actNOW
Digital Product Design | Passion Project
Background
In response to the mishandling of sexual misconduct on college campuses, I led a team of like-minded individuals to design a platform that increases accessibility, quickly finds supportive resources, and eases reporting for survivors.
Why is this matter important to me, especially as a male? I have always been passionate about helping people and empathetic about how I would feel if I was in their position. My journey in finding an avenue to intersect my passion, technology, and social change ignited the urgency to help others BE HEARD through actNOW.
Role
Visionary
Research
User flow & user stories
Visual design
Fundraiser
Knowledge Gained
Lean UX
Being vulnerable
Product management
Trauma-informed evidence
Human-centered design
People management
Trust your intuition
Timeline
Winter 2016 - Fall 2017
Project Overview
Once an academic project to showcase the culmination of knowledge, I gained while pursuing my Master’s in Technology Management. There were prominent people in my life – shoutout to Ciara & Lee – who jumpstarted my passion for advocating and innovating for survivors and students through actNOW.
We started the project by defining the problems to solve and conducting qualitative interviews. Following the discovery phase, we narrowed down our results and selected the core problems to focus on. We then started crafting current and future state flows, a key input towards assessing actNOW’s solution architecture. Which, in our case, was a progressive web app. We wireframed the app structure, designed the visuals, and gathered iterative feedback from target users. The response was favorable, and our network of product champions grew exponentially.
Our ultimate hurdle was finding the resources and time to build actNOW.
Research Goals
Define the current state of the unwanted experiences on college campuses.
Understand the psychological factors and trauma-based evidence related to survivors.
Define survivors', students, and administration’s needs and frustrations with awareness programs and reporting practices.
Understand compliance and reporting standards nationally, regionally, and in the targeted communities.
Identify how to bridge the gaps when connecting people with assets to seek justice, healthcare, and resources.
Primary Research: Market Analysis
First, I conducted research to familiarize myself with the campus climate on sexual assault and various perspectives around “consent.” I collected information from articles and case studies on trends and challenges survivors face when seeking resources and closure. Discovering the mandatory compliance standard – Title IX – led to the understanding that institutions are required to prevent and resolve a hostile environment, including sexual misconduct.
Primary Research: Interviews
Empathizing with the target audience is a crucial step in the design thinking process, so going out and interacting with survivors, students, community leaders, and campus administration in the DC and Boston areas was essential.
Secondary Research: Gap Analysis
To build off my primary research, I analyzed digital services aiming to tackle specific issues surrounding sexual assault. I uncovered their strengths and weaknesses and determined where actNOW could fill the gaps.
Secondary Research: Provisional Personas
I created provisional personas reflecting the data I collected through user research. Understanding the target audience helped me determine how actNOW would appeal to different demographics with varying needs.
Design Sprint
In the discovery phase, we prioritized potential problems to be solved. By attending local DC Meetups, I discovered a startup accelerator – Startups Ignite – which accepted actNOW as part of their Design Sprint to help define our scope of work. In 5 days, we established our project vision and goals, what problem we were trying to solve, and gathered feedback on actNOW's service offerings.
Group Brainstorming
Through synthesizing the insights discovered in the qualitative data, we began brainstorming 'How Might We" statements to ideate the MVP for actNOW.
Service Offerings
Product Requirements
actNOW's purpose is to facilitate a survivor's ability to regain control and foster reassurance in seeking appropriate healthcare and guidance. As a survivor-centered platform, crafting a trauma-informed digital intake experience was vital. By incorporating the Forensic Experiential Trauma Interview techniques, we could define actionable moments for a user to opt-in and gather additional information to achieve progressive steps when locating resources and journaling what just happened.
Information Design
After discovering, gathering insights, and defining our focus, we defined content type definitions, information architecture, and user flows.
Team Formation
I was blessed to mature my leadership skills during this journey. It was also crucial for me to become more aware of my strengths and weaknesses to identify partners that complimented me and each other. The key themes I embodied when structuring the actNOW Family were to have:
A shared vision & mission
Transparency
Empowerment to act confidently
The actNOW Family attending a We SUPPORT the Girls community event in Falls Church, VA
A monumental experience at the Woman’s March in DC
One of Solomon’s “let me break it down” discussions, so we fully understand what is technically feasible
Human-centered thinkers making an impact
The Outcome
You may be saying to yourself; where's the development section!? I live by the mantra, "play the hand you're dealt," and play it to the best of your ability. Our team actively led community outreach activities and fundraising campaigns to source actNOW's technical development and to shed awareness on the climate of sexual assault. However, the team had unexpected family and job priority shifts, which halted the progress towards spinning up product development.
What I Learned
Challenge yourself. Step out of your comfort zone. Empower and passionately lead your team. Be the unexpected change in a societal norm where victories are slim to none.
All of the above experiences happened for a reason, and they ultimately led me to discover my career aspiration in product management, focusing on crafting social change. Being featured in ARLNow created a sense of realness toward achieving my vision for actNOW. I’ve learned to focus on the problem FIRST, and the administrative/tech startup necessities will naturally come to fruition. Secondly, by solely focusing on the product, the ability to define high-impact, less-effort features would have enabled our team to build actNOW’s MVP, with the resources we had in-house.
Ultimately, my actNOW journey is a “to be continued” story. I pledged that my next career opportunity would be to pioneer a company’s mission by managing and delivering impactful digital services.