Overview
The Ask Unlock project acts as a searchable forum and FAQ for voucher holders experiencing discrimination during their housing search and seeking support in navigating the use of Unlock NYC’s chatbot tool.
My responsibilities on the recording tool project included running user testing sessions, collaborating on design and copy, discrete code-based maintenance and improvement tasks, as well as continual debugging and error testing. We collaborated on the code via version control and code review in a small team.
Context
Unlock NYC builds tools that make it easier for voucher holders to document and report source of income discrimination in their housing search. Both the reporting and recording tools take the form of a chatbot built using Landbot.io, which transfers user inputs to an Airtable base that generates a CCHR report.
The recording tool uses Twilio for third-party phone call monitoring. Static site elements on the “Ask Unlock” forum will be generated using 11ty and Spacebook and managed using Netlify and Forestry. Collaborative design documents for tools and features are created in Figma, and all project documentation is hosted through Notion.
Impact
The average user for this kind of tool is already facing an immense amount of stress and insecurity, and so it was incredibly important to make the reporting experience feel empowered and rewarding.
Integrating the perspectives of those most affected and creating plans for the ideal, average and worst-case outcome allowed me to ensure that every user feels respected by the tool and organization, and encouraged to return to it regardless of the result of the report.
This project challenged my ability to synthesize, prioritize and apply reflections from user testing in the most useful way, as well as showcasing my knowledge of information architectures.