If there’s a new community in town and no one knows it’s there, does it make a sound?
By examining the Minnesota Technology Association’s resources, target user base, and current platforms, my team and I found underutilized areas of opportunity that, if addressed in a strategic, multi-touchpoint approach, could both increase active participation in MnTech new community programs and decrease the need for direct staff investment over time.
Roles: Research, Strategy, Design
Methods: Secondary research, strategy mapping, personas, scenarios, prototyping
Tools: Sketch, InVision, Keynote
The Big Picture
Client
Minnesota Technology Association (MnTech):
Professional association of technology companies
Project
Design a strategy to increase engagement in MnTechs new Communities of Interest
Recommendation
Employ a multi-touchpoint approach beginning with direct outreach reinforced through streamlined website architecture, intentional social media strategy, and targeted user engagement
Breaking Down the Barriers to Awareness
Secondary research showed that the tools and the audience were there, but participation was low.
After learning from MnTech about their new Communities of Interest (COIs) and implementation challenges—namely, a small staff with limited resources—my team began by conducting secondary research to gain a fuller understanding of MnTech’s engagement platforms to suss out areas of opportunity.
As I reviewed the Community Management System that MnTech was using to host its COIs, I was encouraged to find that a similar tech trade association had used the same CMS with great success. When my team convened to review our research, however, we were concerned to see that there was little participation in the COIs despite MnTech’s otherwise substantial reach and strong choice of platform. With thousands of followers on social media and membership from some of the state’s largest employers, what could we do to activate that otherwise passive base?
Screen capture of the strategy team’s digital white board featuring findings from my secondary research with team comments. Additional research I contributed to the effort provided suggestions as to the type of content that might engage MnTech’s target user group more fully.
“I have a desire to get to people who are really working in technology. . . We want more practitioners.”
— Stakeholder describing the desired user group for MnTech’s Communities of Interest
Engagement map that I created for my team detailing touchpoints for both primary and secondary users. This map drove the refinement of prototypes and my team’s ultimate proposal presentation to MnTech stakeholders.
Meeting Members Where They Are
User personas and scenarios highlighted areas where MnTech could more effectively intersect with user needs and goals.
Proceeding with the hypothesis that a simple lack of awareness, coupled with challenging user flows, were the main barriers to COI participation, I focused my efforts on creating personas and scenarios to guide the team’s prototyping work. Understanding how each prototype would speak to the users’ goals was a critical step. Through the process of developing the scenarios I noted a missing opportunity for person-to-person outreach that could connect both our primary and secondary users and help to kick-start the engagement process.
My team agreed. Weaving together my personas and scenarios with the team’s initial touchpoint prototypes, I developed a unified engagement map that would guide further refinements to our proposed strategy.
In our scenario, the primary user, Jason, was a young and eager employee of a member company who had been invited by his boss, Julie, to attend a lunch-and-learn about how MnTech Communities of Interest support professional development, career advancement, and peer networking.
As I considered effective touchpoints to supplement Jason’s in-person experience, I thought about easy ways to introduce, follow-up, and drive his awareness into action with minimal effort. Posters, brochures, fun swag, and a number of e-mail templates both pre- and post-event would make outreach easier both for MnTech and the Julie persona, and provide longer-lasting touchpoints in Jason’s experience.
Engaging the Stakeholder
After a design critique to confirm our premise and direction, the team refined and pulled together our prototypes into a cohesive experience for the stakeholder,
Connecting with designers from outside the team gave us a fresh perspective and greater sense of urgency around the importance of ensuring our strategy was sustainable without adding significantly to MnTech’s workload.
With several more rounds of iteration and fine-tuning under our belts, it was finally time to compile our work for MnTech stakeholders. We summarized our strategy and rationale both in a brief video presentation and annotated prototype packet that laid out the users’ journeys—including that of MnTech’s staff—into a seamless experience.
Excerpt from the completed prototype packet provided to the stakeholder featuring final prototypes of direct outreach touchpoints with annotations. The brochure example shown here was part of the in-person touchpoint experience I had developed to supplement onsite outreach events.
“This time next year, a benchmark for me will be our communities running themselves.”
— MnTech stakeholder describing the vision for member engagement in the Communities of Interest
Implementation timeline and evaluation metrics document outlining tactical plans and suggested measurements for success.
Planning for Progress
Considering priority focus areas in the implementation and evaluation plan would increase chances for big results with limited effort.
MnTech stakeholders had noted in our initial kickoff meeting that a single company in their association could represent an untapped user base of thousands of technology practitioners. In laying out an implementation and evaluation timeline, I kept that fact front of mind. Despite their aggressive timeline, if even a small percentage of employees at the few largest MnTech member companies decided to get on board, it would mean not only meeting, but exceeding their initial engagement goals.
Throughout the project, my team had considered tactics that would support the overall strategy with as little time and effort on MnTech’s part. Despite that aim, there was still a lot of up-front work required to get the ball rolling on self-sustainability: website updates, meetings, finalizing follow-up materials. . . Could they do it all? And if it all had to be broken down somehow, what was the most important piece of the puzzle?
One Step at a Time. . . Into the Next Iteration
Working closely with the client, I continued to develop one key piece to fill a gap in their finalized strategy.
After sharing our proposal with stakeholders, I was thrilled to learn that MnTech had anticipated my team’s member outreach plan, and agreed that moving forward with the brochure prototype I had suggested would provide the missing evaluation piece between user awareness and engagement.
Working directly with MnTech leadership, I developed a deeper understanding of how to connect their communication goals with the needs and motivations of the technology practitioners they were hoping to reach. Though only one piece in the overall effort, it represented a critical step in transforming the organization’s effort to connect with this new audience.
An updated iteration of the brochure design for a digital interface, with my notes from the stakeholder meeting.
The Takeaway
Developing an experience strategy for an organization with limited resources and a broad array of touchpoints means adding another user to the equation. Even the most well-planned strategy will crumple and fail if the people who have to translate it from paper and into the real world do not have the time, money, or bandwidth to execute it. It’s the designer’s role to consider the people who will be experiencing the environments and products they create first and foremost, but any design that also acknowledges the people who make that experience possible will be all the more effective for it.
Photo featured in header by ThisIsEngineering-RAEng on Unsplash