IMPACTFUL APP DESIGN
The COVID-19 outbreak was a major setback for the world. Most specifically, it changed the way community service looks forever. For many nonprofit organizations in Las Vegas, they’ve lost the strong connection they once had with devoted supporters. Some also struggle with finding new volunteers or donors. For volunteers in Las Vegas, many found trouble with keeping themselves informed about event regulations and staying connected with their favored organizations. Impactful works to (re)spark and maintain the connection between nonprofits and their supporters, while overcoming various hurdles created by the pandemic.
Overview
Challenge: Improve the way nonprofits and their supporters interact/stay connected
Solution:
Design an app that simplifies the exchange between nonprofits and supporters
Integrate user flows for both perspectives
Role: UX/UI Designer, User Researcher
Key Skills: User Experience Design, User Research, Research Synthesis
Tools: Figma, Adobe Illustrator, Zoom, Miro
Timeline: 2 months (Oct. 2021 to Dec. 2021)
The Design Process
Empathize
Before starting the designing process, I wanted to ensure I understood both perspectives of the app thoroughly. To do this, I interviewed several individuals of the target audience. I spoke with representatives of 3 local nonprofits in Las Vegas and 1 high school volunteer, 1 corporate worker who volunteers on the side, and 1 independent volunteer. Before conducting these interviews, I created a research protocol template to follow, which helped with the flow of each conversation. I asked them general, then specific questions.
Interviews with Organizations
Interviews with Volunteers
Competitor Analysis
Positives:
For volunteers:
Very simplistic way to log and track hours
Map is a great way to see which organizations/events are nearby
Inbox is useful for communication with people within group/organization workers
For organizations:
Allows nonprofits to easily approve hours
Seamless process of volunteers clocking in/out
Negatives:
For volunteers:
Main purpose is solely to track hours
No way to see what events are going on, just locations of organization offices
No way to track and schedule events
For organizations:
Not much functionality compared to online version (can only verify hours/timestamps of volunteers
No way to start new message with someone in Inbox, only keeps track of conversations done on desktop
Sign in and Clock In/Out has very similar functionalities, could be combined into one
Positives:
Provides a variety of clean, creative email templates to send out
Can easily make adjustments to email on the app
Allows users to advertise both on social media and email at the same time
Negatives:
Doesn’t allow you to schedule send posts/email
No way to manage volunteers for events on the app, mostly used for email/social media marketing
Scan coupon feature is confusing and doesn’t seem as important to make a main feature on the homepage
Problems with image scalability when uploading an image to social media
User Personas
After gathering all my feedback, I created user personas to create a mental picture of what kind of users the Impactful app may have, and what they may want out of the app. I created personas for 1 volunteer and 1 organization representative.
Gracie Generous
Occupation: High School Student
Likes to volunteer for health-related organizations
Committed to volunteer weekly to obtain service hours as required by her club
Likes to volunteer alongside her friends/fellow club members
Wants to continue volunteering for her community after high school and stay connected with the organizations she volunteers for
Occasionally wants to volunteer virtually for safety precautions and at times when she’s too busy
Problems:
Doesn’t know where to look for virtual volunteer opportunities for local organizations
Isn’t too in the loop about volunteer opportunities she’s interested in since she’s only informed about them through her club organization postings
Finds it hard to track her hours and get them approved, she brings a sheet given by her club to track hours and get physical signatures but often loses it or forgets to bring it to service events
Olivia Organization
Occupation: Nonprofit organization owner
Just started her organization
Likes to connect with other health-related organizations and help them further their cause
Likes to reach out directly to volunteers/groups to promote upcoming events
Problems:
Finds trouble finding new volunteers, supporters. Posts often on social media but is not getting much interaction.
Has lots of graphic design/multimedia content to post but finds it awkward to attach to emails
Requires vaccination records and masks to her events. Includes it in emails she sends to volunteers but volunteers occasionally disregard that message
Define and Ideate
Defining the problems
Volunteers need an easier way of tracking their hours rather than random apps on their phone or through physical paper.
Volunteers want to have a more focused, organized way of finding out which volunteer events to go to. At the same time, they want to consistently see new events that are related to their interests and needs.
Volunteers can often get confused with the COVID-19 related event regulations as it can get lost in emails.
Service event promotions in general often get lost in social media feeds and emails.
Email marketing limits the amount of traction nonprofits can garner towards their event promotion and also limits certain creativity aspects.
Solutions
Allow user to track volunteer hours/donations on app.
Allow user to answer onboarding questions that relate to their interests and generate a personalized dashboard.
Incorporate a way for a user to acknowledge COVID-19 event regulations before being able to sign up.
Allow nonprofits to post their pictures/videos to a new event they create, which will show up on a user’s dashboard.
Information Architecture
For Volunteers
For Organizations
For Volunteers
Low Fidelity Wireframes
For Organizations
Mood Board and Font Scheme
To gain inspiration of the type of design theme I wanted to go for, I created a mood board of different pictures relating to volunteering, acts of service, etc. While creating the mood board, I noticed green being the prominent color in a lot of pictures I found. This discovery made sense to me, as I understood the psychology of green associated with concepts like growth, new beginnings, nature, health, and generosity. This led me to decide that different shades of green would be my color scheme, with black as an accent color.
Prototype
Taking the low-fidelity wireframes and my design scheme together, I created the high-fidelity wireframes for both target audiences. View the high-fidelity wireframes of both volunteer and organization views below.
High-Fidelity Wireframes
For Volunteers
For Organizations
Test
I then made prototype user flows to test the functionality of the app, which really made the app come to life. I made two user flows for each persona that I’ve created above. The demonstrations below would be from their perspectives, based on their needs and goals with Impactful.
For Volunteers
For Organizations
Temporary Takeaways and New Objectives
Even though this project is still ongoing, I’ve reflected on my process with the project thus far and have spot a few areas in which I could improve on. First, I believe I should have conducted usability testing straight away after making the low-fidelity wireframes rather than jumping right into making the high-fidelity wireframes. This would have saved me more time in the long run, in case the usability testing brought up major (and even minor) problems where I’d have to make adjustments to the look/functionality of the app. I also believe that conducting even more user interviews would have helped, especially from users that aren’t from Las Vegas. Interviewing users in Las Vegas helped me understand my audience better, but since this app works to appeal to audiences anywhere in the United States, a broader demographic across the nation would be helpful. Going forward, I will look into still conducting user interviews and conduct usability testing with the organizations/volunteers I initially interviewed. I’ve also realized my main goal after designing this project is to try and develop it into a real-life, functioning app using back-end coding. From there, I will work to publish it to the app store and promote it to my target audience. As that will take time, it will remain as my long-term goal. Stay tuned for more updates! :)