Sarah Beth Doncals

Overview
Google Search Crisis Response team came to SCAD for a collaboration with students from 8 majors and 9 countries.

Problem
How might Google enable local communities to organize and help each other in times of crisis (with a concentration in natural disasters)? 

Target Users
‍People experiencing a natural disaster

Primary Research
The team conducted 42 user interviews of students, locals and non-locals. To get a better understanding of how organizations operate during crisis, we interviewed nine organizations from CEMA (Chatham Emergency Management Agency) to the Savannah Animal Shelter. From thousands of data points from interviews and focus groups.

Key Insights
The team conducted 42 user interviews of students, locals and non-locals. To get a better understanding of how organizations operate during crisis, we interviewed nine organizations from CEMA (Chatham Emergency Management Agency) to the Savannah Animal Shelter. From thousands of data points from interviews and focus groups.

How Might We...
From the large trends in our primary and secondary research insights we collected. The team created nine how might we statements. The HMWs were put into in three categories based off the problem statement, enable, organize and help.

Archetypes
We laid out our interviewees on a mindset matrix. We found that are users are on a spectrum of apathetic to distressed and a people person to an individualist when in crisis. When you design with extreme cases in mind, the majority of your target users will fall in the middle.

Preliminary Concepts
From our insights and how might we statements, the class was divided into 3 ideation teams based off of the problem statement. The team themes connect, facilitate and empower.

Connect
Connect uses Google's platforms to match members of the community to share resources and support each other with in person interactions.

Facilitate (Raise)
Raise facilitate provides multiple channels for donations. Users have the option to raise funds through watching ads, playing games or a monetary donation.

Empower (Community)
Empower shares communities in need stories to raise awareness and empathy over a crisis.

Final Concept
With the midpoint feedback from Google, the team decided on combining the facilitate and empower ideas. The connect idea was a great solution, but simply out of scope. Our product has 3 new features within Google search, stories, donate and explore.

Stories
Stories gives the ability for users in crisis to document and see what is going on around them.
For users outside of the crisis, they are given a first person perspective as to what is going on.

Donate
‍By living in search, donate give users an easy entry point into helping those in need. Organizations set monetary goals to motivate donations.

Explore
Explore gives users a platform to discover what is going on around the world.

Stepping Into New Territory
‍I was the project manager. As a design student, I had never formally had the role as PM. I had no idea what I was in for. Below, I listed some of the top takeaways I learned being a PM for 10 weeks.

My Role
Most of my day was spent making sure everyone was on track and the same page. In the beginning of the project, I made a master calendar with all of the teams individual checkpoints and due dates. I also had a daily agenda that included helpful links for the day, what we needed to do, notes and action items for the next time we met.

What I Would Do Differently
This was a huge learning experience for me. I would come into the project with a better understanding of how I cannot be a people pleaser. I struggled with balancing myself between teams. I would have made myself have a more routine schedule in the beginning.