My role
Methods
User Researcher
Survey
Personas
Journey maps
Goal
Provide Creative Commons a clear understanding of its current membership and potential members
Duration
July - September 2020
Overview.
I took part in a design challenge put on by Design.Local, an organization that works with non-profit organizations to tackle their challenges.
My team and I had the opportunity to work with Creative Commons, a trailblazer in the open culture movement. The organization offers copyright-free licenses and promotes the sharing and repurposing of information for educational, artistic, and personal pursuits. Websites like Wikipedia and Flickr use these licenses.
Creative Commons has chapters spread across the world. My team and I worked with the Canadian chapter to provide a clear understanding of its current membership and potential members.
For brevity's sake, I've added our final presentation deck here. Otherwise, read on!
Problem framing.
In our first team meeting, we had to understand why it was important that Creative Commons continued its work in the first place. What was at stake and why is this research important?
We reasoned it's because CC is creating a "world brain" as HG Wells put it, which fuels human creativity, and facilitates our participation in culture.
Many of our (Western) cultural artefacts stand on the shoulders of giants. An example is Stars Wars, which was heavily influenced by the films of Japanese director Akira Kurosawa, from the cinematography to the costumes. And entire genres of music, like hip hop and EDM, have flourished because of our ability to cut and sample songs.
Therefore, not doing this work could mean our cultural artefacts and practices become more siloed and exclusionary.
Knowing this, coupled with the project brief, enabled my team to build a research plan that would lay a strong foundation for future design efforts.
Our approach.
Guided by this research plan, we sent out a survey to CC Canada's Slack channel. We drafted 9 questions that would shed light on our research objectives, and we had 17 respondents. Here's what we found:
Around a quarter of respondents got involved with Creative Commons within a year of learning about the organization.
Respondents thought the process for getting more involved was unclear and cumbersome.
Members became involved because:
1. They identified with the politics of the open culture movement.
2. They wanted to meet a community of like-minded people.
3. CC helped people do their jobs better.
Personas and Journey Maps.
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Nick is a young man starting his career
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He got involved with CC because of its mission and values - it's something he wants to be a part of
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He wants to be a leading voice in this movement, but his work limits his involvement
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He wants to build his skills and network, but the touchpoints with the organization are lacking
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As his involvement trails off, he's still an advocate for CC's purpose and goals
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Sandra is older than Nick and more established in her career
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She's not as idealistic. Instead, she's been educating her organization about the licenses
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She's higher up the rungs than Nick - she's volunteered, attended local summits, and completed CC's certification courses
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She feels it's difficult to reach new members
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She wants to get more involved, but she's already contributed a lot, so she's stepping back
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She doesn't have the time nor knowledge of the process for becoming a network member
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She feels the process is cumbersome
Findings.
We cross-referenced our quantitative and qualitative methods with our research plan. This is what we found:
1. CC's value proposition is providing opportunities to learn new skills and network.
Nick and Sandra are trying to balance their volunteerism and work. Recommendation: Highlight how CC's activities relate to one's work.
2. Members are motivated by social, political, and pragmatic reasons.
Since Creative Commons in a non-profit, the stakes for further involvement is fairly low. Recommendation: Draw on CC's history as a trailblazer in the open movement to increase the stakes.
3. People feel the process of becoming more involved is generally unclear or cumbersome.
This doesn't necessarily mean the process itself is unclear or cumbersome. Recommendation: Investigate the pain points associated with the membership process.
Next steps.
With these recommendations in mind, it was our team's view for CC to move further along the UX Design process.
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Focus efforts on improving CC Canada's website
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Conduct usability testing to understand how users interact with the site
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Brainstorm different layouts that better reflect users' goals
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Make the Call to Action (for further involvement) clear and concise
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Limitations & future research directions.
An important thing to note was the survey yielded 17 responses. CC Canada’s Slack channel has 169 members. We built our personas based on the quantitative data we gathered but we recognize that our work may not reflect all of CC Canada’s members.
Throughout the project, my team and I were curious to explore more research avenues. These include:
1. What is the relationship between how members learned about CC and their involvement? In other words, does learning about CC through social media vs. friends and colleagues yield different levels of involvement?
2. What products/services turn members into advocates?
What I learned.
I was keen to take on this project because it gave me the opportunity to exercise my research skills.
I learned the importance of building a robust research plan that would create a strong foundation and inform the rest of the UX Design process.
I feel UX Designers oftentimes ideate solutions too quickly, and without undertaking the proper research and defining a project's scope, there lacks a trail to why the project is important in the first place. Additionally, team members could be confused about everyone's roles and responsibilities, and how their work solves the problem at hand.
Building a research plan helps with team alignment, problem definition, and project scope.
