"Sonali established and designed a community platform for past and current users to connect with the purpose of increasing community engagement and fostering growth. She also designed a framework and materials for a community building event between funders, community members, and guests. We really enjoyed working with Sonali and appreciate her thoughtful approach to work with our stakeholders. Her work helped us to create and improve a cozy sense of community amongst our users. "
Joan Lee
@Head of Business Operations
Purpose Project
Social Impact
Reinforcing connections and fostering meaningful growth with Purpose project's virtual event and community web platform for indivduals aged 14+
Client
Purpose Project
Non-profit
My Role
Product Design Lead
Event planning and designed a
community platform
Team
Justin, Preet
Shreya, Sonali
Project Timeline
6 months
Context // Summary
Purpose Project's toolbox is a program dedicated to helping young people explore purpose and create impact for students and individuals aged 14 and above. These learners are in 52 locations across multiple schools and educational institutions in the US. Our brief was to Design a community outreach strategy to help induce a sense of community and increase PP’s reach to primary and secondary (students) audiences.
I collaborated with my teammates at CCA and worked with our advisor and professor Minnie Bredouw, (Co-founder of Purpose Project)
Project Scope
Designing a community outreach strategy to build a sense of community and increase partnerships. This project highlights end-to-end design process including understanding how communities are built, primary and secondary research and user interviews, identifying opportunity areas, co-creation sessions and testing designs with students and partners
Project Impact
Positive feedback from students and partners on our design solutions and high quality of work
Seamless dev handoff and clear documentation
Appreciation from the Purpose Project team on our contributions
Current Experience and Painpoints
We did our primary research through user interviews, user journey mapping and card sorting to understand difficulties in the current experience and find the most recurring pain points across partners and students. I narrowed down on solving for a few during this project due to a limited amount of time and our given brief.
Lack of engagement and connection between the students/individuals
The current communication channels do not get traction from students in different organizations and they are not connected during the journey or have a chance to establish connections unless they undertake it together in person or have prior acquaintance. I prioritized analyzing current communication channels and understanding the issues behind the lack of traction and engagement within these platforms for students and partners.
A great program losing out on it's impact and network
Every time a individual completes the journey, there's a significant impact in terms of student project outcomes and being one step closer to finding purpose but due to the lack of contact with individuals after the journey commences, Purpose project is missing out on potential opportunities for building a network. I focused on building a framework that helps induce a sense of community and togetherness in this learning journey, while strategizing on outcomes and opportunities for bridging the gap between students and other partners.
Leverage the power of community
There is no effective way to connect past students and current ones as of now and we recognized a need for support and guidance during this learning journey while interviewing with students in the. Alone, we can do so little; together, we can do so much! I emphasized on building students connections and focused on mentorship and guidance needed during their learning journey. Our interactions with students made one thing clear - The learning journey was isolated and ended abruptly
Understanding the community building framework
We identified a major missing theme of having a sense community within the program journey and partnerships. To understand what it meant to create a community, we focused on finding a purpose for the community to exist within the Purpose project ecosystem.
Community building principles
Our approach for community building emphasized finding shared goals and expectations to drive it forward and make a commitment to the students and partners involved . We wanted to have clarity by introducing principles that would help build a sense of community over a period of time.
Potential Opportunities
Experience mapping helped us analyze current journeys and find potential ideas in building a sense of community and increasing chances of new partnerships for growth. We mapped partners and students experience separately and zeroed down on key opportunities that would be a step forward towards community building
Create a support system
We wanted this community to be a safe space for individuals to interact and build meaningful connections.
Establish a sense of connection
Connect the large network of students + alums to help each other by sharing valuable lessons and knowledge.
Keep the ball rolling
Implement a communication channel for partners to stay connected through activities and community engagement opportunities
Have a shared purpose
The goal is to build an ecosystem of support and help in finding purpose early on to be able to make a difference and create impact at a young age.
Opportunity 1
Product page revamp
Opportunity 2
Annual community event
Opportunity 3
Student platform
Here's a video from our final presentation on how we weaved in the story of Purpose Project from a student's point of view. Please note, that the fellowship is a similar to a summer camp open to individuals interested in being part of the Purpose project and this program takes place once every year.
View Presentation
Product Page Revamp
We discovered a crucial opportunity to improve one of the most important touchpoint for new and interested students and partners. The product page did not have clear messaging on "What is the Purpose Project Journey" as well as inconsistency and confusion about the different types of plans. We approached this issue with a heuristic analysis of the website and as a phase 1 project, we revamped the product page by improving storytelling, layout and communication.
Purpose Project Fellowship
The fellowship takes place in summer every year that gave us an opportunity to introduce an annual event by Purpose project called "Foreword" for a project showcase and fun activities. The announcement was advertised through social media platforms and the event was opened up for all students and partners. We introduced a "Scavenger Hunt" activity that began from these social media platforms to the main day of the event.
Community Platform
The goal for this community platform was to create an experience of mentorship and support where learners are able to gain valuable insights and seek guidance from former students to tackle similar problems related to their project and interests.
Connect would let students speak to each other 1:1 and forums were to facilitate interactions between students and alums to establish a form of open communication. Resolving doubts or looking for inspiration made easy with this feature!
Engagement and participation perks
A tier-based community user engagement system was integrated to unlock perks based on the participation and contributions of learners to the community, such as organizing events or moderating discussion thereby incentivizing the user experience
Feedback and Motivation
Post the initial interaction with alum mentor, the student mentee would receive a notification for writing a review or write one through their profile thereby encouraging feedback and much needed positive reinforcement for alums time and effort
The Process
Our process started with divergent thinking of researching problems areas and then narrowing down on specific opportunities given our brief. We conducted user interviews during our research phase and co-creation sessions during our testing phase to blend in a new perspective and validate our decisions. As we evaluated heuristics on the Purpose project website to flag concerns; We simultaneously worked on prototyping low-mid fidelity wireframes for testing with participants for the community platform and product page revamp.
Low-mid fidelity wireframes and Event planning
We did 3 rounds of testing to finally arrive at the final solution for product revamp page and community platform. The event planning and agenda was in collaboration with the team at Purpose project. We narrowed down on activities that linked communication channels such as Instagram and Discord, bringing awareness to these platforms for students and partners to use.
Project Impact
Launched a web based community platform for mentorship and building connections that support individuals learning journey with Purpose project. We received positive feedback on our solutions by the team for our work. The event was a success and we had around 50 attendees including students, partners and the PP team.
Check out some more projects
Want to collaborate?
Back to the top
If you're a startup founder looking for an experienced freelance designer
If you are a budding designer looking for mentorship or career guidance