Designing an Impact Reporting Form Experience
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY
TIMELINE
June - August 2025 (10 Weeks)
ROLE
UX Design Intern
THE PROTOTYPE
A live Explorer Home database where Explorers update impact metrics anytime.
THE PROBLEM
National Geographic Society needs a way to measure the impact they make to communicate with donors.
The National Geographic Society (NGS) supports explorers through grants funded by donors. Until recently, NGS lacked a clear way to measure impact, but the Strategic Insights team introduced a standardized metric form to begin collecting consistent data.
The form details are sensitive so this is a placeholder example form. But the post-project quantitative metric form includes 13 indicators (or metrics of measurement) of impact with at least 3 corresponding fill-ins for each.
Except, Explorers Aren’t Reporting Their Impact
Despite the form being mandatory, lots of Explorers weren’t filling it out or providing complete data because of the unintuitive design.
The main complaints were....
“
There’s too much to fill out in this form, it’s too long.
“
Why do I have to fill this out so many times?
“
What is this being used for?
The goal? Reimagine how Explorers report their project impact through the platform they already use, the Explorer Home.
The internal NGS home for explorers! Contains a directory, resources for their grant, and more.
STARTING DIVERGENT
How can we collect impact metrics?
First, I explored a range of concepts with key stakeholders on different ways to collect impact metrics, then identified a few key ideas to guide my wireframes.
The many ideas from the “crazy sixes” (six minutes, six ideas) I did with the CP/DP team.
One key takeaway was that the SSI team had originally structured the form as a strictly linear process Explorers would have to fill out multiple times.
Select indicators
Fill out multiple questions based on selected indicators
Resubmit form whenever there is new data
But instead of a form, wouldn’t a database feel less overwhelming and make more sense for regular updates? So, I changed the user journey.
Select indicators and fill them out on the same page.
Update these metrics or add new ones whenever there is new date.
I designed wireframes for a near-term prototype to ship in the next quarter, and a future concept to shape the vision of ExHome.
NEAR-TERM DESIGN
Integrating reporting into ExHome as a page explorers can update at any time.
01
Explorers share their impact directly through Explorer Home
Using the existing announcements box and alert system.
02
Salesforce integration lets Explorers view their specific grant details.
Including the goals they set in their project description, and use them to choose indicators for more accurate results.
03
Explorers browse indicators, select what applies, and add data via dropdown.
No need to click through multiple pages. All indicators can be viewed and updated on one page.
04
With in-line fill-out, Explorers can update specific metrics directly in Explorer Home
This allows the business team to target data collection more effectively, giving them multiple ways to capture the partial data they need.
05
When updating, Explorers only see the indicators they’ve already filled out
No need to go through all the others again. If they want to add a new one, they just click a button.
Save at any point (encouraging explorers to share data even if their work isn’t “finished”).
WORKING W/ STAKEHOLDERS
Encouraging Explorers to share partial data so SSI can get timely insights
After presenting this solution to the SSI team lead, I learned their biggest challenge was timing: they needed data as soon as possible, but explorers often withheld submission until they had everything ready. Therefore, I designed this sticky bar to fulfill the business needs of SSI.
FUTURE CONCEPT
Giving inherent value to updating your metrics by making them public-facing.
Building on the community hub that the Explorer Home Designer and PM were working on, I imagined a potential future concept where explorers share impact data through the creation of a public grant webpage.
01
Each Explorer profile now includes a custom webpage with their grant information
Instead of a block of text, this gives Explorers a quick, concise way to share their grant details and connect with others who could support them.
02
With a website editor–style interface, Explorers can manage and add data to their webpage
Framed as a grant website they can use to connect with other Explorers, the design naturally motivates them to keep their data up to date for NGS.
WORKING W/ STAKEHOLDERS
Aligning design with business needs
I designed each data block with a dropdown that let Explorers submit metrics tied directly to the specific indicators the business team needed.
WORKING W/ STAKEHOLDERS
Reducing brand pressure with AI support
Feedback from the Explorer Home designer and PM told me Explorers felt pressured by the NatGeo brand and worried their writing wasn’t good enough. To help the business team gather more narrative data, I integrated an AI tool to reassure them their writing met standards.
AI-DRIVEN WORKFLOWS
Using Figma Make to Ideate Familiar UI Patterns
One of the challenges I faced was in designing a question block for the publications type question.
This question required a lot of fill-ins in a massive table.
To help ideate, I gave all of my project details to Gemini, asked Gemini to generate a prompt for Figma Make, and generated a design.
This was the design Figma Make gave me.
Using these designs, I came up with a different UI for filling in publication details, making a form submit instead of a table.
This design is much cleaner and provides the same data points grouped into cleaner groups. Using AI in workflows to help ideate by providing common UI patterns was incredibly helpful.
ITERATING AND ITERATING
Working Within and Adding to the NGSUI Component Library
Working with the existing NGSUI component library.
Designing new local components.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Designing for Stakeholders
Working with diverse stakeholders
I collaborated with product managers & designers (design), data directors (technology), and business analysts (business). Navigating these perspectives taught me how to balance organizational goals with user needs.
Contributing to a design system
On the technical Figma side and larger system thinking, I got to learn a lot about working within and adding to a legacy brand's design system.
Designing materially honest interfaces
Most importantly, I learned how to design with transparency for users. With sticky navbars in the near-term and full webpages in the future concept, I designed to impart the inherent value of certain actions.