HBCU Heritage Home: Ancestry Exploration
HBCUHeritageHome is a research institute and genealogy tourism site dedicated to exploring and sharing positive stories of African-American ancestry. It addresses the absence of ancestral spaces for Black genealogy tourists by preserving family heritage books. The project was a collaborative effort between the Student Organization for Computer-Human Interaction (SOCHI) and the Engaged Learning Leaders (SO-ELL) at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, providing research-driven design solutions for increased engagement and cultural preservation.
UX Research
Cultural Probe
DEI
01 // Executive Summary
The website wanted to shift the company's focus from older African-American family members to a younger demographic through digitization.
The company primarily relied on older African-American family members ("griots") to preserve and share cultural heritage. However, with a relatively new website and limited online engagement, the clients aimed to attract a younger demographic of African-American students aged 18-25 to boost digital interaction and expand their audience. This shift was key to bridging traditional storytelling with modern digital platforms.
The team conducted secondary research and surveyed 15 young African-American students (18-25) to explore their motivations and knowledge of heritage for the HBCUHeritageHome project. Shifting to a "Cultural Probe" technique revealed more qualitative insights into genuine user engagement. Based on this, the team provided actionable design recommendations tailored to the target audience’s needs. The project was then handed off to the company’s developers to begin implementation and testing.
For this project, we set out to answer the question -
How might we increase young African-American students' engagement on HBCUHeritageHome's Family Heritage website by leveraging their interest in ancestral heritage?
02 // Research Planning
We started by breaking down the project brief and setting up research goals.
To understand the needs of the client at HBCU Heritage Home and our target users of young African-American students, we set up three research questions -
How much does the target audience know about their ancestral history?
Is the target audience interested in learning about their ancestral history?
How would the target audience prefer to interact with their ancestral heritage?
Possible research areas identified from the project brief:
Key Insights from our Research
1. Intergenerational Interaction
Uptil now, the only source of information for the younger population on their heritage was intergenerational interaction with their relatives who have preserved family stories. Exploring heritage as a family bonding experience along with aided visual storytelling at play could act as a motivation for the younger generation to partake more in learning about their ancestors.
Recommendation: Design interactive family-tree-building activities and virtual storytelling events to encourage collaboration between users and older family members.
2. Virtual Heritage Games
Gamification enhances user engagement by promoting interactive learning, cognitive development, and retention.
Potential Implementations:
Card games and image-labeling activities
AR/VR-based experiences simulating key historical events or family journeys
Leaderboards, points, and badges to drive community interaction and motivation
⚠️ Risks: Poorly designed gamification or mismatched content can lead to disengagement. Evaluation metrics will be essential to measure learning outcomes effectively.
3. Insights on the DYKEA Scale
DYKEA - Do You Know Your Enslaved Ancestors - scale is a 20-question, binary Yes/No questionnaire designed to measure how families descended from U.S. enslaved people pass on ancestral stories to future generations. This provided a snapshot of:
Knowledge Level: How much students knew about their ancestors
Interest Level: Their interest in ancestral stories.
It provides a baseline for measuring users’ knowledge of ancestral stories but the binary nature of the scale does not reveal deeper motivational factors or learning gaps.
The limitations of the DYKEA Scale prompted us to conduct surveys to gather a wider range of user responses and insights.
03 // Survey Research
Survey findings showed high interest but revealed key limitations in understanding intrinsic motivation.
We conducted an initial survey with 15 African-American students (aged 18-25) consisting of 23 questions. The survey provided a brief overview of genealogy tourism and explored their interest in learning about their ancestry, their willingness to engage, and the factors influencing their motivation.
Key Findings:
Limitations of the Survey:
Noise in Data: While some responses were insightful, a significant portion of the survey data was not actionable due to irrelevant or generic answers.
Methodological Limitations: Surveys, often used for quantitative or heuristic evaluation, did not capture the deep, intrinsic motivations behind user behavior.
Needs Assessment Gap: The survey highlighted a deficiency in identifying the core motivational factors needed to sustain long-term user engagement.
04 // Transition to Cultural Probe
We transitioned to a cultural probe for more qualitative insights on emotional and motivational triggers.
Since surveys didn’t reveal why students were motivated (or unmotivated) to engage, we shifted to a cultural probe designed to explore emotional, social, and contextual factors through creative tasks.
The cultural probe, named the ‘Ancestral Scrapbook,’ encouraged reflection and storytelling.
We designed the probe as an interactive, reflective experience that evoked family memories and nostalgia, consisting of six tasks that combined photos, sketches, and audio recordings.
Key Objectives
Explore current practices in collecting family history.
Identify emotional connections to ancestral objects and family stories.
Assess users’ desire to document their heritage.
Participants
[Pseudonyms used to maintain anonymity.]
Tasks
Insights From the Cultural Probe
Tradition of verbal storytelling
The cultural probe revealed that oral storytelling is the predominant method for transmitting family heritage in African American communities.
Opportunity: HBCU Heritage Home can leverage this tradition by offering features that allow users to record, store, and share family stories digitally, ensuring they are preserved for future generations.
Preference for stories and items with strong emotional connection
All participants emphasized the emotional value of family artifacts, heirlooms, and stories, demonstrating their significance in connecting users with their past.
Opportunity: The website can encourage engagement by allowing users to document and share personal family stories and learn from others’ experiences through community storytelling features.
There is a strong curiosity for ancestral exploration
Participants showed a strong desire to explore their roots and uncover hidden family stories, indicating curiosity as a key motivation.
Opportunity: HBCU Heritage Home can guide users by offering interactive exploration tools like family tree builders and storytelling prompts, making the discovery process intuitive and engaging.
Curiosity is overshadowed by lack of time and proper resources
Although users were interested in exploring their family history, time constraints made it difficult for them to engage in long, resource-intensive tasks.
Users show an interest to learn more, but they feel limited and don't know how they can connect more to their history and to other people who share similar experiences
Opportunity: Design small, time-efficient and community-based activities like quizzes, daily heritage facts, or step-by-step family tree creation to gradually build user participation without overwhelming them.
05 // Design Recommendations
Based on our research findings, we developed a set of user-centric design recommendations.
These solutions aim to address the intrinsic motivations and engagement barriers of young African American users while fostering long-term interaction with HBCU Heritage Home.
