Nonprofit • Surveys • Personas
Washington Counsel for Economic & Financial Education
Overview
Our team was brought on to provide design recommendations for a non-profit website that serves 2 distinct user groups. I interviewed potential users from both groups to establish their needs, wants, pain points, and motivations when engaging with the organization. These insights were validated and quantified in a survey, then synthesized into data driven persona groups that will guide user experience and design choices for a future website build.
Role User Researcher, Project Manager
Methods Interviews, Surveys, Personas
Tools Zoom, Google Sheets, Google Forms
Interviews
The goal of the interviews was to collect a breadth of data. We wanted to know all the different resources, information, and features that teachers and business partners might want from a WACEFE website. Casting a wide net early on ensured that no key needs were missed, while the survey showed us what to prioritize.
Educators
Educators who are most passionately devoted to implementing economic and financial curriculum in their classes were consistently found to have traumatic personal experiences with financial hardship that drove their interest. These teachers tended to take additional training to expand and leverage their knowledge of personal finance for personal reasons
currently teaching economics/finance in WA state
have participated in WACEFE professional development trainings
“I have college degrees that won’t be paid off until I retire because I didn’t understand the dangers of student loans. That’s where my passion for teaching finance comes from.”
Business Partners
Motivations for getting involved with WACEFE range between deeply personal and mostly humanitarian. For those with personal experiences in matters of financial hardship, their interests in economic and financial education have grown organically over time. These partners may tend to prefer anecdotal feedback about the impact the program is having in student’s lives.
experience as nonprofit board member, donor, or volunteer
interest in supporting economic and finance education
“If it takes me a long time to figure out how to get involved, I will give up.”
Surveys
The goal of the survey was to validate interview findings while collecting data on background and demographics. This allows for a wide range of feedback to show which needs and concerns are most weighty, as well as how those needs line up with other user characteristics.
30 teachers and 53 business partners responded to the Google Forms survey. They answered questions to help me:
collect demographics
prioritize needs
rank desired features
Findings from the survey told us that…
Leveraging Motivations Outside the Classroom: Some teachers are invested in growing their own knowledge about how to make wise financial decisions for themselves, and this may be helpful for motivating teachers to take part in additional training opportunities.
Online Path to Engagement: Individuals who prefer lower commitment engagements will likely want an online path for signing up. This lowers the barrier to getting started with the organization. Individuals more focused on attaining a leadership role in the organization are more likely to want a personal connection or individual conversation to begin their partnership.
Personas
Using the survey data, I sorted respondents according to their responses and see where groups formed. I built personas around these groups as tools to distill my findings and communicate the user needs and goals that should be designed around.
Educators
Renee
43 years old, middle school home room teacher
“I just want all my kids to learn from my mistakes.”
Stephanie
31 years old, 8th grade math teacher
“You really have to work to keep the students engaged.”
About: Renee fosters close relationships with her students, seeking connections to students’ parents, and putting significant amounts of effort into developing original, dynamic teaching methods.
Motivations: Renee struggled with financial hardship earlier in life and wants to educate students on real world finance and economics to ensure that they have do not encounter the same kind of difficulty.
Pain Points: She wishes she had more time to spend on creating amazing, impactful learning experiences. She wishes she had a better handle on using computers so as to incorporate them into her lessons.
Wants: She wishes she did not need to create every lesson plan from scratch, and that there was a resource for engaging lesson plans or activities that she could reliably draw on. She wishes that financial education courses provided more dynamic resources like the ones she has created for her classroom.
Needs: Rene needs a consolidated resource for finding engaging content and ideas that she can use in her lesson plans. Trainings need to be recorded so she is not limited by her full schedule and can watch them asynchronously.
About: Stephanie wants to do a good job of teaching her class, but knows that most curriculum does not stick with students if they are not shown how it fits into their world view. Using economics and finance as a real world tie-in is just one way she seeks to to do a good job of teaching the material personal interests in economics and finance and choose to teach the subject based on those personal interests.
Motivations: Interest in personal finance, looking for real-world examples to make subject matter more impactful.
Pain Points: Finding the right economic/financial lesson content to integrate into non-finance school subjects.
Wants: More resources to find appropriate content (for grade level and subject). She would like trainings to be beneficial for her own understanding of personal finance.
Needs:
Searchable library of resources according to grade level and topic.
Copy and paste materials or video links that she can use directly in her lessons with minimal or no changes.
Business Partners
Robert
58 years old, Retired Investment Manager, Entrepreneur
“There needs to be a viable plan if you’re going to make any real difference.”
Phoebe
33 years old, Client Manager at local credit union
“I’d like to help others overcome the kinds of barriers that I encountered in my career.”
About: Robert has done a great deal of thought on the state of the world, and feels that an early education in economics and finance is the best thing to provide young people to combat societal inequalities. He has many entrepreneurial and charitable pursuits that tend to intermingle with his personal life.
Motivations: He has always had a desire to fight inequality, with his background in business he finds himself in a favorable position to help organizations make the most of of their work.
Pain Points: Robert doesn’t want to feel like a cog in a wheel. If his role in an organization is not tailored to capitalize on his skillset, he feels underutilized.
Feedback: He wants to see evidence of the growth/development of the organization or other quantitative KPI’S. These should include both business oriented indicators and student outcome indicators.
Needs:
Clear, up front messaging about the organization’s mission and plan for action
A signup process that involves interacting with organization members, preferably leaders.
About: As a first generation immigrant, Phoebe feels she and her family have overcome significant ocio-economic barriers, and wishes to uplift their communities with some of the knowledge she has gathered through her own success.
Motivations: Sharing her personal experiences of hardship and success.
Pain Points: Phoebe’s calendar is tightly scheduled between work and volunteer opportunities, so she is hesitant to join in partnerships with ambiguous time commitments.
Feedback: She wants a holistic view of student outcomes including testimonials and student test scores.
Needs:
Online signup process with clearly defined time commitments.
Search optimized website that she can find when searching online for economic education volunteer opportunities.
Results & Next Steps
I handed off an Interview Findings Report, Survey Findings Report, Personas, and a few suggested design recommendations. The client was happy to gain insight into their user base and have a solid understanding of requirements for their future website build.
Limitations & Lessons
I handed off an Interview Findings Report, Survey Findings Report, Personas, and a few suggested design recommendations. The client was happy to gain insight into their user base and have a solid understanding of requirements for their future website build.
