Lambda Zeta of Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority, Inc.
The Lambda Zeta Chapter of Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority, Inc. is a National Pan-Hellenic community service organization. They’re mission statement involves bettering the local Binghamton, NY community.
Goal: Create a website that will help garner women interested in Greek life to join the Lambda Zeta Chapter of Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority, Incorporated.
Duration
2024
Role
UX Designer UX Researcher
Team
Solo Member
Toolkit
Figma Figjam
The Problem
As a member of the organization, me and my associates were in need of a website as another method of garnering interest instead of having to plan consistent in-person events that would clash with our schedules. As the public relations officer, I was tasked with conducting research and building out a platform for all interested women to learn about our sorority.
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Mobile Prototype
Desktop Prototype
Initial Challenge
Typically for my design process, I would start by interviewing my clients to understand my target demographic and gather participants. However, some important issues I came across were:
Due to the stigmatization of sororities, finding a large participant pool was unfeasible
The sorority members rarely had time to discuss what exactly they were looking for and gave vague ideas
Research Goals
Based on my initial challenges I laid out some clear goals for my process such as:
Identifying participants who would be comfortable being interviewed
Discover competitor websites to understand how they go about garnering interest
Understanding features that interest would need to solve their issues
Connecting with known interest to interview
Gathering Participant Data
Research
To understand my target demographic of undergraduate women, I released an anonymous Google survey to gather my data.
I reached out to 5 women with half being members of the organization and the rest being interested women. From their responses, I found that:
All the interests had the same question of how to show interest discreetly and what is life like after college when involved with the sorority
Interest wished they could do more research without having to constantly question current members when they don’t know if they’re available
Overview
I would go on to ask varying questions to identify current frustrations with researching sororities such as:
What information you would want accessible on a website?
What important questions would you like answered in a FAQ?
What stresses you out the most about looking into sororities?
Questions
5/5 of the interest had the same question about how to show interest discreetly and what is life like after college when involved with the sorority
3/5 interest wished they could do more research without having to constantly question current members when they don’t know if they’re available
5/5 participants would like a FAQ section answering about post-grad life
Results
Interest Concern Data
Research Insights
After collecting my data and building my personas, I sorted the responses into three categories: Sisterhood, Opportunities, and Bond.
Having photos showing the values of the sorority is important.
“I’d like to see more photos of the members involved”
1. Sisterhood
Older participants wanted post-grad more information.
“I’ve always been interested but was too busy. I’d like to know how I can be involved after I graduate ”
2.Opportunities
Interest wanted a way to reach out to members personally to ask questions.
“I want to ask questions but I’m nervous because I don’t have a relationship with them ”
3. Bond
Once I was able to separate all of my data into separate categories, I decided to create personas to help me empathize with my user’s pain points.
4. Next Steps
Personas + Journey Mapping
I used two personas to capture the perspectives of two distinct groups from my survey: recent Binghamton admits and soon-to-graduate women. The first persona highlighted the need for current images of the sorority’s offerings, while the second emphasized the importance of post-graduate life information for older members. After creating my personas, I decided to create a Journey Map for my Marissa Thompson character to understand which aspects of her journey caused her frustrations
Define and Ideate
Defining The Problem
Once I finished gathering data, it was time for me to utilize my figures to understand how best I can empathize with my users to build a satisfactory experience. Next, I broke the information down into 4 categories: Insight, Need, How Might We, and Solutions.
Women are nervous to reach out to sorority members one-on-one because they don’t want to bother them when they may not have time.
1. Insight
Needs an effective way to meet with members to ask questions.
2. Need
After collecting and synthesizing my data I was left with one major problem to solve:
How might we figure out a way for interest to speak with members when they’re available?
3. How Might We
Create scheduling features that benefit interest and members
Create FAQ section for common questions
4. Solution
Competitive Analysis
Now that I had my solution, I created a competitive analysis to guide my design decisions. When looking for competitors within the National Pan-Hellenic sphere I realized that barely any organization had a website besides our campus’s Alpha Phi Alpha chapter. So I widened my scope and decided to utilize the sorority’s national website.
For my competitive analysis, I researched the Binghamton chapter’s national sorority website to gain design inspiration. After going through the national website, I knew that I wanted to build my site as if it were a branch of the national one. With this in mind, I utilized a similar color palette (emulating the sorority's colors) and a similar use of videos and photos to show interested onlookers the active members on campus.
Strengths
After browsing the website, I noticed that their color palette was used ineffectively on some pages. For example, on the website banner, the yellow text on a white background was hard to read, and the script font didn’t help.
Weakness
The Pi Beta Chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Incorporated drew me in because it’s the only other Binghamton National Pan-Hellenic Council organization with a website. This was important to me since both organizations have similar demographics. What I appreciated about their platform was an emphasis on their founder’s page and a section that would direct users to their national website.
Strengths
On desktop, the main titles and sub-headings were a little squished and when going to mobile the text was extremely squished and the stroke border around titles made the text almost unreadable. Their navigation system also had inconsistent sizing and spacing.
Weakness
Prototype and Test
Low-Fidelity Prototype
I developed a set of low-fidelity wireframes to establish a basic structure for my designs. I aimed to prioritize functionality before adding visual elements.
Client Interview
After finishing up my wireframes, I conducted a meeting with the active members of the club to gauge responses to my work and any revisions they desired. My main criticisms was the footer needing to be changed, redo homepage with emphasis on membership, and fixing founders page lay out.
In order to address concerns regarding reaching out to members, I created a booking page where members will input their availability allowing interest to book one-on-one meetings without anxiety.
Booking Page
There was a general concern of the page looking odd due to varying amounts of information that would be available on each founder.
Founders Page
Home Page
After having each member review concept pages, my third concept was chosen because of the multiple calls to action, highlighting the members of the club, and a condensed footer.
High-Fidelity Prototype
Once all revisions were made to the critiqued pages, I created my high-fidelity pages.
Outcomes
1. Streamlined the process of garnering new members through the platform.
2. Website scalability will allow future members to easily add more content, avoiding the need for major reconstruction in the future.
3. Since its implementation it has maintained its engagement with an increase of 20 monthly visitors.
Reflections
1. Looking back on my data, if time had allowed, I would have liked to reach out to more of the chapter's consistent members so that my data pool could include more perspectives on who I’m designing the platform for.
2. Once the website is launched during this upcoming semester, I’m hoping to utilize Pendo.io to see if the chapter’s interest goals are being met.
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