Streamlining CASA volunteer management by introducing bulk assignment for supervisors
Project overview
The product
CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocate) is a national association dedicated to championing court-appointed advocates for children and youth who have experienced abuse or neglect. The CASA Volunteer Tracking is a web application that enables CASA organizations to manage their volunteers and document case-related activities.
This project is one of many overseen by the non-profit, Ruby for Good, which develops web applications for social good.
The problem
Users of our tracking app often reassign volunteers’ supervisors when their team structure changes. This process is tedious, requiring many clicks to complete a reassignment, and is exacerbated when multiple volunteers must be reassigned at once. This is a problem because these organizational changes happen frequently, leading to large amounts of administrative work that is prone to user error.
The goal
Provide a streamlined approach for supervisors to assign or unassign multiple volunteers.
Success metrics
Success was measured by asking users for feedback regarding their perception of how much faster they completed the task using the new feature.
My role
Lead Product Designer
Responsibilities
Conduct user research, interpret data and qualitative feedback, create prototypes and wireframes, and conduct usability testing
The team
Product manager, lead software engineer, and myself
Project duration
June 2023–July 2023
Understanding the user
User research
During a user feedback review, a CASA supervisor recounted their experience using the Volunteer Tracking application to unassign volunteers from another supervisor who left the organization. They expressed frustration with having to individually unassign each volunteer from that supervisor, followed by individually assigning each volunteer to a new supervisor. This was described as a common task that is carried out when organizational changes occur.
Users expressed frustration over the inefficiency of this reassignment flow, describing it as time-consuming, repetitive, and prone to errors due to its manual nature.
Pain points
Supervisors reported that the current volunteer reassignment process is:
Time-consuming
Repetitive
Prone to error
The current user journey
Volunteer reassignment
To reassign a volunteer’s supervisor, the supervisor or admin user must navigate to a table of volunteers, find the volunteer of interest, and click on their profile. Next, the user scrolls down to the bottom of the page, where they must first unassign the volunteer’s supervisor. Then, the user opens a dropdown list of available supervisors and selects the new supervisor for that volunteer. The user would then repeat this process for each reassignment.
Starting the design process
Creating a Bulk Assignment Feature
Recognizing these pain points and the need for a more streamlined approach, I brainstormed possible solutions. I determined that a bulk assignment feature would alleviate the challenges of the previous reassignment flow. This feature would allow users to select multiple volunteers and update their assigned supervisor in a single action. This would reduce the time required for reassignments and the risk of errors from manual data entry.
Digital wireframes
I developed wireframes to capture and convey my idea to my primary stakeholders - the product manager and engineering lead. After confirming that this proposed feature would satisfy the user’s needs and was technically feasible, I began creating the prototype.
Refining the design
Design Review
After completing the wireframes and high-fidelity mockups, I met with the product manager and engineering lead to conduct a prototype walkthrough to identify areas in need of design improvement for this new feature. I then refined my design by incorporating the feedback I received, which allowed me to significantly improve the user experience for the feature.
Insight 1: Button visibility
When supervisors selected volunteers from the table, it was not clear that the new “Manage Volunteers” button was related to these actions. This means that this button should become more prominent once a supervisor selects at least one volunteer row in the table.
Insight 2: Selection feedback
When supervisors selected additional volunteers, it was unclear which volunteers and how many of them were selected. This indicates a need to implement a visual indicator that displays both the selected volunteers and their total count.
Before review
In the initial prototype, the "Manage Volunteers" button was initially positioned above the table and only became active after a user selected at least one volunteer from within the table. This placement failed to establish a clear link between the button and either the table itself or the process of selecting volunteers from within it. Additionally, the initial design lacked clarity in indicating the number of selected volunteers, further complicating the user experience.
After review
To address this feedback, I redesigned the feature to accentuate the connection between user actions and the "Manage Volunteers" button. In the updated design, the button is placed within the table and becomes visible only when a supervisor selects at least one volunteer. This adjustment enhances the clarity of the relationship between user selections and the corresponding action. To provide greater clarity, the button now incorporates a visual indicator that displays the total count of selected volunteers. This addition ensures users receive immediate feedback on their actions, reducing any potential ambiguity and making the selection process more intuitive and user-friendly.
The final designs
Going forward
Impact
Supervisors at CASA are most interested in spending their time assisting their team and do not want to get bogged down in administrative work. Streamlining the supervisors’ workflows minimizes their workload and improves their ability to do the work they enjoy doing.
This feature allows these users to take group actions, thereby accelerating their administrative work and creating more accurate records.
What I learned
This project taught me how to recognize and establish design patterns that can be extrapolated to future features across the application.
During my work on this project, I discovered that tables were consistently used as design patterns throughout the application. I recognized that any change I introduced to a table may need to be generalized across other tables. Therefore, I needed to develop an approach that could be universally implemented and seamlessly integrated into the existing application functionality.
Next steps
Add additional group actions to the volunteer table.
Enable group actions for other tables across the application.