Volunteer Project · 2024

Mutual Aid NYC

Background

Mutual Aid NYC's Resources section hadn't been meaningfully updated since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Content was outdated and misaligned with current needs, and resources weren't organized, navigable, or usable across devices, languages, neighborhoods, and disabilities.

Solution

I redesigned the Resources section to make clear what help exists and how to access it, framing "users" as neighbors with real, often urgent needs, not abstract search queries. The structure was built to hold up as the resources scale.

In this case study, I walk through how I diagnosed three barriers to finding and trusting help and the research, content, and interaction design decisions that addressed each.

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Problems

As defined by interviews  with 6 users (2 mutual aid users and 4 organizers who handle intake) and a heuristic analysis of the  Resources page.

1.

The resources page relied on broad tags that offered little room to filter by specific need or audience, leaving users to sift through an undifferentiated list regardless of their actual circumstances or intersecting identities.

2.

The resource descriptions were lengthy and overwhelming to process, with little context or visual cues to quickly gauge what the resources are or how to use them.

3.

Users frequently did not know who to contact or are otherwise not confident they are contacting the right person.

Approach

Allow for crisis-specific journeys with clear resource types & audiences

Mutual aid resources exist to meet a wide range of needs, often for people navigating more than one circumstance at once. But the resources page presented every listing through a limited set of generic tags. The redesign needed to allow for crisis-specific journeys with clear resource types and audiences, rather than treating every need and every user as interchangeable.

Methods

  • Competitive analysis of other mutual aid organization sites to understand how other groups are communicating needs and resources in their content and UI design
  • Card sorting to surface how people naturally categorize needs

Opportunities

  • Refined the language of the need category filters and called them out as color-coded tags
  • Added "Community Focus" tag to account for varying audiences (youth, LGBTQIA+, unemployed people, etc.)
  • Refined filtering to support multi-select across need categories, following standard filtering conventions vs. the original non-standard pattern, with location filtering included in the map to avoid redundant/crowded pin data
  • Ran an accessibility review to ensure usability across devices, languages, and disabilities

Simplify and standardize resource language

Mutual aid resource pages often need to communicate a lot of key information at once (e.g., what a resource offers, who it's for, how to access it), but that information doesn't need to come at the cost of clarity. Resource descriptions were text-heavy with no visual cues or content structure to help users quickly gauge what a resource was or whether it applied to them. When someone is scanning and comparing multiple resources, often under time pressure, a wall of dense text works against users taking action.

Methods

  • Content audit of existing resource descriptions to understand the overwhelm problem and establish a baseline before writing new copy guidelines
  • Scenario-based usability testing on the redesigned layout to confirm users can locate and compare resources faster than on the original

Opportunities

  • Created copy guidlines for resource title and descriptions that made the list easily skimmable and digestable when reading and comparing several resources
  • Truncated resource description to 2 lines with the option to read the full paragraph by clicking into the resource
  • Decreased the size of the map on the page while enlarging the resources list, so that the resources are the focal point of the page

Usability testing

Create a clear call to action

Resources were inconsistent in how to engage with them. If they didn't have a number, the address wasn't available. Had to click into the resources to see these.

Methods

  • User interviews specifically probing moments of hesitation or failed contact (i.e., what made someone unsure who to reach out to, whether they misidentified the organization, or abandoned the resource entirely)
  • Scenario-based usability testing redesigned resource tiles, validating that surfacing contact info directly and separating org name from title actually resolves the confidence gap

Opportunities

  • Clearly designate contact information (phone number and/or address) directly on the resource tile in the list, the key piece of inforation users need to take action
  • Indicate the mutual aid groups' name under the title of the resource (as opposed to in the title) while hyperlinking their website to their name, not only simplifying the title but allowing for another path to learn more

Outcomes

Navigating resources felt more effortless

Every participant preferred the new filtering system over the original, even as the number of resources scaled past 150.

Users found the right resource 45% faster

Clearer contact information and organization identity on each resource tile cut the average time for users to confidently identify who to contact from 29 seconds to 16 seconds.

Research participants said they'd use it

Most participants said they felt "organized" and "less overwhelming" navigating the redesigned page, and that they'd turn to it if they or a friend needed to find mutual aid resources.

Final UI