Bringing a community together on a member engagement portal
The Member Engagement portal was the center for everything a user would need in their community. It was the primary digital platform on which the member could engage directly with their organizations and their fellow members. The portal was a host to various tools such as managing personal schedules, donations, and education.
My role
UX designer, UI designer, researcher
Company
Parishsoft (now under Ministry Brands)
Category
Web application
Focuses
Dashboard
The design challenge
The most important thing to Parishsoft clients was their organization’s members.
How could we help the organization serve the needs of their members better?
How could we increase, measure, and help sustain member engagement?
At the time the client’s organizations were struggling to bring their members to the existing portal, which offered a lot of time-saving features and documents. Instead of having the members rely on the organization to do all the work, we wanted to empower the members to take control of their own data and to help them build their community. We wanted to encourage them to become ambassadors within their community.
The original solution was cumbersome, outdated, and confusing. It needed a new redesign with a touch of modern flare.
The process
We conducted research on the current channels in which the members receive their information from the organization. We asked ourselves:
How were they registering for events now?
How did the members manage their schedule and in the event of changes, how did they interact with the organization?
We then identified and analyzed the users’ key tasks and needs in registering for events, managing events, and volunteer opportunities. With this data we created the wireframes, concept mockups, and handed off to developers for low-fidelity coded prototypes.
The solution
Nothing said engagement more than a customizable dashboard for member event & registration. Our challenge then was to create a member portal in which they could handle their registered events and volunteering opportunities. This member portal could also serve as a way for the organization to post announcements for events and volunteering opportunities, in which the member could enlist. This would keep the members involved in the community, using the online portal as an interaction point.