Civian
Civian Redesign: Enhancing Decision-Making for Capital Investments
Our clients at Civian were interested in evaluating the usability of their data insights platform and identifying opportunities to enhance its support for responsible capital investment. We conducted a series of moderated user tests to develop design recommendations aimed at improving the user experience. Our key decisions included introducing a dedicated community comparison tool, more robust data viewing and filtering options, and enhancing user guidance for navigating the platform.
Timeline
2 Months
Team
4 UX Consultants
Role
User Research
UX Design / Prototyping
Research Report
Tools
Figma / FigJam
Panelfox
UserInterviews
Userlytics
BACKGROUND
“I think it’s doing a lot of interesting things in simple terms and a few data points that seems to be well chosen. It’s not perfect, but it’s doing a lot of useful things.”
— Participant 5
What is Civian?
Civian is a data analytics platform designed to help businesses understand the local communities they serve and measure the social impact of investments. By highlighting key geospatial data points—such as socioeconomic strength and the outcomes of prior community investments—Civian provides actionable insights for organizations to leverage when deciding where to invest.
What was the client's goal?
Civian was entering the beta development phase to test and align the platform's design with user needs. Their goal was to improve how information was presented, making it easier for users to intuitively connect data points and strategically decide where to allocate capital.
HIGHLIGHT
DEFINING OUR DIRECTION
We kicked off the initiative with a stakeholder meeting with the Civian team to gain familiarity with the platform, their goals, and questions they had around how users engaged with the product.
They were most interested in knowing if users could effectively leverage the data points to make investment decisions and where they wanted to dig in deeper.
MODERATED USER TESTING
To address the knowledge gaps, we designed and conducted 8 usability tests, aligning user tasks and questions with our goals.
Our realistic task-scenarios centered around locating communities, assessing data, and making investment decisions. We also included pre- and post-test questions to gather qualitative insights on overall impressions and participant demographics.
We primarily targeted individuals working in Financial Service Organizations — Credit Unions, Community Development Financial Institution (CDFIs), and Impact Institutions.
These individuals are within Civian's target user group because they are committed to investing in communities, geographically bound and therefore understand the nuance of neighborhoods, and responsible for/deal with interpreting data around investments within their role.
Since recruiting from this population is difficult, we also included a secondary target of individuals more generally involved in data analysis and social outreach for non-profit organizations.
🎯
3 primary target users
From client's network, e.g. alpha-testers
CSR Specialist, Account Supervisor, Data Scientist
🌍
5 secondary target users
Recruited via Panelfox, UserInterviews, Userlytics, and word of mouth
NPO Co-Founder, Data Analysts
MAJOR TAKEAWAY
Data is easy to understand, but users need help piecing together the "story".
Users generally had positive impressions of the platform and easily understood most of the terms. However, while data was presented clearly, it isn't obvious how to connect the dots to decide which communities to invest in.
60% of users felt it was difficult to compare community data, slowing down decision-making.
Key statistics like vulnerability score, capital deployed, and impact score can only be viewed for one community at a time
Sorting feature on tabulated regional data is broken, making it hard to pinpoint neighborhoods by data point
Five users expressed need for a dedicated comparison feature to improve the evaluation process
“I don’t know if I need the map at this point to do much of anything... a table comparing [the data] would be more effective.”
— Participant #3
02
Poor visual design and system feedback hinders readability of the map.
Geographical boundaries are unclear due to lack of division markers between communities
Duplicate use of color between the map and data visualizations causes confusion in which data points are represented
System does not provide feedback to indicate whether a location search query has been processed
"Colors are kinda merging, [this is] so confusing."
— Participant #5
03
75% of users desired greater depth and context to enhance their assessments.
Users need more granularity in data such as grant recipients and vulnerability breakdown by issues to make well-informed investment decisions
Users expected vulnerability and impact score to be a slider for quick filtering of communities on the map
"I want to know the names of organizations under the number [of grant recipients]."
— Participant #8
RECOMMENDATIONS
01
Add comparison functionality to streamline decision-making
Introduced a dedicated comparison tool via a "Compare Locations” call-to-action
Key community statistics can be viewed side-by-side on the right panel and in tabulated format for thorough analysis
Significantly reduces the time and effort of data comparison during investment decision-making
02
Clearer map with responsive system feedback
Distinct and linear geographical boundaries makes divisions between communities more visible
Revised color system avoids reusing the same color across multiple data points to enhance clarity and reduce ambiguity
Search bar loading state reduces user frustration with accurate system status updates
Providing dynamic and deeper insights
Dynamic data points on the right panel reflect deeper data on the map (e.g. “Organizations” shows local organizations markers and names)
Vulnerability and Impact Score slider enables responsive filtering of the map for greater precision during comparison
Contextual onboarding to build platform proficiency
Targeted walkthrough and onboarding experience reduces friction of learning the platform and builds confidence when leveraging data for decision-making
Moving help button outside dropdown menu increases visibility and accessibility of guidance
CONCLUSION
Our testing revealed that users would benefit greatly from a dedicated community comparison tool, a clearer map design, dynamic and deeper insights, and improved user guidance for using the platform.
While they find Civian’s novel approach to community and impact analysis valuable for responsible investment of capital, we identified these areas as needing refinement to fully achieve its potential.
Our clients agreed and gave positive feedback to our recommendations.
Although they had experimented with a community comparison feature previously without success, they found our recommendations insightful and appreciated these new opportunity areas to explore.
NEXT STEPS
Beyond the recommendations outlined, we informed our clients on additional issues we identified which future work should focus on:
01
Additional data points for analysis
Data types include fiscal year differences and potential future commitments/policy changes, detailed community income data, statistics on unemployment and job creation
Incorporating these insights would support a more comprehensive understanding of communities investment prioritization
02
Thematic organization of insights
Users want to further filter insights by topics such as Black- and women-owned businesses
Segmenting data to align with specific focus areas would enable users to better understand how their contributions affect certain communities
03
Present economic impact in a familiar format
Users would feel more comfortable reading this data in a traditional ROI graph or ratio visualization.
We look forward to hearing of the client's progress and the outcome of our recommendations.
