UGBA190D: Innovation & Design Thinking In Business
Cal Clubs: Creating Inclusive Communities
​Team: Rhyu Olide, Ashley Gong, Andrea Vergara,
Calista Guo, Erin Ta, Lynn Nguyen
Role: Lead Product Designer
Timeline: 9/24 - 12/24
Background...
HMW improve the club discovery & recruitment processes for applicants so that it eases stress?
TLDR: Our group was formed off of one word: "Inclusivity". Our only instruction; make it relevant to campus community. With this in mind, we begun problem discovery by discussing issues important to us. We found one problem, unique to Cal we've all faced: student club rejection.
That's a big ask. How'd we narrow it down?
We understood our own personal experiences, but with over 500 clubs on campus, it was important to gather context and external opinions on the issue.
STEEP Research
12 User Interviews
We conducted desk research to tackle how social, technology, environmental, economic, and political factors impact our problem space. Following, we interviewed club officers, club general members, and students who have never interacted with club culture or organizations.
What did we find out?
1. Financial constraints, cultural capital, and race affect the likely hood of success when applying.
Barriers
2. Limited marketing forces applicants to rely on their social networks.
1. Clubs lack transparency in their recruitment processes.
2. High-commitment, often unplausible for URM/First-Gen students.
3. Clubs lack space & time required for broader outreach.
Recruitment
1. Club culture is viewed as elitist, so students opt-out.
2. Clubs are believed to provide meaningful experiences, and often allow pathways for upward mobility.
Perception
Who are we designing for?
Before building a prototype, we needed to understand who will be affected by our design. We identified a primary user group, student applicants, and a secondary user group, club officers and leadership.
We also created journey maps.
Identifying Product Opportunity
Once we understood our user, we ideated 200+ ideas, grouped them by similarity, voted.
Speaking directly to the end user.
We created paper sketches and went out to UC Berkeley Haas to ask students one main question: would ​you use it? We received an overwhelmingly positive response and a lot of feedback that helped us tailor the features and redesign our interfaces.
Testing Takeaways
While we received an overwhelmingly positive response, it was important for us to incorporate the feedback we did receive. Below are our key takeaways for each feature.
1. Having unique onboarding experiences for applicants and club officers would allow for more clarity in the use case of the website.
Onboarding Experience
1. Clubs should be allowed to manage their own pages.
2. Anonymous ratings may become problematic - find a way to mitigate bias.
Club Profile
1. Filter menus and short descriptions would help improve the efficiency of sorting through the large catalog.
Club Directory
1. Perceived as a very useful tool, so it should be highlighted more on the interface. It should be a key feature for product pitches.
Matching Form
1. Filter menus and a personalized calendar where you can choose which events to add would provide more usefulness for users.
Events Calendar
1. This feature use case was unclear, confusing users.
2. Giving this feature its own page would provide more clarity on its purpose.
Partnership Request
Clustering mid-point feedback
After presenting our midpoint, we gathered feedback from our classmates and went back to the drawing board.
What's our business model? How do we launch Cal Clubs?
To understand the context and feasibility of our solution, we created this business model.
How does the product work?
When entering the website, users will sign in as an applicant, club officer, or general member.
Then, they'll see our home screen.
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What if you want to find a club?
Users may scroll through a club directory, leveraging affinity tags for interest groups, filter menus, and blurbs that are shown when scrolling through for quick, simple navigation.
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No time to scroll through the directory?
Fill out our matching form to find a club tailored to your interest. It's like a Buzzfeed quiz, but for clubs!
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I'm the VP of Marketing, can I update my org's page?
Club officers can become editors of their own pages. They may put as much information, or as little, as they would like. To encourage inclusivity, we've added a transparency rating that goes up as clubs report more information.
I want to build cross-club community, can you help me?
Of course, use our partnership request form to find clubs who are looking to collaborate. If you're a company we have a form to help you get in contact with an organization too!
So many events! How am I supposed to keep track?
Use the integrated calendar tool, complete with customizable timelines and menus.
Reflection
The main challenge we faced was determining how to encourage clubs to adopt and actively use this service. Without their participation, the platform’s purpose—to reduce barriers to entry and foster inclusivity—cannot be fully realized. This required us to think strategically about value propositions and engagement tactics. Building strategic partnerships with ASUC would be key to institutionalizing the service. By integrating it into existing ASUC Technology Teams, we could establish long-term sustainability and support for the program. Unfortunately, this is just a concept, but if it were to be realized, we hope it would make UC Berkeley’s extracurricular landscape more equitable and accessible for all students.
