BaaleiTeshuva.cm
A website that provides resources for Jewish people
at the start of their religious journey.
A friend of mine approached me to design a website for baalei teshuva - individuals who grew up in a secular or traditional home, and decided later in life to become religious. He laid the groundwork and created a website for this purpose. I was asked to redesign it using UX principles.
This project was done completely independently; I conducted interviews, created a persona, sketched designs, made prototypes, and conducted usability testing.
Why create this website?
We found that there are many resources that target college students (such as Jewish organizations on campus), and a lack of resources for working professionals who are interested in becoming more observant, or learning about their Jewish heritage. As a solution, this website was to accumulate resources for new baalei teshuvas, This site will also serve as that hub to assist anyone who wants to start becoming observant in finding useful information all in one place.
How to define user?
Survey
Before interviewing, I created a survey to find people who were willing to speak about their personal religious histories. I posted the survey on social media sites. The basic criteria is the following: having become religious at some point in life. I also wanted to interview converts, because converts to Judaism have a similar journey. Although this website is meant for baalei teshuva, many converts would benefit from this website as well. 36 people responded, and 35 of them qualified for interviews.
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Interviews
I interviewed 11 people from the survey. Although I have my own experiences as a ba'alat teshuva, I need to understand what are common wishes, needs, and pain points of people in this situation. What motivated these people to drastically change their lives? What information did they wish they had, when they first decided to change their lives? Where did they learn Jewish concepts, and from where did they gather resources to practice? (i.e. Where did they celebrate the Sabbath?) From the interviews, I found that:
Inspired
Everyone at some point in their lives had a moment of realization that life has the potential for meaning and purpose.
Persona
Based on the interviews, I synthesized the data and developed Sam, an amalgam of the interviewees.
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Sam needs a way to access Torah knowledge, social support, and mentorship to live an Orthodox lifestyle. How might we provide Sam with sufficient resources and support to alleviate her knowledge gaps, loneliness, and help her live a life of meaning and purpose?
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I planned to create a website that would provide the user with the resources to alleviate their knowledge gap. To help alleviate loneliness and mentorship, I plan on building in a forum, and providing the user with as many resources as possible to find a local Jewish community.
First Iteration
Second Iteration
Third Iteration
Next Steps
Looking back, there are some additional changes that should be made in the future:
Change "Success Stories" to something else.
Incorporate a forum.
The website owner would love to provide a service to match up users with a Rabbi or mentor. That would address the most important need of the user, but at this time it is not possible.
There are additional features recommended from the initial user interviews and from the website owner that should be added.
Final Thoughts
This problem was challenging, more than I had anticipated. There are some needs of the user that are not met; there are limitations on the problems that a website could solve. However, from the user interviews and the usability testing, I received overwhelming praise for the concept. I am very pleased with the work; it came out better than I had anticipated, and everyone I spoke to loves the final product.