WHAT I HEARD
Family needs were difficult to track in one place.
WHAT IT CHANGED
Urgent needs first
Surface urgent needs on the dashboard, with a clear route to the relevant family.
B2B SAAS
PRODUCT CONCEPT
01 / OVERVIEW
I designed Hivo from a need I experienced firsthand.
I designed Hivo during my evacuation from Kibbutz Mefalsim. Four months turning a problem I saw around me into a product concept.
Built from a need close to home.- My role
- Sole product designer, responsible for the information structure, user flows and UI.
- Team
- Independent personal project
- Status
- Concept presented. The project did not progress beyond that presentation.
- Design scope
- Community dashboard, family management and profiles, urgent requests and a guided aid-request flow.
- Timeline
- Four months
- Presented to
- Tekuma Directorate and community managers
- Redesign
- The same flow, visually redesigned in 2026, with an added request confirmation state. All screens on this page use the updated design.
In this case study
02 / THE PROBLEM
Needs got lost between spreadsheets and WhatsApp.
After October 7th, displaced communities had to rebuild their routines in days. Community managers tracked families, needs and volunteers across Excel sheets, WhatsApp threads and phone calls. Requests slipped, nobody had the full picture, and trust eroded when help came late. I saw it firsthand, as an evacuee from Kibbutz Mefalsim.
“I had no clear way to track who got help.”
Community manager
COMMUNITY UPDATES
Who’s coordinating the medical needs?
Has anyone followed up?
COMMUNITY NEEDS.xlsx
NeedOwnerUpdateTransportTo checkPendingEquipmentTo checkPending
Missed calls
More context to piece together.
The information isn’t.Illustration of the fragmented workflow
03 / USER RESEARCH
Managers had no single place to see who needs what.
THE SURVEY25questions
Open, scaled and multiple-choice questions, shared through WhatsApp groups and community mailing lists.
THE PEOPLE
Community managers, in their own words.
Respondents came from displaced communities and NGOs. Alongside the survey, I talked with managers about how they actually work.
MAKING SENSE OF THE ANSWERS
I used ChatGPT to help sort the open answers. The recurring themes below shaped the design.
Scattered information
Information was scattered across WhatsApp groups, spreadsheets and phone calls.
Lost follow-through
Managers struggled to track who needed help and what had already been done.
Unclear priorities
Urgent requests were difficult to distinguish from everyday updates.
“I didn’t need more WhatsApp groups. I needed one clear system to rely on.”
Community manager
“How can I track urgent needs without drowning in spreadsheets?”
Community manager
04 / COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
Community work needs a clear view of families and requests.
I compared project management, nonprofit case management and community organizing. The design opportunity was to bring the family, its needs and the next action together in a focused workflow.
monday.com- ✓ Flexible work and project management
Salesforce Nonprofits- ✓ Nonprofit programs and case management
NationBuilder- ✓ Organizing people and community engagement
- Hivo concept
- Concept: community needs and family records
| Platform | Starting point | People and context | Design implication |
|---|---|---|---|
| monday.com | ✓ Flexible work and project management | Limited: depends on how boards are configured | Make the next action explicit |
| Salesforce Nonprofits | ✓ Nonprofit programs and case management | ✓ Participants, households and relationships | Keep the family model focused on this workflow |
| NationBuilder | ✓ Organizing people and community engagement | ✓ People profiles and relationship history | Keep communication connected to a need |
Hivo concept | Concept: community needs and family records | Concept: family context connected to each request | Aim for a guided flow with clear ownership; ease of use needs testing |
✓ Existing capability · Limited: relevant with constraints · Concept: proposed direction, not a tested result.
Feature references checked October 2026. Comparison focuses on this project’s use case. monday.com ↗Salesforce ↗NationBuilder ↗
05 / KEY INSIGHTS
Managers needed visibility across families and requests.
WHAT I HEARD
Manual updates fragmented the history.
WHAT IT CHANGED
One family, one history
Keep communication, requests and history connected to one family profile.
WHAT I HEARD
Managers had little time to learn another system.
WHAT IT CHANGED
A guided next step
Use a guided request flow, then test whether it gives enough context without help.
06 / PERSONAS
Yoav needs a clear view of each family’s needs.
Yoav is a composite based on the survey and conversations with community managers. His goals and daily work helped frame the design.
Yoav, 47 · Community manager
People first. Context always.Keep the community in view.
Keep the family in focus.
THE FRICTION
Information lives in separate conversations and records. A request can lose the context of the family behind it.
WHAT HE NEEDS
To know where attention is needed, find the right household and understand enough to act.
HOW I DESIGNED FOR IT
A community overview leads into a family record, then into a request. The family is the connecting point.
07 / USER FLOWS
Connect each need to a family and a next action.
The wider support workflow
CURRENT PROTOTYPE
- Identify a need and find the family
- Create a request
- Confirm the request
FUTURE SUPPORT WORKFLOW
- Assign responsibility
- Track progress
06 / CHECK THE OUTCOMEIs the need resolved?
NOT YETProvide more support
Return to tracking progress.
YES07 / Archive
Keep the history with the family.
If the need is unresolved, support continues and progress is reviewed again. The current prototype covers finding a family, creating a request and confirming it; follow-up remains future work.
08 / KEY DECISIONS
Three decisions connect family context to action.
Three decisions connect the wider community picture to the person behind each request. Each makes the next step clearer, with a trade-off to manage.
INFORMATION HIERARCHY
Priorities before detail.
Give urgent family needs a clear place in the overview, with a route to the full record.
Explore the decisionTHE INFORMATION MODEL
Start with the family.
Connect requests to people, so the next action begins with the household’s context.
Explore the decisionPROGRESSIVE DISCLOSURE
Reveal the right detail.
Keep the list scannable. Open the family story one layer deeper, without losing your place.
Explore the decisionTHE INFORMATION MODEL
A family is more
than a record.
I organized people, locations and requests around the household, so managers can follow a need back to the family it concerns.
COMMUNITYFamily
The shared point of reference.
A household, with people behind it.
Family members and contact details belong to the same family context. A manager should not have to reconstruct that connection from separate conversations.
Try a request for this familyConceptual information model based on the designed flow.
INFORMATION HIERARCHY
The right detail.
At the right time.
Each layer answers a different question. The choice is what to show now, and what to make easy to reach next.
THE QUESTION
What needs attention?
The community picture comes first, with a dedicated area for needs that require attention.
ONE LAYER DEEPER
Keep individual contact details in the family record.
ONE DECISION, IN DEPTH
Why a
side panel?
The manager needs enough detail to act and a clear way back to the list. A side panel balances those needs, with limits of its own.
A comparison explaining the design decision, not a claim that these alternatives were tested.
09 / FINAL DESIGN
Move from the community overview to a specific request.
Follow one designed path through four screens of the redesigned system. The information becomes more specific as the manager moves closer to action.
COMMUNITY
Find the next priority.
Which family needs my attention first?
A dedicated section highlights needs that require attention alongside the community overview. The manager can choose where to look before opening individual records.
FAMILY
Find the right family.
Have I found the right household?
The family list connects a household to its location, contacts and requests. A need stays attached to the people it concerns.
CONTEXT
Keep the full context.
What do I need to know before acting?
A side panel shows the family’s details beside the list, giving the manager enough information to act without crowding every row.
ACTION
Turn a need into a request.
How do I turn this need into a request?
The request form opens from the family context. The redesign adds a confirmation: the new request appears in the family record. Tracking over time remains open.
Designed concept, ending when a request is created and confirmed. No completed aid delivery or measured service outcomes are shown.
TRY THE DECISION
Keep the context.
Take the next step.
Try the family-to-request flow yourself. This simplified model uses the redesigned visual language and fictional records. Nothing is sent or saved.
Your task Find the Cohen family at North residence, then send a request for school supplies.
3 families
01 / FIND THE RIGHT HOUSEHOLD
Two households share a surname. Location and a family identifier help distinguish them before a request begins.
10 / REFLECTION
Clarity is a path.
Not just a clean screen.
Reducing visible detail creates a responsibility: make the route back to that detail clear. The hierarchy and the next action have to work together.
WHAT I’D TEST
Can a community manager identify a priority, find the right family and begin a request without help?
WHAT I’D WATCH
Wrong-family selections and backtracking, signals that the flow is not giving enough context.
WHAT REMAINS OPEN
Follow-up and request tracking. The redesign confirms that a request was created, but what happens after that still needs design and validation.
11 / WHAT I’D TEST NEXT
Questions for the next round of testing.
- 01
Can a community manager find the most urgent open request on the dashboard in a few seconds?
- 02
Does the guided request flow capture what volunteers need, without follow-up calls?
- 03
Would managers trust the family profile enough to stop keeping their own spreadsheets?