From Physical to Digital: Improving an NGOs communication and feedback experiences
The present article it’s a personal reflection and a summary of the context and challenges, process and tools I used, as well as some of the outcomes achieved during a volunteering project within an NGO in Nepal.
In this 3 month project I tried to explore the integration of User Centered Design (UCD) and People / Human Resources practices in organisations. This article specifically focuses on improving employees and volunteers communications and feedback experiences through empathy, co creation and prototyping of digital products.
1. The Challenge: “Are we focusing on the right things?”
The NGO in which I was volunteering was growing fast by doing a great job attracting new volunteers and funds for the organisation. However, this external focus on getting more resources to support the community was still not reflected internally, and the NGO was struggling to cope effectively with the increased workload and the quality of the volunteers experience was decreasing.
This idea was explored and re — confirmed later when analysing the research phase insights, by which we learned that almost 6 out of 10 employees (58%) considered that the NGO had some room for improvement when it came to successfully responding to the needs and expectations of volunteers and the local community. In the same line, and as one of the employees put it during one of the interviews:
“We are still working as if we were a small NGO… We need to be able to maintain quality in everything … that’s the challenge we all have in all areas, especially with volunteers”
As you could imagine, the impacts of this situation was felt by both groups, Volunteers and Employees, alike.
On one hand Volunteers were not happy with the support received whilst volunteering in the field, as they considered that “it was not enough one to one quality time”, and also they expected them (NGO employees) “to spend some more time with us in the field to understand what we do and our needs”.
Along with that, Volunteers were also feeling the “pain” when it came to connecting with the staff, as “it was sometimes difficult to provide feedback using the official forms and surveys” as they were all in physical copies “which were difficult to store, find and access”. The consequence of this situation was that volunteers were not always and consistently completing forms and surveys required by the NGO as they should be. Which in turn, reduced the amount of updates, insights and information NGO employees received back about the experience and needs of the volunteers.
“The most of my time goes into documentation work”
On the other hand, the NGO employees who needed to be as close as possible to volunteers in order to understand more about their projects and needs, were not always and consistently being able to do it as they were spending more time than expected at the office doing what they called “documentation work”.
This “documentation work” was referred to the typing and transcription of all volunteers forms and surveys from “physical” into “digital” formats for recording and reporting purposes (ie Annual Report). There were Exit Surveys, Travel Release Forms (to request holiday days), Induction Feedback Survey, Project Handover Forms (to share what was done previously on the project you will be joining), amongst others.
These documents were given to volunteers just after their arrival, specifically during the Induction Event, for them to complete by hand writing when needed. Volunteers would finally take back the physical documents to the office, whenever they happen to visit the office Headquarters, for storage and transcription by NGO employees.
Now, try to picture yourself the amount of workload, transcription and typing required. It was all very time consuming and the process was not adding the expected value.
If 3 years ago the team was able to process and transcribe a small number of volunteers documentation, which left them with enough time for field visits, now imagine a 3x increase in volunteers to visit, as well as documents and forms to transcribe… all with the same staff.
2. What did we do? “Get everyone on the same room to co create”
Everyone, employees and volunteers, were feeling the pain, but we were also starting to have more clarity and definition about the challenge ahead. So we started pondering the following:
“How might we improve communication and feedback channels amongst employees and volunteers?”
Based on the above challenge, we thought that the most appropriate next step, was to get everyone, employees and volunteers, in the same room to present the challenge and explore if we could get to some common ideas to inform a future solution, using ideation methods and tools. So we invited nearly 20 people to a 2 hours “Ideation Workshop” on a warm Friday afternoon at the office headquarters in Kathmandu.
We divided the team in 3 groups, and after a brief explanation of the session objectives, main highlights of the research phase, and the ideation tools we would use, all groups started to diverge on ideas, to then converge on the best ones. We also gave them stickers to vote and select the best ideas by group, and then we asked them to prototype in 30 minutes a low cost and simple model of their ideas, to finally present their “solutions” back to the room.
From the session, and after all groups presented their ideas and prototypes, we found out that ideas around mentoring , communications, and even a party for volunteers were thought as possibilities to tackle the challenge.
However, and by the end of the group debrief, the initiative we all believed and agreed could have the most impact for both user groups (employees and volunteers), was to work on improving the surveys and forms the NGO was using to communicate with and get feedback from volunteers.
What if … we go digital?
Based on the resources and timings we had, and also considering that the experience it was given with current physical documents was not the best one for any of the user groups, we thought that we could “take a first shot” and explore if (free) digital surveys and forms could help us close the experience gap.
3. Prototyping: Think Big, Start (very) Small
Amongst all the physical surveys and documents we could prototype, we decided to start with the “Induction Feedback Survey”.
Why? Because it was shorter, simpler and required less effort from our side to get learnings fast. In other words, and in despite that we knew from the research phase that the more “meaty and informative” channel was the Exit Survey as it covered a lot of elements of the volunteer experience in more depth, we didn’t want to go “too big too fast” and decided to “start small”.
As mentioned before, the Induction Feedback Survey was simple if we wanted to start prototyping fast. The physical survey had only 6 multiple choice questions and some open space for comments which was very easy to “lift and shift to digital without too much complexity or approvals”. The timings of this survey were also very suitable for prototyping and testing, as the NGO had fortnightly induction sessions for new volunteers, which gave us an opportunity to learn and refine our prototype and ideas every 10 days.
So we went tangible pretty fast when we launched the first prototype of a “Induction Feedback Online Survey” using Google Forms. Along with the online form, we printed out a QR Code which was pasted outside the room in which the induction was held for the volunteers to scan with their mobiles to then complete the survey.
4. What did we learn from prototyping? Feedback & Iterations
The first learning we had after the first roll out (5 volunteers completed the first draft of the online form) was that they liked the “move to digital” as the link allowed them to complete the survey on their phones on the go and it was easy to access. We also confirmed some of our research findings about the technology habits of our volunteer group. From the research we learned that the great majority of international volunteers were between 20 and 30 years old, and from “western countries”, so digital technologies were “more or less close to them”.
But not everything was good feedback. We also learned that “we tried to do a bit too much” and that by introducing the QR Code (along with the link to access the online survey), people got confused with more than one option for completing the survey.
“Where do I go? Link or QR Code? Are they different surveys?”
We also had learnings from the employees after the first roll out and prototype. They liked the idea of moving to digital their physical forms as they could initially visualise a more efficient allocation of their workload, however “digital was new for them”. Digital online surveys and forms, were not widely used in the company and they didn’t know how to use them effectively.
So we saw an opportunity to empower them to better use these kind of tools, and we did some briefing/training sessions with staff and management on the use of digital surveys and forms, and also a bit of data processing (Excel) and analysis for better decision making.
It was amazing to see that the team as soon as they started experiencing the first prototype by themselves, plus that bit of training they received, they started to see the value of the change and they wanted to get on board. In other words …
… They started to believe on the proposed change when they saw this initiative moving “from an idea to something they could touch”.
Following the final debrief, and based on that initial good reception from the volunteers, and also with the NGO team up-skilled and onboard with the proposed new way of working, we decided that we had an opportunity to design a second and simpler prototype of the Induction Feedback Online Survey; and even more, to also take the learnings from the first prototype to scale up and digitally re-design some other, more complex and detailed, surveys and forms they were currently using (Exit Survey, Handover Form).
5. What did we achieve? Outcomes & Results
In despite that we had only a few rounds of prototyping, and also considering that I didn’t stay in Nepal for long, it’s hard to proof with 100% accuracy a long lasting change of our design efforts. However, I can happily say that whilst I was still there I personally saw the following initial evidence about impact:
Improved Volunteer Experience:
- Following a few weeks of using the new digital Exit Survey, 75% of the volunteers commented (within the survey) that they liked this move from “analog to digital”.
- The Project Handover Form, key document to ensure a good induction for new volunteers, started to be sent now digitally, to upcoming volunteers improving the recruitment experience, specifically allowing a better match between volunteer experience, available projects and understanding of day to day responsibilities.
Customer Centricity:
- Employees started to spend less time in transactional work (transcribing) and more time in strategic work (improving volunteer experience) as all the data was directly being registered by each volunteer using digital tools.
- Also, by having access to data which was “digestible” and “already structured” by the digital tool, the team had more insights to make better, and more informed, decisions when working with volunteers.
Digital Workplace:
- NGO employees were upskilled on the use of a new (and free of cost) digital workplace tool.
- The team managed to move some company processes and tools closer to their end user habits and ways of working/living (digital, mobile, always connected)
Corporate Social Responsibility:
- As the team started to hand out less physical copies to collect feedback and connect with volunteers, the printing requirements started also to go down.
Do you want to get to know more about other People Centric Design initiatives we also implemented in this NGO in Nepal? Click below to learn more about each specific initiative:
Learning Experience Design in NGOs “From Training to Learning to Performance”
