Brain Exercise Initiative
Empowering volunteers to combat memory loss in patients with Alzheimer's
TIMELINE
Dec 2023 - May 2023
ROLE
UX Design
User Research
TEAM
Product Manager
Engineering Manager
2 Designers
6 Developers
TOOLS
Figma
CONTEXT
What is the Brain Exercise Initiative?
The Brain Exercise Initiative or BEI is a global nonprofit organization that seeks to combat memory loss in Alzheimer's patients through simple cognitive exercises. The initiative involves university students across different chapters in the U.S. volunteering in brain exercise programs with seniors - aiming to enhance their memory and create intergenerational connections.
PROJECT OVERVIEW
CHALLENGES
With Bits of Good only being an extracurricular club, there were two main challenges that we had to face as students throughout the semester:
CHALLENGE 1
Timeline
Bits of Good works on projects in a semester by semester manner. This means that designers and developers only have 10 weeks to design and develop features to be implemented. This meant that within our two week sprints, we had to use a reactive design process to quickly push designs to developers.
CHALLENGE 2
Hand-Off
Due to projects being worked on on a semester by semester basis, many projects will get handed off from one design team to another. This would often mean designers would be working on projects based on a previous semester's work. For this project, it was important to communicate with past designers to better understand previously established design work and the decisions that went into them.
OUTCOME
After the end of our 10 weeks, this is what were able to accomplish:
Designed and implemented an admin-facing portal to track and manage volunteers
Introduced design updates to the patient-facing mobile app
For this case study, I'll only be focusing on the admin-facing portal.
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Admin Portal
Problem
In our initial meetings with the Brain Exercise Initiative, Tim - our client contact - discussed with us accomplishments from the previous semester and their specific goals to be completed for the current semester. After a volunteer-facing portal was completed last semester, BEI wanted to implement an admin-facing portal for this semester.
Currently-
There's no existing system in place for BEI to track and manage the thousands of volunteers across hundreds of chapters around the country.
For BEI, the lack of centrality for managing volunteers was a major logistical issue.
We asked ourselves -
How might we design a system for BEI to track and manage their volunteers?
Setting Design Goals
The leadership team for the BEI project, which included the product manager, engineering manager, and us two designers, had a two-week headstart before developers joined the team. In these two weeks, we had several meetings with BEI to discuss previous work, establish design goals, and plan a product roadmap for the semester.
Understanding BEI Needs
After setting goals and needs with BEI for the semester, the team needed to get a better understanding of the features that would be implemented.
For the admin portal, we wanted to get a better idea of the role of admins within BEI. This meant understanding the overall hierarchy of members within BEI. Currently, there are 6 different member statuses a person in BEI can have:
For BEI admin, they need to be able to complete three main actions in regards to a volunteer:
Change a member's access level
Change a member's active status
Delete a member from the BEI organization
User Flow
Based on previous design work and current design goals, we created an admin portal user flow that combined patient management, volunteer management, as well as an account page.
Wireframing
Instead of designing from scratch as well as to abide by our strict time frame, the team decided to use design patterns from the previously established volunteer portal. This is seen in our initial wireframes of what the admin portal would look like:
Incorporating Branding
After we completed wireframes of the admin portal, we began moving towards creating high-fidelity prototypes. First however, we needed to ensure we were implementing BEI visual branding. We created this style guide to ensure we were creating a consistent and accessible experience.
Client Feedback
Once we had completed our preliminary hi-fi screens, we presented them to our client for feedback. The client approved much of the design however, they provided critiques and corrections for a couple features.
Access Level & Admin Hierarchy
Something that we didn’t take into consideration was the hierarchy within members holding an admin status. This meant that persons above a volunteer status would then be able to view and manage members only under their position in the hierarchy.
We then redesigned the edit access level feature to match each member’s admin status level.
Final Solution
Volunteer List & Search
Admins would have the ability to search and manage volunteers. For each member, admins would be able to change their access level, active status, as well as delete their account if needed.
Volunteer Information Dropdown
Admins have the ability to view a member’s information in a dropdown. Information includes a member’s name, date of birth, chapter location, contact information, etc.
Volunteer Approval
Once a volunteer requests to join BEI, admins would be able to view a list of pending volunteers and approve or deny their join request.
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Next Steps + Reflection
next steps
User Testing
One of the big things we were not able to accomplish this semester is a full series of user testing sessions with BEI admin and volunteers due to our strict timeframe. Aside from receiving feedback from Tim, we weren’t able to gather much feedback from other users. In future semesters, the next steps would be to begin conducting user testing sessions with BEI volunteers as well as admin.
Chapter Management
The next goal for BEI is to implement a chapter management page. This would only for admins to create and manage BEI chapters across the U.S and other countries
Final Solution
Working on the Brain Exercise Initiative was truly an awesome experience! Getting to see where we started at the beginning versus presenting at Demo Day I felt was a testament to the hard work and high level of collaboration the BEI team had throughout the semester. Being able to also be apart of a project that will have a positive impact on groups that face cognitive diseases has been an awesome opportunity and one that I hope to continue being a part of either through BEI or through another non profit.
