Company

NOLS

Sector

Non-profit, Outdoor Education, Travel, Leadership

Who Is NOLS?

NOLS is a nonprofit global wilderness school that educates students in leadership, wilderness skills, risk management, environmental studies, and wilderness medicine.

Background

NOLS offers courses in four main program areas: Expeditions (B to C), Wilderness Medicine (B to C and B to B), Risk Services (B to B and B to C), and Custom Education (B to B). Of these programs, Expeditions and Wilderness Medicine account for the majority of revenue and courses for the company.

At the time of the project, the organization was trying to increase the revenue coming from Expedition course offerings. Student applications for Expedition courses were on a steady decline the last two years due to a shift in the customers desire for shorter, less profitable courses.

One idea NOLS had to address the shift was to increase brand awareness and drive more website traffic. To ensure they had the best chance of converting customers on the website, the organization wanted to improve the user experience of the blog.

The Problem

Technical errors and bugs, an unresponsive layout, design inconsistencies, and lack of content organization undermine readers’ trust in the NOLS blog.

NOLS alumni want to be leaders in the outdoors beyond a NOLS course. The NOLS blog is a source of truth in the outdoor industry for them to continue to engage with NOLS curriculum. In order for NOLS to remain a reliable source of up-to-date information the blog was in need of a redesign.

Make of the Team

In-house team of 10 people, including the Marketing Director, Creative Director, Web Manager, Front-End Designer, Art Director, Senior Designer, Senior Writer, Writer, Communications Manager, & Marketing & PR Intern

High Level Timeline

4 weeks (June–July 2019):
Redesign

6 months (August 2019–January 2020):
Development

Intended Outcome

If NOLS alumni see the NOLS blog as trustworthy, they will be more inclined to contribute to the blog and share articles from the blog with their community. NOLS alumni will spread the word about NOLS’ transformative course experiences and expertise in the industry to inspire others.

Key Goals

User Goal

Help NOLS alumni engage with outdoor leadership content, so they can inspire others and find opportunities to grow outdoor and leadership skills.

Business Goal

Help NOLS stand out as an expert in outdoor education so NOLS can remain the leading source and teacher of wilderness skills and leadership that serve people and the environment.

My Role

As the project manager, workshop facilitator, UX researcher and UX designer I planned, conducted, and synthesized the research for the design and project solution; managing stakeholder requests during the process.

Based on the scope and constraints, I determined a project kick-off meeting followed by a sprint workshop would be the best way to complete the project with the availability of the team and the four week timeline. As the facilitator of the five day sprint workshop, I lead the team through the creation of user flows, wireframes, prototypes, and usability testing. With the results from the usability testing, I worked closely with the front-end designer, senior designer, and art director to develop the visual design based on the company brand guide and best practices.

Scope

The team was aware of the underlying technical, visual, and usability issues with the NOLS blog. The blog issues were pushed to the bottom of the project list as a direct result of the team’s limited capacity for additional projects.

Due to the team’s limited capacity, myself and the creative director decided it was time for our team to experiment with Jake Knapp’s sprint process. In Jake’s words, the problem was “high-stakes,” there was “not enough time,” and we were “just plain stuck.” We gave ourselves 4 weeks to redesign the blog and pass off designs to development.

The issues with the blog were brought to the attention of the team by customer service representatives and direct complaints from new and returning customers. Since the blog serves as a direct channel of advertisement for NOLS, the problems with the blog were pertinent. In addition, the main nols.edu website was undergoing a design refresh that would allow users to have more direct access to the blog. The focus of the blog project had to be narrow to resolve problems quickly.

Many macro and micro goals were discussed; including an increase in course applications, an increase in story contributions to the alumni magazine, and an increase in donations. These metrics would be difficult to track as a direct correlation to a blog redesign. Many factors aside from the blog can effect those metrics. The team began to realize the importance of narrowing the scope to solve the immediate problems: the errors and inconsistencies within the blog.

Constraints

We saw the constraints as opportunities to try new strategies and methodologies.

New process

The team had never run a sprint before so we needed to get buy-in from everyone who would be involved to dedicate a week of their time to the project.

Short timeline with limited availability of the team

With holidays and people out of the office, it proved challenging to coordinate everyone for a project kick-off, sprint workshop, and completion of a redesign in four weeks.

Competing project

Parallel to this project, the team was also working on a massive website refresh that required a large investment of the team’s time and effort. Out of the two projects the website refresh was always prioritized.

Platform constraints

Hubspot’s predefined template structure made it unclear if the new information architecture and UI design would be feasible to implement.

Incomplete design system

The team did not have a complete design system, which resulted in more time for the approval of brand and visual design decisions.

Scheduling participants for usability testing

The team wanted to test recent grads, therefore we had to align testing with students getting back from expedition courses.

Users & Audience

NOLS’ blog readers are NOLS students (past, present, and future) and extended community members (parents, donors, industry members, and outdoor enthusiasts).

Process

Project Methods

Variation of AJ & Smart’s Lightning Decision Jam for the project kick-off meeting

Variation of Jake Knapp’s Sprint Workshop and AJ & Smart’s Design Sprint 2.0 for taking the project through to completion

— 2 weeks before the sprint workshop

Project Kick-Off: Define the problem & get alignment

In a two hour workshop I explored what is holding the team back and what is moving the team forward with the current state of the blog. Each team member started off by doing the following:

• Writing on Post-its what is moving the team forward / what is working
  (4 minutes)

• Presenting the positives and placing their Post-its on the whiteboard (1-2 minutes per team member)

• Writing on Post-its what is holding the team back / what is not working
  (4 minutes)

• Placing their Post-its on the whiteboard (1 minute)

• Voting on the negatives they believe are the most important and relevant to solve with 3 dot stickers (3 minutes)

Then, we translated the most important problems into How Might We (HMW) questions (3 minutes). Here are our HMWs:

• How might we … make the blog more engaging?

• How might we … make the blog work better for mobile users?

• How might we … make the blog easier to search?

• How might we … make the blog more visual?

By defining the problem and success areas we acknowledged what needs to change and what may not need to change. Rewording the problems into HMW questions gave the problems more optimistic phrasing, making it more likely for the team to look for opportunities and challenges rather than getting bogged down in the problem.

As a team we defined the most important problems and goals with the HMW questions. From here we ideated possible solutions based on what success looks like to the team by:

• Writing solutions on Post-its (5 minutes)

• Placing Post-its on the whiteboard (1 minute)

• Voting on the solutions they think would best solve the HMW questions with 6 dot stickers (4 minutes)

• Reorganizing and sort solutions by their number of votes (2 minutes)

I helped the team narrow the scope by defining known constraints and potential risks (5 minutes), which allowed us to easily prioritize the solutions into an Effort/Impact Scale. The Effort/Impact Scale let us determine what to do now, what to make a project, what to make a task, and what to forget about for now. Ultimately, guiding us in the sprint to build a minimum viable product (MVP).

The project kick-off workshop got the team into the same headspace before beginning the sprint. Big questions and unknowns were brought to the forefront. Potential problems were turned into questions to make them easier to track and answer with sketches, prototypes, and tests. The mindset of the team shifted from uncertainty to curiosity all in the matter of one hour. The team got back together one more time before the sprint to discuss and define what metrics we would use to track success for a total of two hours. Normally, a meeting to discuss a project of this scope would have been two+ hours and most of us would have walked away without clarity.

— Day 1 of sprint workshop

Map & Sketch

We began by mapping out the story or the challenge we needed to solve by defining a beginning, middle, and end:

• On the right side of the whiteboard we wrote out the ending of our story.

• On the left side of a whiteboard we listed out the actors in our story.

• In the middle of the whiteboard we wrote out how the actors of the story would reach the end.

By starting at the end of the story, the team could quickly confirm the problems and long-term goals we defined in the Project Kick-Off.

From the map, the team was able to determine the target customer and target event to focus on while completing the sprint. The decision allowed us to target an ambitious, but manageable piece of the problem.

• Target Customer: Alumni

• Target Event: Inspire

Based on our targets, we came up with solutions to inspire Alumni through the blog.

• Each team member took some time perusing the internet for existing ideas from other blogs that could be remixed and improved upon for the NOLS blog.

• Then, each person presented their research and we captured the big ideas on another whiteboard.

Instead of dividing different parts of the blog among different team members to focus on, we decided each of one of us would tackle the entire blog during the next step in the sprint.

• The team spent 20 minutes taking notes and gathering key information on the goals, opportunities, and inspiration discussed up to this point.

• Then, the team took another 20 minutes to doodle rough solutions.

• Next, we took 8 minutes to try coming up with rapid variations. In an exercise called “Crazy 8s,” we folded a piece of paper into eight squares, then spent 1 minute sketching an idea in each of the eight squares.

• Lastly, we took 30+ minutes to figure out the details and sketch our final solutions.

At the end of the first day, the team had five solution sketches. The sketches eliminated the confusion of abstract ideas. No one’s idea was undervalued or overvalued. Instead, the solutions were critically and fairly evaluated by the team.

By working alone together everyone had the time to do research, find inspiration, and think about the problem. The team generated competing ideas, without the circular conversations that often derail a meeting.

— Day 2 of sprint workshop

Decide & Story Board

On the second day of the sprint we walked in ready to review the sketches drawn by each team member hanging up on the wall. Everyone had a chance to look over the sketches before we each:

• Dot voted the most interesting areas of the solution sketches

• Speed critiqued solution sketches as a group making note of the most standout ideas

• Reviewed questions and concerns

• Allowed the creator of a sketch to explain any missed ideas

• Voted for the sketch we thought was the best overall solution and explained why

With all the votes in, everyone began to see how the prototype would come together. Most importantly, everyone had a voice in the final solution and understood how the decision was reached.

With the three winning solutions decided on, the team began to combine different parts of the winning solutions into a single solution. We brought in our Director of Admissions and Marketing to approve the final solution sketch.

Now, it was time to turn our decisions into a plan of action to finish the prototype for testing. Before jumping into the prototype, we connected our final solution sketches together into a storyboard.

• Each team member created 6 steps in their proposed storyboard on Post-its.

• The facilitator collected the Post-its and arranged them on the wall, one row per person.

• Each team member dot voted on the Post-its.

• The facilitator consolidated the winning Post-its into a single storyboard flow.

The storyboard acted as the blueprint for the prototype. With the storyboard the team easily understood which screens would need to be created and how the screens would need to be connected in the prototype.

— Day 3 & 4 of sprint workshop

Prototype

— Day 5 of sprint workshop

Testing

— 1 Week After Testing

Analysis

I reviewed the recorded interview sessions, writing down quotes, observations, and my interpretation of what happened. From here, I turned my notes into a list of patterns and next steps to present to the team.

Key Findings

All five interview participants had very positive experiences with the prototype.

• Simple and clean

• Easy to navigate

• Inspirational photos and pull quotes drew them in

• One user quoted:

  • “I feel like I could click on the next one (article) and go into a rabbit hole of NOLS reading.”

I presented the key findings to the team and we looked back at the goals of the sprint to decide which patterns are most important and pointed us toward next steps. We considered our prototype a flawed success; with just a little more work it would be our MVP.

We ended up with some minor changes based on the usability testing that included removing the social column, rethinking iconography, adjusting text size and layout to add a bit more distinction between sections.

Outcomes

— 1 Year AFter Launch

Overall, there were only minor changes to the prototype after I left my role at NOLS. I continued to work with NOLS as one of my clients in my own business and they were able to share the successes of the launched NOLS blog redesign after one year.

Key Findings

Post launch, NOLS’ blog experienced:

• -29% in average page load time, 

• +16% in pageviews, 

• +9% in average time on page, 

• +8% in returning visitors, and 

• +3% in pages per session.

Lessons Learned

How to reach a solution quickly

Our new project methods (Lightning Decision Jam and Sprint Workshop) really speed up the project process for our team.

• Instead of jumping right into solutions we took the time to map out the problem and agree on an initial target.

• Instead of shouting out ideas, we worked independently to make detailed sketches of possible solutions.

• Instead of abstract debate and endless meetings, we used voting, and a Decider to make crisp decisions that reflect our teams priorities.

• Instead of getting all of the details right before testing our solution, we created a facade so we could learn quickly.

• Instead of guessing and hoping we’re on the right track we tested our prototype with target customers and get their honest reactions.