IterateUX Discord 2021
About IterateUX
IterateUX is a community of UX professionals from all experience levels and backgrounds. We hold design challenges and portfolio reviews in safe and supportive spaces and facilitate mentorship between junior and senior UX professionals. IterateUX website: www.iterateux.com
Business Opportunity
IterateUX wants to evolve and keep growing as a community. A year ago, they launched a community forum on Discord. The goal behind IterateUX Discord Server is to provide an interactive and engaging community to learn and build ourselves to become strong UX Designers. Currently, the Discord forum provides portfolio reviews, design reviews, career help, UX Design resources, and much more. Lately, there has not been much engagement on Discord. The goal is to learn and provide recommendations on increasing engagement.
Potential Business Impact
Increase engagement
Attract and Retain members
Improve member satisfaction
UX Goals
Discover the current experience that members face while interacting with the IterateUX Discord server through surveys and interviews
Identify the key target markets within the IterateUX Discord server.
Create stories of vital target users experiences and expectations for Discord
My Roles
UX Research: Learn about the current users’ experience regarding Discord through surveys and interviews. Based on the data, create compelling user stories on the necessary changes for Discord.
UX Research Methods
Surveys
Interviews
Collaborators
UI/UX Designer
Key Deliverables
Conduct surveys to gather a macro-perspective experience on Discord
Conduct interviews to learn about the reasons behind average experience on Discord
Create a data synthesis on the qualitative data from interviews
Provide personas on the vital target users
Produce recommendations and next steps for improving Discord
Tools Used
Google Forms
Video Chat
Figma
Research on IterateUX Discord Server
Objectives
The main goal of the user research is to increase user engagement and attract more members to Discord. There are areas of further exploration to understand the engagement factors shown below.
Engagement Factors
Pain points users encounter while interacting with Discord
User’s motivations to stay within Discord
Uncover the community forums that users use frequently
Essential Questions to Explore
What are users’ expectations of the IterateUX Discord forum?
How do they spend their time in the forum?
What prevents them from posting?
Analysis
Surveys
Discovered crucial areas of Discord that worked and did not work well
Members were disinterested in interacting with miscellaneous areas that were irrelevant to UX Design
Members would like to see more engagement opportunities occurring in Discord
Interviews
Members want to see the Discord forum focus on the career and education realm
As for engagement, they would like to see networking opportunities
Members need to be informed and notified of upcoming events
Members use Discord daily or if they receive a notification
Overwhelmed with too many channels
Personas
There were two types of personas based on the data gathered from surveys and interviews.
Persona A is a user who is an experienced UX Designer. It's engrossed within the UX topics, posts helpful resources, and learns what other UX Designers are doing in the community.
Persona B is an individual who is brand new to UX Design. Seeking aid in projects and growing their careers.
Recommendations
The main themes members would like to see in IterateUX Discord server channels are career and education
Provide clarity within each channel
Reduce the channels
Increase engagement on Discord, such as providing design challenges, and projects, engaging in portfolio reviews
Results
Survey Results
How would you rate your current experience while using IterateUX server on Discord?
43.7% of the members were satisfied with the experience on Discord and would continue using it.
In the IterateUX server, what channels are you currently not using?
The channels they are currently not using are games, book club, the question of the day, and game design.
In the IterateUX server, what channels in this server do you use often?
The most used channels are Portfolio Review 75%, Job Postings and Design Review 56.3%, Helpful Resources 43.8%, and Networking and Design Hangout 37.5%.
Facebook and Slack are the highest used for Community Forums.
Interview Results
I collaborated with a UI/UX Designer to gather all of the interview information and conducted the data synthesis on Figma.
Link to Data Synthesis: Data Synthesis
Key Insights
All participants use Discord frequently. 2nd highest usage was Slack
Users use the Discord forum for UX Design resources
Overwhelmed with too many channels
More dialog and engagement should occur
Worried about the exposure of private information such as revealing resume in Discord
More networking opportunities must occur
Conclusion
Overall, based on the interviews and surveys. Designers are using the IterateUX Discord as a resource for UX. They use it for collaborating with other designers and looking for help within their overall career and education. Here are the following expectations users want from the forum.
Users expect engagement, fewer channels, and focus within the career and education realm of UX design.
Most of the time was seeking resources in growing UX Design knowledge, looking for jobs, and getting their portfolios reviewed.
Users face frustrations within the forum in being overwhelmed with too many channels and lack of engagement occurring.
Engagement-wise, they want to see networking opportunities, team collaboration projects, and some UI design activities.
Personas
According to the data synthesis from user interviews, there are 2 types of personas I created. Here are the personas shown below.
Persona A: Experienced UX Designer
Persona B: Inexperienced UX Designer
What did I learn?
Learned about the unique obstacles that members faced while interacting with Discord
Not able to receive notifications on meeting reminders
Ability to see others' feedback on design reviews and portfolios
Concerns about public information being revealed especially through resume posts
Interesting to see how UX Design drives a strong community impact
Engagement is critical within various levels in the community forum