INTEGRATIVE CONSERVATION CLINIC
Working in a group of 7, we have worked alongside our client from William & Mary Institute for Integrative Conservation. This project was conducted over a 7-month time period, with weekly team meetings and bi-weekly meetings with our client.
How we began…
We began our secondary research to learn more about conservation since most of our group had little to no real understanding of what is included in conservation. From there we started recruiting participants for user interviews so we could learn what needs are not yet fulfilled within conservation.
Competitive Analysis
Other websites offer similar information, so we had to find a way to stand out from the others.
With all of these competitors, we noticed there was still something missing. A different way to find useful resources within conservation.
Forestry Technicians
Wildlife Professionals
Community Conservation Advisors
Who were our users?
Aquatic Biologist
Environmental Conservationist
Conservation Educators
From our users, we were able to create personas. We had The Community Builder, The Matchmaker, and The Bridger. All of these personas play different roles within our project.
The Bridger acts as our information pipeline. This persona wants to act as a reliable source of information and encourage active participation from their community by directing them to helpful tools and resources.
The Community Builder uses their research to provide information to education centres and prides themself on sharing their knowledge. This persona finds it frustrating to sift through the amount of information out there and hates how the media often only reports on the bad news instead of positive actions.
The Matchmaker focuses mainly on the engagement of the community. Their goals include finding new tools to help create region-specific events and creating a balance of responsibility between professionals and the community. This persona finds it difficult to find and process new information in a timely manner and believes that certain areas of research lack engagement.
Interview Findings
Upon reflection, our group was able to highlight three main themes that appeared throughout our interviews:
Many users indicated that there was so much content and so many places to find it that it can become overwhelming.
They also expressed frustration and confusion when sifting through the information.
There is so much person-to-person communication within conservation. Most of the communication is done via long email threads that users find themselves lost in, and take up too much room in their emails.
Users also noted that they often have communication with other people in their community, not just their direct co-workers.
We also noted that users are looking for engagement from the community.
Users did note that in some instances hands-on engagement is preferred, however, digital engagement is useful when it provides easy-to-understand information that can be used on or off the field.
We could now begin lo-fi prototyping
From our research, we focused on creating a sitemap of all the pages that would be necessary and from our ideation sessions, we envisioned the various functionalities our site could provide as a design solution.
Of the various functionalities, we included a:
Map function to help promote engagement on the site.
Filter function for users to easily narrow their results both at the initial search and for later use throughout their research journey.
Connect function to allow users to connect and follow other users on the site.
From our findings, we were able to begin ideating
We began investigating an interactive map where users could join our hub and find conservation information specific to their region. They could connect with others and find what conservation actions they are taking. Another idea we had at this point was a discussion forum where users can chat about conservation practices, share ideas, and ask questions. The discussion could be organized by region or watershed to keep information relevant to your area.
We used these ideas when creating our storyboard in the next section, but first, take a look at some images from the ideation phase on the whiteboard before bringing the design to life using Figma!
Our Storyboard
The storyboard pictured here captures some of our ideation as these conservation practitioners go from being overwhelmed looking for this information to presenting their findings to local businesses and informing them about how their actions make an impact.
1. First, we have our conservation practitioner looking for credible and region-specific information regarding watershed conservation for businesses.
2. They are overwhelmed with the amount of information and don’t know how to move forward.
3. To get some help, the conservation practitioner emails their colleague for advice on where to find resources related to this topic.
4. After being referred to the conservation hub, they are now feeling hopeful about their research.
5. Through the conservation hub our conservation practitioners find information about the watershed in their region using the interactive map and discuss their knowledge with members within the hub.
6. Finally, they are happy that they have easy-to-understand, region-specific content. The conservation practitioner is able to easily articulate the information to local businesses to improve their waste effect.
We also conducted a card sort and a tree test
We were interested in seeing what terminology users would use when sifting through potential filter options. Using Optimal Workshop, we conducted an open card sort.
From the results, we noticed some similarities in the types of cards that were grouped together, but not much similarity in the exact terms the users came up with.
For example, the filter option “Plant” was sorted into “Ecology”, “Forestry/Ecology”, “Natural World”, “Category of the Natural World”, “Living Things”, and "Things”. These labels all show a similar correlation. However, without users providing the same name, our results showed several categories for many cards. As a team, we further analyzed the categories for each card and created a cohesive label. Our further studies proved that these labels were intuitive for our users.
For our tree test, we provided users with the following 2 scenarios:
Imagine you found a really interesting article on turtles in Ontario. You marked the topic and want to relocate it to show a colleague for some research they are doing. Where would you go to find this article from the past?
You came across an article by John Muir and really liked his work. You added him to your contacts and now want to find his information to add him on LinkedIn. Where would you go to do this?
This allowed our team to see where the users expect the saved articles and connections within the site.
With these insights we began iterating our current design
From the Card Sort:
We were able to come to a more solidified understanding of how language within the conservation field is used to describe topics and groupings. Using this knowledge, it was then applied to our filter function.
We have 45 topics for the filter function
Users contributed to creating 38 of those cards and all 6 of our groupings in our Lo-fi prototype.
The main groupings that testers helped to create within the filter function include “Field of Study”, “Ecology”, “Invertebrates”, “Vertebrates”, “Habitats”, “Continent”, and “Date of Publication”
Many of our categories surfaced from the card category labels however, during our post-study conversations users also noted other cards and categories to consider. We further tested these filters in our usability tests.
From the Tree Test:
We were able to solidify our understanding of user journeys through our site’s information architecture.
With our first task centred around the article search, 5 out of 7 testers passed this task. Having most testers succeed with this task demonstrated the effectiveness of our information architecture centred around the search function.
With our second task centred around adding contacts, 5 out of 7 testers failed this task. Having most testers fail to complete this task demonstrated the faulty positioning we had for our connection function within our site.
Usability Testing and Prototyping
Our usability tests provided us with great insights into our design. We conducted multiple rounds of usability testing with different level prototypes, each with their own tasks. The results we had helped us create a filtering system and navigation for the site. With these changes, we drafted a Maze study to gather insights into how users interact with our site.
The iterations we made from our initial usability test were:
Remove saved resources and connections from the home page
Users did not access these pages from the homepage, they would rather have a navigation. The homepage is more focused on the main usage of the page when it only displays the search bar.
Add a sub-navigation under the profile icon
Users were trying to access the navigation through the profile icon rather than utilizing breadcrumbs and would rather have a standard navigation.
Add icons to the map to differentiate between the resources on the map
Only differentiating the resources by colour poses an accessibility issue. We needed to have another identifying feature.
The iterations we made after further usability testing were:
Change the label of ‘website’ to ‘web source’
This will allow users to understand they are looking at a web source, rather than being taken to a separate website.
Add clickable boxes to the labels in the legend and add a media filter
This helped with the users’ perception of the legend’s interactivity.
Add result numbers to the resource legend
This will let users know right away how many results will disappear if they filter further by the type of resource.
As you can see, we added more features to version two and created more paths through the site.
This first version of our prototype outlines our initial ideas on wireframes.
Our Product
After seven months of research, prototyping, testing, and iterating, my team and I designed The Integrative Conservation Clinic; a website for conservation practitioners to access tools and resources in various forms of media related to conservation issues and practices. Through our site, they can search for resources, save resources, and connect with the publishers (other conservationists) to learn more about their work. Our goal is for this to be an all-encompassing hub for learning, professional connections, and innovative new tools.
The main focus of the Integrative Conservation Clinic is for conservation practitioners to find tools and resources which is why the focal point of the site is our search and filters. All the results are presented in a geographical manner displaying results in their corresponding location.
Below is a walkthrough video of the final design.