01 / CASE STUDY

Hivo. Clarity when it matters most.

Hivo. Clarity when it matters most.

Hivo. Clarity when it matters most.

After October 7, I was evacuated from Kibbutz Mefalsim and watched community managers run everything on WhatsApp, Excel and phone calls. Hivo brings people, needs and aid requests into one calm, reliable system.

Watch it in action

Hivo's LEGO community manager typing on a laptop at a desk
Hivo's LEGO community manager typing on a laptop at a desk
Hivo's LEGO community manager typing on a laptop at a desk

02 / THE STORY

Communities deserve a real system, not another WhatsApp group.

Communities deserve a real system, not another WhatsApp group.

After October 7, entire communities were displaced within days. As an evacuee from Kibbutz Mefalsim, I saw firsthand how much we relied on a few dedicated community managers to keep everything together — people, information, requests and constant communication.

They were doing incredible work with very limited tools: scattered Excel sheets, endless WhatsApp threads, and hundreds of people asking who handles food, medical needs or the authorities.

So I asked a simple question: if businesses rely on CRMs to manage customers, why shouldn’t communities have a dedicated system to manage themselves — organized, responsive, and above all, human?

Scattered across WhatsApp groups

Hard to track who needs what

No visibility on urgency

Requests lost in the noise

Manual follow-up takes too long

No clear ownership

Not enough data on what’s happening

Too many disconnected tools

03 / THE CHALLENGE

Powerful enough for a crisis. Simple enough for everyday life.

Powerful enough for a crisis. Simple enough for everyday life.

How might we give community managers a complete picture of hundreds of families and needs — without making them feel like they’re operating enterprise software?

The central tension was balancing the micro and the macro: one family’s case and the whole community’s picture, in the same tool, without one drowning out the other. Hivo shouldn’t ask managers to manage data — it should help them manage people.

Emotional support

Open requests

15

Food & water

Open requests

15

Housing

Open requests

6

Basic equipment

Open requests

4

Fast to use in high-pressure situations, for managers with no time to learn

Interviews made it clear: in a crisis there’s no time to learn complex systems. Requests are grouped by type, so a manager sees where the pressure is in one glance.

Designed around the family — the real unit of a community

The core unit isn’t the individual, it’s the family. Every family has one card with its location, needs and who already helped, so nothing depends on someone’s memory.

Families to check on

3

Location not updated

Needs attention

Cohen family

Location not updated in 48 hours

Nobody slips through the cracks, even when things go quiet

A deliberate decision: when a family’s location hasn’t been updated in 48 hours, the dashboard flags it. It’s the concrete answer to the question every manager asks — who needs my attention right now?

From a request to a resolved need, with clear ownership at every step

A need turns into an aid request, gets assigned to a partner NGO and is tracked from sent to closed — replacing the “did anyone handle this?” messages.

Aid requestHotel, Tiberias
Baby stroller for the Cohen family
Assigned to partner NGO
Opened from the family card
SentIn progressClosed
Mark as delivered
Partner NGO

04 / COMPETITORS

Powerful tools, built for someone else.

Powerful tools, built for someone else.

Most platforms are made for businesses or political campaigns. They’re powerful, but they miss the human side of running a community — families, emotions and urgent needs.

Hivo was built to fill that gap: organizational strength, with empathy and simplicity at its core.

Feature

Monday.com

Salesforce Nonprofit

NationBuilder

Hivo

Community fit

Flexible for projects, not built for communities

Adapted for nonprofits, but needs experts

Made for political campaigns, not daily community life

Built specifically for community management

Emotional & social needs

No emotional or family-based tracking

Heavy and complex, with no emotional focus

No personal tracking beyond campaigns

Supports emotional, family and urgent needs

Ease of use & flexibility

User-friendly, with templates

Complex technical setup

Structured for politics, limited customization

Simple, intuitive and adaptive to real needs

Supported

Very limited

Not supported

05 / RESEARCH

Talking to the people on the ground, instead of guessing.

Talking to the people on the ground, instead of guessing.

I ran a 25-question survey — open-ended, scaled and multiple choice — shared through WhatsApp groups and community mailing lists, collected in Google Forms and analyzed with ChatGPT. Thirty community managers and NGO liaisons answered.

Then I went deeper with 10 in-depth interviews with veteran and new coordinators, to understand the reasons behind the numbers.

85%

had no single organized system

Work was spread across personal phones, group chats and spreadsheets.

70%

of requests were handled too late

Without urgency tracking, critical needs waited in line with everything else.

90%

wanted one centralized platform

A single place that brings families, needs and requests together.

10

in-depth interviews

With veteran and new coordinators, to understand the reasons behind the numbers.

Every request and every family, one click away.

06 / KEY INSIGHTS

So, what stood out?

So, what stood out?

The same gaps came up again and again: urgent needs slipping, information scattered across tools, and no time to learn anything new. Each one became a design direction.

72%

struggle to track family needs in one place

Lack of visibility

Managers can’t see who needs what, and when.

58%

are frustrated with manual updates in Excel and WhatsApp

Scattered information

Critical details get lost across too many tools.

46%

feel they don’t have time to learn complex systems

Ease of use

A crisis needs fast, intuitive tools — not heavy platforms.

07 / PERSONA

Behind every community, there’s a manager.

Behind every community, there’s a manager.

I built a persona from the survey and interviews, to keep every decision grounded in a real day — the frustrations, motivations and habits of the people holding it all together.

Meet Yoav. He isn’t a tech enthusiast, but he’s open to anything simple that saves him time.

Yoav as a LEGO minifigure, working on a laptop at his desk

RESEARCH PERSONA

Yoav, 47

Community manager

Kibbutz Mefalsim · 6 years in the role · former educator

“

I’m always the one organizing everything.

Goal

Keep full visibility of family needs and give quick, accurate support.

Behavior

Juggles WhatsApp groups, Excel sheets and phone calls every day.

Pain points

Scattered information, constant fear of missing urgent needs, and no single source of truth.

08 / THE SOLUTION

A calmer, clearer way to manage communities.

A calmer, clearer way to manage communities.

The system turns scattered communication, spreadsheets and fragmented workflows into one structured platform — making it easier to track requests, manage families, assign responsibilities and keep a clear overview of the community at all times.

Hivo dashboard: community overview with registered families, open requests, a map of where families are staying and an emotional status breakdown

Dashboard

Community overview at a glance

Hivo family management table with filters, locations and request status for each family

Family management

Every family, filterable

Hivo family card with open requests and the form for opening a new aid request

Family card & aid request

From a need to a request

09 / USER FLOW

From a new need to a resolved request. Here’s how.

From a new need to a resolved request. Here’s how.

A real scenario from the research: Yoav, a community manager, starts his morning from the management tent.

1

Open the dashboard

Yoav sees the family count, open requests and the emotional status of the community — and an alert: a family’s location hasn’t been updated in 48 hours.

2

Filter to urgent needs

One filter narrows hundreds of families down to the ones that need attention now.

3

Open the Cohen family’s card

They’re now at a hotel in Tiberias. Yoav adds a new need: a baby stroller.

4

Open an aid request

The need becomes a request, assigned to a partner NGO — no extra calls or messages.

5

Close the loop

He tracks it on the aid requests screen from sent to in progress to closed, then updates the family’s status once it’s delivered.

10 / WHAT I LEARNED

Three things kept coming up.

Three things kept coming up.

Information gets lost. Urgent details disappear between chats, spreadsheets and calls.

Reality changes fast. A static spreadsheet can be outdated minutes after it is updated.

Complexity is the enemy. Managers need something they can understand instantly — especially under pressure.

Hivo shouldn’t ask managers to manage data. It should help them manage people.

A note from the designer

Hivo was deeply inspired by my own experience during the war, after being evacuated from Kibbutz Mefalsim following the events of October 7th. Seeing how communities struggled to manage information, urgent needs and communication during uncertainty showed me how much clearer, more structured tools were needed.

Designing for pressure. Clarity matters most when people are under pressure. When communities manage urgent needs, confusion creates delays, so every interaction had to feel simple, focused and easy to act on.

Systems should feel human. Beyond dashboards and workflows, the challenge was designing a system people could emotionally trust — not only organized, but calmer and more supportive for managers and families.

Complexity needs structure. Clear hierarchy, prioritization and guided workflows turned scattered data into actionable decisions, without losing flexibility.

With love, Nati

Nati Cohen

Product designer

A note from the designer

Hivo was deeply inspired by my own experience during the war, after being evacuated from Kibbutz Mefalsim following the events of October 7th. Seeing how communities struggled to manage information, urgent needs and communication during uncertainty showed me how much clearer, more structured tools were needed.

Designing for pressure. Clarity matters most when people are under pressure. When communities manage urgent needs, confusion creates delays, so every interaction had to feel simple, focused and easy to act on.

Systems should feel human. Beyond dashboards and workflows, the challenge was designing a system people could emotionally trust — not only organized, but calmer and more supportive for managers and families.

Complexity needs structure. Clear hierarchy, prioritization and guided workflows turned scattered data into actionable decisions, without losing flexibility.

With love, Nati

Nati Cohen

Product designer