Imagine Englewood if...
“Skills Applied
Ethnographic Participatory Observation, Interviewing, Coding, Information Architecture, Sketching, Wireframes, Interaction Design, Visual Design, CSS”
Challenge
Imagine Englewood if... (IEi) is a nonprofit community center based in the Chicago neighborhood of Englewood. Its mission is to strengthen and empower families and the youth of the community through healthy living, environmental awareness, and mentorship programs. Using ethnographic methods of participatory observations and interviewing, my DePaul group was tasked with a formative evaluation of the community center to uncover the organization's needs and to determine where it could use help.
Process
To begin, we interviewed IEi staff members, volunteers, and the center's youth group and also participated in direct observations of events and activities at the community center and the neighborhood. We used thick description in our note taking to document not only what was happening, but also to explain the context of the events.
Next, using Saturate, a web-based qualatative analysis tool, we coded our notes and organized the codes into themes.
“These themes were discovered through the coding of many hours of observations and interviews with IEi.”
From these themes, and along with the organization's needs that we discovered through the interviews, we began to see patterns and discovered areas where IEi could use assistance. We developed a list of recommendations that included the reorganization of the center to utilize its space better, various ways to pursue a consistent brand strategy, and a website to help spread its message to a wider audience.
After presenting these findings during stakeholder meetings, IEi determined that a website would meet its needs the most. Based on our findings and the center's needs, the goals we set for the site were to prominently feature its programs, show the youth of the community in a good light, provide a place to post upcoming events, facilitate easy donations, provide a blog to keep the center's youth group engaged, and begin building the center's branding. With these goals in mind, we began sketching ideas.
“Sketches produced using Penultimate sketch app on my iPad.”
We next presented our sketches to IEi and iterated the designs into a low fidelity prototype based on their feedback.
Solution
After acquiring design and content approval from IEi, we began building the site. To allow IEi to make quick and easy updates, we built the site in WordPress, which also provided easy plug-ins for the donation and blog pages. Additionally, we chose a responsive WordPress theme so that the site would not only work with current browsers and devices, but future ones as well. Following the design, we presented to IEi, professors, and classmates. The site accomplishes all the needs and goals set out during discovery and is currently serving the community of Englewood.