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.
During my evacuation from Kibbutz Mefalsim, I saw family needs scattered across chats and spreadsheets. I designed a path from the community overview to a family record and a specific request.
Built from a need close to home.- My role
- Sole product designer: information structure, 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
- 2026 visual redesign, plus request confirmation. All screens shown use this version.
In this case study
02 / THE PROBLEM
Needs got lost between spreadsheets and WhatsApp.
After October 7th, community managers had to coordinate families, volunteers and urgent needs with fragmented records. Seeing which requests were still open required piecing together separate conversations.
“I had no clear way to track who got help.”
Community manager, research conversation
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 needed to track what happened next.
THE CONVERSATIONS10community managers
Sha’ar HaNegev Regional Council. Preliminary research, before development.
THE MAIN CHALLENGE
Keeping track of support.
Following up on requests was the central difficulty in these conversations. My design response was to connect each request, its status and its family context.
THE SURVEY
The 25-question survey combined open, scaled and multiple-choice questions, shared through WhatsApp groups and community mailing lists. Respondents came from displaced communities and NGOs.
Tracking support
Managers struggled to track who needed help and what had already been done.
Scattered information
Information was scattered across WhatsApp groups, spreadsheets and phone calls.
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, research conversation
“How can I track urgent needs without drowning in spreadsheets?”
Community manager, research conversation
This research summary is based on my recollection; the original records were not retained.
View the processClose the process
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 PROTOTYPETry these steps
- Identify a need and find the family
- Create a request
- Confirm the request
FUTURE SUPPORT WORKFLOW
- Assign responsibility
- Track progress
- 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.
The information model, hierarchy and request flow each resolve a different part of the problem.
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 the four screens from community priorities to preparing a request.
COMMUNITY
Find the next priority.
Which family needs my attention first?
The urgent-needs table brings the family, request and treatment status into one row. It gives the manager a starting point for the next review.
FAMILY
Find the right family.
Have I found the right household?
Compare the family name, current location and contact before opening a record. The request count stays in the same row.
CONTEXT
Keep the full context.
What do I need to know before acting?
The family panel keeps contact details, location and the request entry point beside the list. The manager can inspect one household without losing their place.
ACTION
Turn a need into a request.
How do I turn this need into a request?
The form names the family and collects the request topic, urgency and description. This screen shows the request being prepared; the interactive example below includes confirmation.
These screens show the path to creating a request. The interactive example below adds confirmation. Follow-up and completed aid delivery remain outside the prototype.
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?