THE GUIDES TEAM
Hack for LA is a civic tech organization that uses technology to solve pressing problems affecting LA. The Guides Team oversees HfLA's documentation processes and trains new volunteers on the tools they need to start contributing to the org from day one.
Role: Lead PM, Content Writer
UNDERSTANDING THE USER
Being the User
Coming in as a new PM, working through the developed guidance got me up to speed on the project and its objectives. By trying to understand each step, I familiarized myself with the process we hoped to train other volunteers to complete. It also gave me insight into the roadblocks users might face while making their first guide.
Coming in as a new PM, working through the developed guidance got me up to speed on the project and its objectives. By trying to understand each step, I familiarized myself with the process we hoped to train other volunteers to complete. It also gave me insight into the roadblocks users might face while making their first guide.
Observing Others
Other folks at Hack for LA were also actively working on guides. By reviewing their processes, their questions, and how they communicated their work to others, I developed a better sense of why people choose to make guides, and what parts of the process were most important to the final product.
Other folks at Hack for LA were also actively working on guides. By reviewing their processes, their questions, and how they communicated their work to others, I developed a better sense of why people choose to make guides, and what parts of the process were most important to the final product.
PRIORITIZATION
There were three main ways I considered approaching my work with the Guides Team:
Option 1: Build out a set of instructions for writing guides, beginning to end, before testing and making any changes
Option 2: Refine the first phase of the process (Gathering Examples for a Guide) then expanding on lessons learned to inform further phase development
Option 3: Improve where and how guides were stored in the organization - starting with a strong structural foundation, but stalling any forward movement for new volunteers
Option 2: Refine the first phase of the process (Gathering Examples for a Guide) then expanding on lessons learned to inform further phase development
Option 3: Improve where and how guides were stored in the organization - starting with a strong structural foundation, but stalling any forward movement for new volunteers
Refining the first phase was my top priority. By modifying and testing new instructions for the first phase, I could use the data to improve the rest of the process without investing too much time up-front. This also meant that once we progressed the first phase from large, structural changes to fine-tuning, I could prep future phases in the background to eliminate delays before team review.
IMPROVEMENTS
Breaking it Down
The Guide Instructions were originally structured as one large presentation which included many smaller steps. The result was a document that was unwieldy and left new volunteers swimming in an ocean of new information.
I split the instructions into a series of smaller presentations focused on individual tasks to complete and added an overview presentation which outlined how to navigate from one step to the next.
How I divided the Gather Examples Phase into its main components
Visualizing the Process
Sometimes graphics are easier to follow than text instructions! To help volunteers understand where they were in the process, I added assets to visualize both the overall process (maps, tables of contents) and individual steps (GIFs, instructional videos)
Modular Tools
Having the same information in many different places made it difficult to keep all of the instructions up-to-date. Rather than storing instructions in the guide issues themselves, I created new instructions stored in a central wiki. This simple step saved us countless hours during testing and future iteration.
Previous Structure for a Guide Issue
Updated Structure for a Guide Issue
RESEARCH & PILOTING
As the PM, I drove the strategy and planning for our pilot workshop series on guide-making. This meant working closely with our UX research lead to build a research roadmap for testing the updated guidance.
PM priorities for research included key questions like:
- How intuitive is the new organization system for new volunteers to navigate?
- Does guide creation align with the expectations volunteers have before starting to work on a guide?
- Does our Gather Examples guidance effectively teach new volunteers how to use GitHub and Slack?
- What prevents a new volunteer from completing the first phase of making a guide?
- How intuitive is the new organization system for new volunteers to navigate?
- Does guide creation align with the expectations volunteers have before starting to work on a guide?
- Does our Gather Examples guidance effectively teach new volunteers how to use GitHub and Slack?
- What prevents a new volunteer from completing the first phase of making a guide?
We further collaborated on survey design and individual research plans around these questions. I left the team before the launch of the pilot, due to academic and other work commitments.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Designing content for beginners who are working independently means being cognizant of their lack of experience and eliminating any barriers to success. Guidance needs to be prescriptive, but succinct - it’s better not to assume anything is obvious, and leave no room for ambiguity.
The need for simplicity extends to the organization of instructions as well. Learners need clear signals about where they are in the process to maintain confidence and a sense of progression.