Redesigning the Indiana Red Cross Volunteer Experience

Greetings Volunteer Experience Team!

It was so great to meet some new faces, and see some familiar ones at our “Re-setting/Kickoff Meeting” on Thursday, March 2nd!

In this meeting, we re-kicked off this project by giving a “talkshop” on People-Centered Design, and did a bit of review on where we left off from October.

Session Agenda:
1. Talkshop on People-Centered Design
2. Review were we left off
3. Reset Timeline

Talkshop on People-Centered Design
We have uploaded the slidedeck and worksheets from the talkshop in our shared Google Drive. Within the “Team Folder – ARC Volunteer Experience,” in a folder titled 03/02: Re-Kickoff Talkshop.

Review Where We Left Off
We gave a quick overview on where we’ve been and where we left off; there have been a lot of great interviews conducted, and some sense making that has already been happening with that interview data!

Reset Timeline
There were a few folks who were unable to attend this meeting, so in order for us to fully re-set our timeline, we’ll be reaching back out to Donna and others to schedule our next meeting.

Please don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any questions, or have trouble accessing any of the files.

More soon!

Since it’s been about 3 weeks since we’ve last checked-in, we had a brief remote & in-person check-in on Friday, September 16th. (you all have been doing some incredible work helping others amidst the recent disasters across our state–thank you!)

Session Agenda
1. Status update on interviews
2. Revisiting the timeline
3. Next Steps

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Status of Interviews
Nearly all interviews have been complete and transcribed! Continue to plug in your interview transcriptions into the unpacking spreadsheet. Donna and Hadiah will be checking in with folks to make sure that all transcriptions are complete before we meet again.
Timeline:

In order to still meet our end of the year deadline, our schedule will be ramping up! We will be bringing a visual of our process and timeline to the next session to begin to plan more sessions as they correspond to the rest of the process. This includes looking at possibly meeting every week, thinking about focus groups, building in time for leadership to weigh in, and considering smaller groups to participate in prototyping.
Next Steps:

Collabo will be sending over some dates to Donna to find a good time to move forward with our analysis party! We’ll post an update when that gets scheduled, sometime in early October, which could mean meeting on a day other than Friday.
Stay tuned!

Session Agenda
1. Status update on interviews
2. Review and check in on breaking down data into Google spreadsheet
3. Next session: In-person, August 26, 2016 from 10am-12pm

Folks on the call: Tom, Donna, Theo, Collabo

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Status of Interviews
Interviews are moving forward, Donna and Theo have collected several responses and have them transcribed. Those text files will be uploaded to the Interview Data Transcriptions folder on the Google shared folder.

Next step will be to breakdown the responses into the Google spreadsheet, located in the Interview Data Breakdown folder.

If anyone has any questions about how to use the Interview Transcription Breakdown spreadsheet, please don’t hesitate to shoot us (Collabo) an email so we can jump on a quick call to walk you through how to use the sheet.

Next session (In-person): August 26, 2016 from 10am-12pm
In our next session, we will debrief on everyone’s experiences with conducting interviews and share any initial insights or themes that may have begun to emerge through talking with people. So come ready to share your thoughts, the remaining time will be analysis party time!

See you all in 2 weeks!

Session Agenda
1. Status update on interviews/observations
2. Retouch on unpacking/breaking down data
3. Next session?

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Interview/Observation Status:

Theo:
– Underway with interviews (3-4/10)
– All interviews scheduled till around mid-August

Sue:
– Planning 10-min tutorial with Donna to catch up with where the team’s at

Tom:
– Not on

Donna:
– Scheduled out till Aug 10

 

Notes:
– If your interviewee has not filled out the initial survey, consider having it with you and taking the first 10 minutes of your scheduled interview to have them fill it out right then.

– When plugging in your interview transcriptions into the unpacking spreadsheet
if you find that you have some comments that don’t quite fit into the broken down categories, then create a new column, or find somewhere on the spreadsheet to still capture them.

Schedule Update:
Next session: August 12th (remote)
Next in-person session: August 26th

Session Agenda
1. Introduction & Recap
– Design Process
– Where we’re at
2. Thing Sort Activity
3. Practice Analysis
4. Next meeting: Remote, 7/29, 10-11am

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Session Summary

The main purpose for this session was to introduce and get some hands-on practice with analyzing dense, messy, qualitative data. To do this, the group worked through an affinity diagramming activity with our brown bags of stuff.

Now that the group had a little fun and felt comfortable with affinity diagramming, we followed up with working through data collected through a single volunteer/staff person’s interview. In order to sort through the verbal responses from an interview, Collabo broke down the interview transcription into single statements in a spreadsheet. This breakdown or unpacking allows us to easily move, group, and identify patterns across the verbal responses.

To do’s
1. Keep scheduling and conducting your interviews and observations
2. Transcribe your interview responses into the unpacking spreadsheet 
3. Take some time to reflect on your experiences as a design researcher… what’s been great? not so great?

Talk to you all soon!

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Session Agenda
1. Method worksheet check-in
2. Scheduling interviews & Observations check-in
3. Data collection & transcription
4. Next session: July 15th — You’ll need to have data for this session

Click on the link to download: Worksheet-Method

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Session Summary
For our remote check-in on July 1st, we checked in with everybody on progress with the method worksheets, scheduling interviews and observations, and data collection and transcription.

*Remember:*
Once you have completed any interviews or observations, transcribe all data into a Google doc (or send us a Word doc via email!) and place your transcription/s into thw folder within our Google Drive Team folder, titled: “Interview Transcription Data.”

For our next in-person session (Friday, July 15th) we want to have some raw data (i.e. typed up interview transcriptions and observation notes) to be able to begin the analysis process!

Have a great 4th of July, team!!!

Session Agenda:
1. Intro (Welcome Duchess!)
2. Check in on initial survey and stakeholder list status
3. Shape Round 2 Research
4. Assignment
5. Next Session (Remote check-in July 1st)

Session Summary:
The main focus for session 8 was to begin shaping methods for round two. With the initial general survey sent out, and more names added to the stakeholder participant list, the team began generating more focused questions pertaining to the Volunteer Experience Map. The map was broken into 5 distinct phases (Initial Interest, Initial Contact, Intake Process, Referral, and Orientation/Start-up). Within these phases, the team worked on generating, categorizing and prioritizing specific questions to further explore the volunteer experience from the volunteers’ perspective.

The team was introduced to three key methods that could be used during the Understanding phase:

1) Ethnographic Observation, which focuses on observing people, objects, environments, messages and services within specific contexts;

2) Exploratory Interviews, which focus on uncovering useful meaningful insights and gaining empathy for participants; and

3) Envisioning Interviews, which focus on enabling participants to explore and visualize “what could be.”

The team then practiced filling out a Method Worksheet tool (which can be found in the Google Drive Team folder), that is meant to help aid in planning methods. The worksheet breaks down method planning into 7 key categories: Objective, People, Time, Environment, Activities, Tools to make and Supplies to take.

Click on link to download: Worksheet-Method

To Do for Next Session
Before our next remote check-in on July 1st, the team will be using the Method Worksheet to select and plan appropriate methods (either interviews or observation/shadowing) for different sets of questions, and will begin selecting stakeholders/participants and scheduling engagements. In the background, the team will be exploring different types of transcription devices and software in order to find the most appropriate way to capture and transcribe collected data from participants.

Talk to you all soon!

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Check-in Agenda:
1. Update on Initial Email and Digital Survey
2. Update on additions to ARC – Research Participants List
3. Begin generating round 2 participant questions

Links:
Worksheet-InterviewQuestions

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Check-in Summary:
At our first remote check-in, the team discussed the status of the Initial Email and Digital Survey, additions made to the ARC—Research Participants List, and moving forward with generating participant questions for round 2.

The timeline for pushing out the Initial intro email and digital survey is as follows:
June 10th: Donna & Hadiah will complete the Initial email and Digital Survey
June 15th: Collect feedback on email and survey from team members
June 16th: Send out email and survey

Team members are to have any new participant names added to the ARC—Research Participants List by our next in-person session on Friday, June 17th.

In addition, a pdf of the “Worksheet-Interview Questions” was posted in to the shared Google Drove folder and linked above (If you have not received access to that folder please contact Collabo (hello@collabo-creative.com). This worksheet corresponds to the experience phases laid out in the revised Volunteer Experience Map (for more info on the experience map see post, Session 5: Enter the Understanding Phase). The phases include: Initial Interest, Initial Contact, Intake Process, Referral, & Orientation/Startup).

The worksheet is meant to serve as a tool, to enable the team to diverge on more focused questions for participants, as they might to relate to each of the 5 phases. In our next in-person session on June 17th, we’ll be looking at the teams’ new questions, and will begin discussing which methods would be most appropriate to get those questions answered.

Be sure to bring your workseets filled out on June 17th!

Getting into our first round of research in the Understanding phase, the main focus session 6 was to begin shaping some initial research methods to better understand the existing volunteer experience.

After a little review about Design Research, the team worked through few activities and determined that the first method should be an introduction email paired with a digital survey that would be sent to each potential research participant. To further flesh out the specifics of this method the team collaboratively generated some rough survey questions and then closed up with assigning tasks and deadlines for moving forward. The data generated in this session has been transcribed into a Google Document (Session 6 – Initial Survey Questions) along with a spreadsheet of the ARC Research Participant List.

*Each Volunteer Experience design team member should have been invited to a shared Google Drive folder where editable documents will be housed for this project. If you have not received access to that folder please contact Collabo (hello@collabo-creative.com)