NEW HOPE
Standardizing the church visitor experience
Role
UX Designer & Researcher
Project Description
HCI/d graduate program
individual capstone project
Research Methods
Literature Review, Survey, Observation, Interview
THE GIST
For my capstone project, I partnered with a local church to identify areas of opportunity in how the church can standardize and execute excellent services for all visitors, despite a limited rotation of volunteers and resources. Through this process, I worked directly with church stakeholders, volunteers, and visitors to create a user-centric service plan that was ultimately implemented.
THE OPPORTUNITY
New Hope Christian Church is a mid-sized nondenominational church located in Whitestown, Indiana. Following a building remodel, New Hope saw a huge growth in weekly attendance. Due to this recent growth, the number of volunteers needed has also risen and resulted in a sub-standard experience for all new and frequent church visitors.
THE CHALLENGE
How might we create a service that continually and effectively engages visitors every single time?
Positive engagement is crucial for a church visitor to feel welcome and connected to a new church. However, small to mid-sized churches work with limited resources and access to volunteers, meaning that experiences can often vary depending on the volunteers themselves.
THE PROCESS
RESEARCH & INSIGHTS
To understand the current state as well as possible opportunity, we conducted extensive user research spanning multiple research methods.
OBSERVATION
Goal: Observations were conducted at New Hope and similar churches in the central Indiana area to understand common practices, pain points, interactions between volunteers and church visitors as well as observing the layout of the space.
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Insights
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Common new guest problems like “Where should I go” and “How can I get further connected” should be addressed and prioritized differently within the physical church space due to the hierarchical nature of needs.
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Easy to identify volunteers can take away some of the guesswork for visitors.
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Visitors need to be able to access information without having to interact with.
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STAKEHOLDER INTERVIEWS
Goal: Stakeholder interviews were conducted in order to learn more about the current service design, the relationship between the staff and volunteers, as well as possible unmet needs of church guests.
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Insights
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New people aren’t the people who are regularly stopping by the Welcome Center.
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In its current setup, the Welcome Center isn’t providing a consistent experience.
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SURVEY
Goal: Through the use of a survey, it was hoped to get a broad foundation of what people, not just people who identified as Christians, would need and expect from a religious environment.
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Insights
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As a new visitor, most respondents would prefer to be greeted and acknowledged, but not overly engaged.
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Individuals may feel comfortable reaching out to people with questions, but digital methods for information gathering need to be available.
ANALYSIS & IDEATION
To ensure a well-informed solution that considered the different stakeholders (new visitors, staff, and volunteers), I synthesized the collected data and insights through various mapping techniques with the goal of identifying pain points and problem areas.
The most pronounced pain point that newcomers felt when visiting New Hope was a lack of understanding of where to go or what to do. The Welcome Center, which is designed to interact and help new guests, is positioned too far away from the main entry doors to really provide newcomers with what they need.
Note: Due to time and resource constraints, true testing and validation of the proposed concept wasn’t possible.
THE SOLUTION
In the new service design structure, the goal is to connect the different kinds of guests with the information and environment that they need, while still creating a warm and welcoming experience.
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The new structure keeps what was working well for New Hope, the Coffee Bar and the Front Doors, and introduces two new touchpoints: the New Guest Starting Point and the Information Hub.
New Guest Starting Point
Located directly in front of the Front Doors and near the Coffee Bar, this touchpoint serves as a designated space specifically for newcomers. Equipped with a distinct-looking volunteer, newcomers can quickly stop by and make a connection, ask questions about where to go, or learn more about what New Hope values. This new structures creates a designated space where newcomers can immediately feel comfortable and sure in an unknown space.
Information Hub
The Information Hub transforms from the previous Welcome Center into a centralized and permanent wall structure. In the previous touchpoint design, all visitors, both new and frequent, had to seek out the Welcome Center in order to get directions, ask questions, and learn information. This new structure provides all guests a single source of church-related information that can be accessed at their own pace and comfort.
THE IMPACT
After my formal partnership with New Hope ended, I heard from the staff that they had implemented most aspects of the prescribed service plan and have seen favorable results.