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LEA ROBINSON

COMMON GOOD - THE APP FOR VOLUNTEERING 

Role - UX, UI (solo project)
Tools - Figma, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Miro

Duration - 2 months

Research methods - Secondary and primary research, user survey & interviews, competitor analysis, usability testing

Problem

Lack of awareness of local volunteer opportunities and trust demotivates locals from participating in volunteer work.  

  • Can't find volunteer opportunities nearby

  • Distrust in volunteer opportunity due to lack of information/transparency ​

  • Bad past experiences

Solution

A mobile app that helps people easily find and get involved in local volunteer work.

  • Search function based on location and interests

  • Ability to sign up for volunteer work

  • Reviews for trust and credibility

  • Add friends

Design Process:

1. Empathize

A. COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS

I conducted a competitive analysis of other similar apps on the market. 

Point

Strengths

  • Clean, simple visual design

  • Apply filters to volunteer opportunities based on interests

  • Ability to track volunteer hours
     

Weaknesses

  • No reviews of volunteer organizations

  • Icons for filters confusing

  • No community or option to connect with friends function

Golden

Strengths

  • Can find friends

  • Shows volunteer history

  • Can see what other users and connected friends have participated in

  • Shows a rating for events


Weaknesses

  • No filtering by interest/cause

  • Cannot see real reviews

Just Serve

Strengths

  • Can track volunteer history

  • Can save favorite organizations


Weaknesses

  • Not the most appealing visual design

  • Can't adjust interest filters in the home search function, only in user settings

  • No Reviews

  • No community or option to connect with friends

C. USER INTERVIEWS & ANALYSIS

In order to further understand who is the target audience, 5 interviews were conducted. Users were male and female between the ages of 18-45 who live in Columbia and have an interest in volunteer work.  

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Key insights:

  • All participants said that they feel motivated to do volunteer work because they feel like they can make a positive impact in their local community. 

  • All participants expressed the desire to be able to easily look up and sign up for volunteer opportunities online or via a mobile app.

  • 3 out of 5 participants expressed that trust and credibility in the volunteer opportunity were the most important when selecting where to volunteer. 

  • 4 out of 5 participants expressed that they like volunteering for the social connection aspect.

  • 4 out of 5 participants said it is sometimes difficult to find which volunteer opportunities are happening near them. 

  • 3 out of 5 participants said they would like the ability to easily track their volunteer work hours.

2. Define

Meet Daniel. He is a Marketing Manager and lives in Maryland. He likes to give back to his local community by volunteering during his spare time, but wishes he could find volunteer opportunities more easily. 

After the research phase, I deduced that users need an app that makes it easy for them to engage in local volunteer work because they lack the access to see what opportunities are available and which organizations can be trusted.  

​​

  • How might we help users find local volunteer opportunities based on their interests?

  • How might we help users build trust with the volunteer organizations?

  • How might we help users connect with other volunteers?

  • How might we make volunteering more exciting?

3. Ideate

In this part of the design process I first came up with solutions and then created user flows. After that, I created wireframes, created a mid-fidelity prototype, conducted usability testing, and created the visuals for the app. 

I focused on 4 main user flows:​

  1. Search events

  2. Sign up for events

  3. Join friends

  4. Log volunteer hours

B. USER SURVEY

In order to understand what motivates/demotivates users to volunteer, I created an online survey with 20 participants. All participants live in Columbia, Maryland and are ages 18-45. 

A. PERSONA

In this part of the design process, I created a persona, ​and created some "How might we..." statements.  

B. HOW MIGHT WE

A. SOLUTION

  1. Discover feature that allows users to search volunteer opportunities based on several filters: location, interests, days of the week, time of day

  2. Community feature that shows where other users and friends are volunteering, and allows you to connect with friends

  3. Sign up page that lists all important information, shows reviews, and allows sharing 

  4. Tracking feature that allows users to see volunteer hours and review past volunteering opportunities

B. USER FLOWS

C. WIREFRAMES​

Mid fidelity wireframes and a mid-fidelity prototype were created.

Search events and sign up

Join friends

Log volunteer hours

D. USABILITY TESTING​

I conducted usability testing with 5 participants over zoom, each lasting about 30 minutes. 

​

Objectives from the test:

  1. Observe if users can complete the specified task.

  2. Identify areas for improvement based off of users' feedback.

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Results:

  • Users were generally able to search for, and sign up for events with ease.

  • They enjoyed the overall aesthetics and UI.

  • Users wanted a simplified logging hours process (they were frustrated when new input fields popped up after previous one was completed).

  • A couple users suggested that they would like to see an ability to cancel an event that they signed up for. 

E. VISUALS

This app is meant to help people become more involved in their communities and to find joy in community service, so the visual design had to be happy, bright, and simple. 

View Figma prototype here.

View Figma prototype here.

4. Prototype & Test

  • 5 users participated in the high-fidelity prototype usability testing

  • 2 iterations to the design to fix user problems (i.e. fixed prototype interactions, fixed correct display of added volunteer hours throughout, improved copy, fixed broken links.)

5. Conclusion

Key feedback and reflections: 

  • Users were generally pleased with how easy the app was to use, and they were able to complete specified tasks.

  • Most users said the visual design was "clean and nice."

  • There were several different variables that resulted in specific interactions or screens in the prototype that now can be simplified with Figma's most recent variable feature. My aim is to incorporate this in the next iteration.

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