The Community Power Accelerator (CPA) Platform

  • Challenge

    Project developers need an easy way to browse capital providers and philanthropic entities to get their projects funded. In turn, capital providers need a quick way to browse projects to make strategic investments. Stakeholders would like to see higher levels of engagement, so we’re diving back in to conduct user research to discover pain points and to prioritize feature enhancements.

  • Process

    As a project manager and UX Design and Research lead, my role has involved conducting user research and analysis on an existing platform to identify areas for improvement. I worked closely with stakeholders to gather insights and make data-driven recommendations. I led the execution of design updates, functionality enhancements, and copy revisions, ensuring all changes aligned with user needs and project goals.

  • Outcome

    The redesigned interface, updated copy, and refined features led to a more intuitive user experience, driving higher engagement and satisfaction. The seamless collaboration throughout the process resulted in functional and user-friendly updates, ultimately meeting the project’s goals for improved usability and user interaction. This project is still in progress, features will be deployed in spring- stay tuned! Visit cpa.gov.

UX Research & Analysis

In the UX research and analysis phase, I developed a user research plan to align the UX team on a clear path forward. I conducted user interviews, competitor SWOT analysis, heuristic analysis, and user personas to understand the needs, use cases, goals, and pain points of both developers and capital providers using the CPA. By gathering insights into their motivations, behaviors, and challenges, we aimed to identify opportunities for improving the platform’s usability and increasing user engagement.

UX Design & Art Direction

In this project, I led the design and development of a user-centric platform, managing cross-functional collaboration between stakeholders, developers, subject matter experts, and writers. A key aspect of the project was creating a new onboarding questionnaire with branching logic, ensuring the questions aligned with guidance and provided helpful resources to users. As the project manager, I facilitated communication across teams, ensuring alignment on objectives and smooth execution.

I art-directed a team of designers as we developed interactive prototypes to visualize user interactions, allowing us to gather early feedback and refine features for enhanced usability. I led the team in iterating on design concepts, ensuring each feature met user needs and aligned with project goals. This collaborative approach resulted in a well-structured, visually cohesive platform that was both functional and intuitive for users.

Design System

I art-directed a team of contracted UX designers to create a comprehensive design system that ensured consistency across the platform by leveraging the Chakra design system. We utilized its out-of-the-box components to streamline development while also incorporating custom styles to meet the unique needs of the project. This approach allowed us to maintain a cohesive visual language throughout the platform while ensuring flexibility for future iterations. By integrating Chakra’s scalable, accessible components with tailored design elements, we established a robust system that enhanced usability and facilitated seamless collaboration between design and development teams.

Deployment

In the deployment phase, I coordinated closely with developers to ensure the database aligned with the user interface, search functionality worked seamlessly, and the algorithm was properly integrated. I also focused on ensuring that new features were intuitive and user-friendly. To ensure a smooth launch, I conducted extensive quality assurance testing, identifying and addressing any issues to guarantee the platform's performance and reliability. This collaborative effort ensured that the product was fully functional, met user needs, and was ready for successful deployment. This project is still in progress, and we’re continually launching new features and enhancements.