, and healthy relationships to enrich the lives of underserved Twin-cities youth. They provide after-school and summer programming to targeted communities by partnering with local schools, organizations, and recreation centers. JP4 delivers a strong service to community youth, but, as a lean team, needs actionable, user-centric approaches to communicating their value proposition effectively to each of their target audiences. The JP4 Foundation approached us with the goal of developing a multi touchpoint strategy for connecting with community organizations and recreation centers, in order to understand how to disseminate the right information, at the right time, to the right people.
JP4 has an online presence (e.g., website, social media) but makes most of its partnerships (e.g., donors, partner schools and organizations) through existing personal connections.
JP4 has some existing promotional and informational materials used when initiating conversations with potential parters, but these materials lack consistent and cohesive messaging.
Understanding the Existing Landscape
In order to understand the current experience, we conducted a stakeholder interview and deep dive secondary research into our target audience, competitors, comparators, collaborators, and existing resources.
We performed a deep dive on various topics such as city parks and recreation services, social media current and best practices, mentor sourcing and staffing models, neighborhood and community councils.
We explored existing research and partnerships, as well as strategies employed by competitors and comparators, to evaluate the effectiveness of JP4’s existing strategy in the context of similar organizations.
Approach
With our target audience in mind, we developed a guiding strategy statement and touchpoint strategy map to help frame our design goals and approach within the context of our research findings.
Guiding Strategy Statement
All user experience touchpoints for JP4 will help community organizations and recreation center leaders and decision makers to feel confident and excited, so that they are able to strengthen and unite community youth.
We will do this by focusing on developing community partnerships and identify new community resources.
As a result we hope to see a change in the number of community partnerships and visibility.
Starting with a team whiteboarding session, we organized user and client actions, noting opportunities for touchpoints and tracking emotions throughout the user journey.
A teammate led the development a digital version of the touchpoint strategy map, further exploring the visual depiction of user-client interactions and spaces to enhance and expand on existing strategies and touchpoints.
Opportunity Areas
From this approach, we identified three main opportunity areas for strategic development.
Visibility
JP4 already follows several best practices in its approach to social media given the organization's lean staffing; however, a more consistent yet adaptable approach to first-contact when initiating new partnerships may serve to more efficiently and effectively communicate JP4's mission and value proposition.
Maintaining Relationships
JP4 has a structured approach to maintaining donor relationships (e.g., newsletters, fundraising events, etc.) but lacks a consistent framework for maintaining relationships with other organizations -- particularly with those that are not current partners in programming.
Community Partnerships
JP4 has a number of key connections with community organizations, but there are still many untapped resources in the Twin Cities. A structured method for organizing and tracking both current and future relationships may help JP4 to fully utilize and manage a growing set of connections as the organization continues to develop.
SOLUTION
Touchpoint Prototyping
We prototyped a number of touchpoints in response to the opportunity areas identified, in order to visually formulate and communicate potential solutions.
A teammate led the development of a 1-pager that can be easily modified, to serve as an introduction to community organizations and recreation centers to what JP4 has to offer. This bright, eye-catching template will draw the attention of centers who currently have no connection to JP4 staff or board members.
A teammate led the development of an email strategy and cadence geared specifically toward community organization and recreation center leaders and decision-makers, for maintaining contact with both current and potential partners.
I led the development a Google Sheets resource bank that provides a listing of resources relevant to developing community and recreation partnerships. This prototype allows for quick access to organizational details, while also introducing a prioritization scheme and status tracking system.
I led the development of a project management tools report, to provide tailored information about how JP4 might best leverage industry tools to enhance their current workflow in the future, as the organization continues to grow.
Strategy Implementation Map
We developed a strategy implementation map to visually depict the role of our prototyped touchpoints in the relationship between JP4 and community organizations and recreation centers, and how they build on one another.
We used a team whiteboarding session to reframe the touchpoint strategy map as a strategy implementation map, focusing on client actions and the interplay between prototyped touchpoints throughout the process.
A teammate led the development of a digital version of the strategy implementation map, calling out key occurrences of prototyped touchpoints.
Client Delivery
We created a 10-minute video presentation for JP4 of our proposed design strategy and touchpoint prototypes, along with a digital prototype package to hand off our deliverables.
We delivered a recorded client presentation of our proposed design strategy, highlighting the problem space, opportunity areas, design rationale, implementation, and next steps.
We created a digital prototype package in Google Drive for handoff to JP4.
CONCLUSION
Deliverables
Next Steps
JP4 already enriches the lives of youth in underserved communities through healthy activity, healthy meals, and healthy relationships. With this touchpoint strategy, JP4 will have both the framework and tools to develop new and existing partnerships, fostering confidence and commitment while working together toward strengthening and uniting community youth.
Moving forward, short-term strategies can be evaluated (e.g., number of community partnerships, social media analytics), refined, and implemented, working in combination with touchpoint strategies for JP4’s other user types (e.g., program participants, donors, school leaders and decision-makers).
With future growth, longer-term strategies can be explored and realized, strengthening JP4 and the work it does, and helping to enrich the lives of underserved youth for years to come.
Key Learnings & Takeaways
Working with a non-profit with a lean team, it was important to understand current workflows and tool familiarity, while balancing this context with introducing new, enhanced, functionalities and features, so that proposed solutions were actionable and implementable while still being progressive and future-oriented.
Understanding what information may be known, unknown, or assumed is key when preparing for a stakeholder interview. Not only can it help focus and facilitate the conversation, but it also serves a purpose in both acknowledging and overcoming cognitive bias in the research process.