THE CLIENT

SubjectToClimate (StC) is a nonprofit online connector of climate change education resources for all. I had the dual role of a monitoring and evaluation as well as a UX researcher. My mission was to prepare StC's beta platform for its August 2021 launch. Founded during the pandemic, StC still operates as a fully remote team, with employees all over the world.

THE PROBLEM

As I delved into this project, our objectives became twofold: preparing the platform for its imminent launch and formulating a long-term strategy. This journey was steered by into two pivotal areas:

Meeting Teacher Needs & Enhancing Usability:

I began by scrutinizing whether teachers were truly finding the resources and results they sought. This entailed assessing the appropriateness of our content, the efficiency of our processes, and the user-friendliness of our interface.

Metrics and the Feedback Loop:

The next challenge was to establish an effective feedback mechanism that could measure and inform our intended outcomes. This encompassed the development of organizational processes and the implementation of impact measurement strategies.

In this unique role, I seamlessly melded the worlds of Monitoring and Evaluation and UX Research. Instead of rigidly reporting findings solely at the end of the process, I adopted a cyclical approach aligned with our design sprint schedules. My contributions included frequent reporting, featuring midway progress reports and recommendations. These insights helped the founders shape StC’s strategy and determine priorities for future development, as well as swift, essential adjustments in time for launch.

PROCESS

Logic Model

Our collaborative journey kicked off with a workshop, with the founders and department heads to develop our organizational logic model. This model interconnected all program resources and activities (including features from the platform) with our overarching vision and mission.

Menu of beta site 
screenshot showing menu of beta site showing key activities included in logic model: Resources, Lesson Plans, & Community

What stood out immediately is that the Library and Community features had no resources dedicated to them, no employee assigned a role, and they did not directly contribute to output and outcomes. At the same time, it became apparent that a community has started to evolve with newsletter readers and internally within the task force of content and resource creators.

Screenshot of logic model generated from workshop highlighting relationships, and lack thereof between resources, activities, outputs and outcomes.

As we analysed the logic model, a curious revelation emerged. The Library and Community features had no dedicated resources or a clear outcome, yet an internal community had already begun to take shape within the task force of content and resource creators. The leadership team, already had a clear stategy in mind with planned feature builds and a clear grasp of prioritization based on impact. Consequently, the marketing team's focus shifted towards cultivating the community through our professional presence in research, reporting, event participation, and social media engagement. The community found its home on a Facebook page, while the library seamlessly integrated into 'my profile’.

Accessibility & Visibility

As many bootstrapped startups, StC still had no UX designer, so I needed to flag some basic accessibility issues such as color use, contrast, text size, readability, and link colors. 

Visibility and readability issues highlighted on resource database fro beta site.

User interviews underscored these concerns. For example, users failed to notice notice crucial elements like the tagging button on resource images until it was explicitly pointed out.

Comparison showing the current redesign to improve visibility and readability of action buttons with highlighted key information

To ensure a smooth launch, the platform team prioritized addressing these issues, and the primary recommendation for long-term sustainability was to onboard a designer for future builds.

Usability

Improving usability became a long-term project, taking over a year to implement all the recommended changes. The work required setting up a data collection infrastructure, backend development, and refining the content development processes.

Our quest to understand our users led to invaluable insights. Clear patterns emerged from user interviews, surveys, and discussions with team members and contributors. Early adopters, passionate about teaching climate change, fell into two categories: experienced teachers seeking resources and younger teachers in search of comprehensive lesson plans. Their feedback, however, echoed common themes:

  • More resources: particularly for specific age groups and subjects beyond science.

  • Consistency across the site: including content quality, formatting, and tagging.

  • Frustrations in keyword search functionality.

Our action plan for addressing these issues was encapsulated in the redesign of a single resource.

Development plan that resulted from feedback of UX research reflected in the design build

We began by eliminating the landing page, which had initially prompted users to filter their searches. Some users appreciated this feature but found it difficult to return to it. Others expressed frustration with the back-and-forth navigation. Consequently, that landing page was scrapped entirely, and the search bar was integrated into the homepage.

User hovering unsure of what to select from landing page search bar

USABILITY: SEARCH ENGINE

Users expressed frustration with the keyword search function, which often resembled the complex AND/OR functions found in academic paper search engines. Additionally, the search results only displayed the number of hits at the bottom of the page, and this information was visible only when the number exceeded nine. Given that nine resources couldn't fit on a single screen without scrolling, this limitation was highlighted by several users.

Addressing these issues involved a significant shift to Universal Search, requiring collaboration across teams, a new build, SEO optimization, and months of collaboration with the content team to establish intuitive tagging hierarchies for resource types. 

Evolution of resource tagging showing development of an hierarchy

SOLUTION

Based on our research, the redesign focused on helping teachers find what they need. The new improvements were reflected in the homepage including a search bar at the top and current topics a teacher might need quick access to following the school calendar.

New homepage showing search bar and featured resources and news.

The search engine allowed teachers to easily filter resources in the sidebar based on their needs. 

New search engine showing updated resource typees and universal search

CHALLENGE

Before Universal Search and SEO optimization could commence, we faced the challenge of collecting user data effectively. Our users were not required to log in or create accounts, and many of our actions led to external links. Consequently, measuring our impact in making climate change education accessible to all remained a challenge. While we've updated our data collection methods with integrations like Hootsuite, we still lack concrete insights into whether users implement our lessons in their classrooms, aside from occasional survey responses, and formal case studies.

Another challenge StC will continue to face is staying current. As StC continues to grow its database, it needs to stay up-to-date, and relevant. The organization works hard on maintaining rigorous processes to ensure that (see upcoming case study on processes).

CONCLUSION

Reflecting on this case study, if I were to work on this project all over again, I would have perhaps taken the time to reconsider the definition of community. This exploration could be an avenue for understanding the real impact of StC’s resources on students within their classrooms by developing closer relationships with its users.

Following StC’s progress closely, they are implementing a scalable strategy that involves close collaboration with communities in various states across the US. This shift redefines ‘Community’ as a tangible and active presence built on the ground through partnerships with local organizations and advocates, moving beyond merely a tab on the website.