Designing For Upward Economic Mobility

Introduction

Uptogether aims to enhance economic and social mobility for the 50 million people living at 50-150% of the poverty line. we're doing this by shifting from a deficit-based system to a strength-based approach that values social connections and mutual support among low-income individuals. Our approach includes: 

 1. Direct Investment: Providing unrestricted cash or cash equivalent investments directly to individuals or households based on their demonstrated strengths, without emphasizing financial need or repayment expectations. 

 2. Social Capital: Encouraging and facilitating social capital exchanges within communities, where people help each other through non-monetary exchanges of goods, services, knowledge, and networks that improve economic well-being. 

 3. Agency: Empowering individuals and families to have full control over their decisions and how they use their direct investments to achieve economic mobility.

As an organization, we realized in order to further efficiently scale our approach there existed a necessity to transform this program design into product design and engineer a platform which satisfied our three principles.

I joined Uptogether as the first and principle design hire to retroactively audit and improve the interfaces and experiences.

Discovery

Prior research and studies have provided valuable insights into our users, referred to as members. Our primary member profile comprises mothers aged 35 to 50 from underserved communities, particularly Black and Latino Americans due to economic disparities. Notably, Asian Americans have experienced a significant increase in poverty over the past decade. Additionally, certain predominantly White American rural areas in the country also face underservice and underdevelopment.

Context

At Uptogether, we collaborate with research institutions and municipal governments to develop and implement Guaranteed and Universal Basic Income pilot programs. We had an upcoming program with the City of Oakland and Oakland Resilient Families, which required us to rapidly build platform features to meet their summer 2021 launch timeline. Our primary focus was enhancing platform robustness for effective member communication, and the project followed an atypical but comprehensive design process due to its "Waterfall" style and tight schedule.

Getting Started 

Our first step was to map out and organize our workflow and anticipate how long it would take to ship our project which was determined to be a series of different features combined to create a rich "pro" social media platform. 

Setting the Stage  

Until this point most of my work has been DesOps. This would be a large project which would affect many surfaces including both internal and user-facing documentation. I considered the design patterns and system I created in earlier months to help ground my thinking when I was visualizing those early mappings and wireframes.

Another activity I did was to review metrics and understanding how shaping this project can and should help accomplish these metrics and larger org KPIs.

Designing with Data

I then teamed with analytics to discover where these metrics currently stood. As important as this was collaborating with the team, which is an opportunity to distribute ownership of a project throughout an organization. This can help grow commitment and excitement which in turn helps a project to maintain trajectory and momentum.  

Next I conducted research into adjacent platforms to understand which design patterns existed in the world of social media. There were many platforms from which to choose however I qualified three for different reasons.

LinkedIn was chosen because of the specificity of the audience to which it caters. Our audience was also very particular so I wanted to discover how a product in the long term can stay committed to its core audience in product design and feature release. 

The other two selected though not pictured here are Youtube and Facebook

I chose YouTube for its global popularity across cultures to explore universal design elements that transcend language and culture differences. 

For Facebook, we already had member data showing high adoption, and we wanted to understand our members' existing systems.

No Regrets?

Due to time constraints, we skipped early user testing and pursued a "No Regrets" approach, focusing on typical social media design patterns to meet our tight deadline. This process isn't ideal but necessary given our time constraints.

The Design

One of the Major design decisions from this screen include color selection. I wanted the system to reflect calmness and trustworthiness. This was achieved by using light blues and greens against white backgrounds.

Still in a low-mid level fidelity, once a baseline design had been established I started adding tertiary interfaces for interaction, such as a search feature and an overview page. I also shifted a few elements around on the page in order to determine the best layout for accomplishing goals and satisfying user stories.

I continued pushing elements around the space, revisiting patterns of visual design to produce a technically pleasing, yet functional aesthetic.  

 

The above screens represent the ambition I had to push the platform forward with exploring AI solutions to aid in alleviating internal stresses and also by demonstrating good data stewardship by returning data to users in a friendly beginner-level readable dashboard. 

Building

The frontend of the platform is engineered in Vue.JS and the Backend uses python. During the project we used Figma to build wireframes and prototypes. 

Challenges

Building this project with a "No Regrets" approach led to uncertainty about meeting user needs, potentially resulting in costly features with low adoption rates.

Additionally, piecemealing the release strategy has created challenges in maintaining a clear vision and may lead to pushback and waning interest among stakeholders.

The most significant challenge was designing the system from scratch, as there were no prior flows to reference for guidance.

Takeaways

First, in the realm of product design, I found that users now expect familiar interface patterns due to their experience with similar systems, reducing cognitive load.

Second, project ambition and schedules should align with the organization's capacity, considering both team availability and departmental roadmaps and KPIs.

Lastly, the most significant lesson was the power of a can-do mindset. Despite challenging deadlines and pressure, maintaining a positive attitude as a team helped us overcome obstacles and succeed in project delivery.