UXPALA (UX Professionals Association Los Angeles) is known for hosting the best UX events in LA, but we knew we could do more to serve the UX community. In 2020, we set out to create a database of UX groups to help designers find new places to talk and practice UX.
I took ownership of this section of the site and was responsible for conducting research. Working with our president to define methodology, I gathered insights that would feed into our information architecture strategy. Afterwards, I presented my findings to the 16 members of our Content Strategy team and proposed next steps.
This project took place September - October 2020. I worked alongside our Director of Content Strategy and acting product manager Aaron Thomas to work through the user story and project requirements. I also collaborated with two team members working on similar research projects to improve our methodology.
UXPALA is almost solely perceived as an events group, making it heavily reliant on ticket sales to cover operating costs. Our challenge was finding ways to better serve the UX community while bringing in more donations and corporate sponsors.
We saw an opportunity to position the org’s site as a resource for UX designers at any stage of their careers. To help UXers grow their networks, we decided to build a database of UX communities on Slack, LinkedIn, Discord etc.
Before any design, we needed to research communities already out there. This was the first step in answering the question “How can we help UXers find their community?” In addition, we wanted to understand what needs were already being met and identify opportunities to fill any gaps.
We initially identified the platforms where relevant communities were active and engaged — LinkedIn, Facebook, Slack, Discord and Reddit. I used Google as a jumping off point to begin my research.
I logged every piece of key info, search term and link that I visited in a spreadsheet so my team and I could reference them later. Documenting my work was especially important in order to leave a trail for new team members down the line.
Key info I looked at included the name of the community, URL, member count, how to join, official social media tags, about us and our own notes. This would help us understand the landscape and shape information architecture later. I ended up finding 95 communities on Slack alone.
As I documented communities, I sorted them into preliminary categories to help with my own organization — UX design, UX research, product, general design, leadership, local and DEI.
Majority of articles list the same handful of communities that are most popular.
Most listicles cover the same 5-25 communities with the largest member base. As a result, many listicles overlapped.
It became increasingly hard to discover new groups, especially groups with fewer members (less than a few thousand). As a result, local and DEI groups were most likely to go under the radar, even though these groups serve individuals who are most likely to be searching for a community.
There are 3 kinds of communities: Public, moderated and exclusive.
This determines how you can sign up for the community and the conditions under which you’ll be accepted in.
Communities set their own, unique rules that influence their demographics and discourse.
List of rules (Discord group, for example)
Who can join
How to join
What to post - e.g. no self promotion -> important for someone who wants to join a group to advertise their portfolio and looking for a job
How to post - how to structure your post, what channel, what tags
This made me think about what details users want to know before joining a community. What were the potential deal breakers or deal makers? I became curious about how users currently find communities and why they choose to join certain communities over others.
The platform affects the level professionalism and formality.
Reddit and Discord are on the most casual end, while LinkedIn is on the most formal end.
Communities geared toward experienced practitioners have stricter requirements to get in.
Requirements like years of experience, job title etc. Especially for management and leadership groups. We can start to see how some groups might be completely irrelevant to certain personas. How might we go about addressing their different needs?
We had the most trouble discovering Slack and Discord groups.
Slack and Discord don’t have built in search or directory, so the only way to discover them is through a third-party - word of mouth/referral, or mentioned online like in an article called “10 UX slack groups to join now” or third-party databases like designerslack.org
The fact that this was so difficult made me think about how our database could help people save time and find relevant UX communities.
Understanding the user’s motivations and goals will be key to helping them find the right community.
We need to understand this if we are to serve them the best communities that will help them reach their goals.
Motivations are varied and include discussing industry trends, mentorship opportunities, resume/portfolio review and job searching.
My research brought up many questions that I posed to my team, including:
With so many UX communities out there, how can we find as many of them as possible? Some will surely slip through the cracks.
We need to define criteria for what qualifies a UX community to be part of our database.
In terms of logistics, how will we sustain this long-term? This is a very manual process with a lot of moving pieces. UX communities constantly evolve, and new groups and platforms emerge regularly.
How does the user’s motivation in joining a community affect the page’s design and information architecture?
By the end of this project, we had found our next big question. How might we help users find communities that match their needs?
The insights and questions I uncovered all pointed to the need for user research. In trying to improve the way people find UX communities, we first need to understand how they’re currently solving the problem.
As this project is ongoing, we are currently planning the next phase of discovery.
I had never experienced the true power of research until this project. If it weren’t for this work, we wouldn’t have gained this understanding of the problem space. We uncovered a lot, but just as importantly, it uncovered what we still don’t know. We know the questions, now we just need to find the answers.
I’m still an active member of UXPALA today. I’m truly grateful for my amazing team members, all of whom are also UX professionals volunteering their time. Our projects span UX design, research, information architecture and content strategy. It’s given me amazing opportunities to learn and grow in the past six months, and I’m a much better UX designer for it.
♥
