A Redesigned Tool for Camp Kesem

Figure 1: Official Camp Kesem Logo

What is Camp Kesem?

Camp Kesem is a national 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization run by passionate student leaders who are dedicated to providing year-long support to children impacted by a parent’s cancer. One of the primary ways Kesem provides support is through a free, week-long summer camp where these children can connect with others who share similar experiences.

Camp Kesem has over 100 chapters across the country and continues to grow in numbers. I discovered Camp Kesem my freshman year at the University of Georgia and completely fell in love with the organization’s mission and people.

At camp, one of our most popular activities is messy games!

Kesem Force: A Platform for Kesem’s Student Leaders

As a part of a chapter’s executive board, you are given a shared account on a platform called Kesem Force. There is a ton that goes into planning a summer camp, especially one that plans to serve over 150 children impacted by a parent’s cancer. Kesem Force is a platform designed to help student leaders keep track of important documents and milestones throughout the year such as fundraising, camper and counselor applications, and camper orientation calls.

The Problem

While Kesem Force is an important tool to utilize throughout the year, its current design is miserable to navigate through. The information provided on each page is overwhelming, especially for a college student who is trying to learn how to use it (Figure 2).

The first time I ever used Kesem Force was my sophomore year in college, and let me tell you the word overwhelming was an understatement. The platform is supposed to act as a hub for all information that we may need as students to begin planning for camp, but I had a hard time locating anything helpful. Camp Kesem provides documentation in Google Docs, but with the busy schedules that we have as students, it was difficult to find time to sift through all of the information.

“I’ve been using Kesem Force for roughly three years and I still can’t navigate it easily.”

— Past volunteer coordinator

One of the many positions on our executive board is called an outreach coordinator. Two months before camp, outreach coordinators are responsible for completing orientation calls with the parents of our campers in order to collect necessary information we need before they arrive at camp. This not only helps with camp preparation, but also creates a trusting relationship between us and our campers’ parents.

Figure 2: This is the current “Orientation Call Progress” Report page. You must scroll both vertically and horizontally through over 100 camper applications.

According to one of our outreach coordinators, Kesem Force makes the orientation call process a lot more taxing because of the amount of scrolling you must do to get information you need during the call (Figure 3 & 4). She wishes for an easier method of recording orientation call notes while speaking with the parent.

Figure 3: The top of a camper application page

Figure 4: You must scroll for a long time through a camper’s application just to get to the Orientation Call Details. This is where you enter notes and other information during a call with a parent.

Our outreach coordinators end up creating their own spreadsheets for the orientation call process since they cannot risk attempting to edit a camper’s application and adding in notes while speaking with a parent (Figure 5 & 6). As they put it, “it’s more stressful and time consuming entering all of the information on Kesem Force than it is speaking with the parents.”

Figure 5 & 6: You can see the difference between an applications normal state vs its editing state. When you click to edit, all of the information is mixed around which can cause confusion.

“As a member of the executive board that uses Kesem Force very often, I believe that it is an essential tool for us to give our campers the best experience possible. That being said, it definitely needs a lot of renovation. The platform base feels outdated, and has tendencies of lacking user-friendliness.”

— UGA’s outreach coordinator

The Solution

While there are many aspects of Kesem Force that could be redesigned, I decided to focus on the orientation call process that our outreach coordinators must painstakingly go through.

Persona

To begin the redesign journey, I created a persona that will help me guide my design decisions. Read about Lisa Jackson, a recently selected outreach coordinator, in the chart (Figure 7) below.

Figure 7: Lisa Jackson’s Persona Profile

Customer Journey Map

The next step was to create a “current-state” customer journey map (Figure 8) of Lisa to view the steps she takes to complete an orientation call while using Kesem Force. A few major problems that arise are listed below:

• While viewing the orientation call report, it is difficult to determine how many campers have been called vs have not
• There is too much information for the new user to view all at once
• It’s difficult to find the orientation call section in a camper’s application
• There is no easy way to jump from one camper application to another if they are a part of the same household
• The user must go through so many steps just to take notes; this can distract the user from the conversation with the parent

Figure 8: Lisa’s Journey Map

The Sketch

Before playing around with any prototyping software, I sat down and sketched out my ideas on paper. Below you can see my rough sketch of the Orientation Call Progress Report page (Figure 9) as well as a glimpse at the new structure of a camper’s application.

Figure 9: Sketches of Redesigned Kesem Force

With this sketch, I was able to visualize my initial thoughts of the redesigned pages and share it with some of my peers for feedback. One of our outreach coordinators reiterated the importance of being able to quickly view multiple applications from the same household.

Figure 10: The current Kesem Force site displays the number of applications in a household, but does not specify who and how to get to their applications.

“You can only view one application at a time, which is very inconvenient when you are speaking to a parent with multiple campers that each have specific needs.”

— UGA Outreach Coordinator

Together, we came up with the idea to include a button on the right side of a camper’s application that would display a dropdown of that camper’s siblings if applicable. Once I found confidence in my design concept through the sketch, I moved on to Adobe XD.

The Prototype

You can view the full prototype while continuing to read, or follow along with the screenshots of the prototype below.

Finding the Right Applications

I recreated the “Orientation Call Progress Report” page by removing the large, overwhelming table full of applications and replaced it with a pie chart and a smaller table off to the right.

Figure 11 & 12: When a user clicks on one of the pie sections, the list of applicants show up on the table to the right.

When a user, let’s say in this case Lisa, clicks on one of the sections of the pie chart, applications pertaining to that specific pie chart section will show up in the table to the right (Figures 11 & 12). When Lisa clicks on the number below the column, “related applicants,” a dropdown appears and Lisa can view the names of applicants in the same household (Figure 13).

Figure 13: A dropdown allows for the user to see exactly who is in the same household, even if applicants have different last names.

Now let’s take a look at John Doe’s application in the “did not call” section.

Applicants of the Same Household

Let’s say Lisa is currently on a call with John’s mother and she needs to quickly view his sister’s application. Lisa clicks on the button “View all apps in the household” and a dropdown menu appears (Figure 14 & 15).

Figure 14 & 15: John and Jane’s applications with a dropdown menu to easily access other applicants in the same household.

Once she clicks on “Jane Doe” her application appears. Lisa manages to get the information she needed and returns to John’s application by following the same steps. This new addition to the camper application allows Lisa to quickly bounce back and forth from siblings’ applications without needing to return to the report page and searching for their names.

Taking Notes During the Call

Now that we are back to John’s application, the call continues. Lisa is able to scroll through John’s application while the Orientation call details remain fixed to the left of the page. This aids Lisa in juggling between the call, taking notes, and reading the application.

As a new outreach coordinator, Lisa needs some guidance during the conversation with John’s parent. She clicks on each “Orientation flag” and they open to a new tab with corresponding scripts she can read (Figure 16).

Figure 16: Orientation Call Flags are now a hyperlink that takes a user to the corresponding script.

It’s now time for Lisa to take down some notes while she listen’s to John’s mother. Rather than clicking a pencil icon to enter an editing state, all she has to do is click on a button and a text box will pop up beneath it (Figure 17). A date and initial box is also included to help remind Lisa about this important step as it was previously only mentioned in the lengthy documentation papers.

Figure 17: The new add notes button allows the user to take notes easily during an orientation call.

Lessons and Shortcomings

Designs are never perfect, not even a redesign. While I am extremely happy with the prototype I’ve created, there are still some things that need work.

In the next iteration, I suggest focusing on a better way to let the user know which applicants are in the same household on the report page. While my redesign managed to make that somewhat more understandable, there must be an even easier way. Perhaps the reports page only shows each “household” that applied and the user can click to view each applicant in that particular household in an overlay or completely different page.

This project was a great way to put my new knowledge of customer experience design to the test. I’m eager to continue expanding this knowledge and eventually utilizing it in a professional environment. Who knows, this could be the start to a really fun and interesting career in user-centered design.

Feel free to check out and watch a quick video presentation of my project.