Project Description
MyImpact App
BRAINSTATION CAPSTONE PROJECT – UX DESIGN DIPLOMA PROGRAM
Overview
MyImpact App is a capstone project that was developed in a 10-week project timeline as part of the User Experience Diploma Bootcamp at BrainStation.
The project goal was to design a one-place digital solution to assist people search for charities and nonprofit organizations and manage their charitable giving, and also to help charities to increase their engagement in campaigns, their number of volunteers and also their monthly donations.
Project type: Academic
My role: UX Researcher e UX Designer
A one-place solution for people that want to make an impact
My Impact App provides a one-place solution that allows people to discover many ways to support charities and manage their charitable giving. People can find charities that match their interests and causes that are close to their heart, and learn more about what they do, they can donate to their favourite organizations from their account, volunteer their time, launch a fundraiser or sign a petition and they can also manage their charitable giving, plan the impact they want to make and view their charitable giving history in one place.
Design Process
UNDERSTANDING AND RESPONDING TO THE USERS’ NEEDS
Double Diamond Process
In this case study, I am going to show how I used the Double Diamond process to help me make better design decisions. This includes understanding and defining the design problem through user research as well as developing a solution specific to certain target group.
DISCOVER
Problem Space
People don’t usually know where to find the right charities to support — that match their interests or are most in need — and how to manage their contributions and impact of their support. At the same time, charities face the lack of resources to allow supporters to help them easily and more frequently.
Donors find it hard to find new charities to support and also can’t keep track of their giving (how much they donate per month, which organizations they already supported). On the other hand, charities and nonprofits face the challenge to to increase the number of supporters and their fidelization.
Secondary Research
The point of secondary research is to collect data that deepens the understanding of the problem space. Secondary research is beneficial because it is quick, cheap to conduct, and helps guide subsequent primary research. For this project, I found it was very relevant to learn more about donors behaviour and their impact and also about other similar tools and competitors.
Design Question
Hypotheses
Finding a powerful way to help people find the right charity to support and also help charities to increase the number of supporters and donations would be a great benefit for charities since they depend exclusively on donations.
We believe that providing a all-in-one digital solution will help to increase the donations to charities by motivating people to better manage their charitable giving and to commit to a giving frequency (reducing one-time donations).
We will know this is true when we measure the data related to giving behaviour and we observe the increment of donations (especially monthly subscriptions) and the expansion of charities projects.
Design Question
Assumptions
- Most people forget to donate to their favourite charities
- Charities need to remind their frequent donors to keep supporting them
- Most of donors don’t keep track of how much they spend per month
- People don’t have an specific amount they direct to donations
- When donor can’t find a way to donate they postpone to do it later and they forget
- People look for charities on Google
- It would be helpful to people to have an app to assist them managing their giving
- The app would motivate them to increase their donations or to enrol to monthly plans
After conducting secondary research and formulating these hypotheses and assumptions, I came up with the following design question:
How might we make it easier for donors find charities and manage their giving in order to help them diversify the charities they support and increase their impact?
Primary Research
Key Insights
Insight Statement
Donors need a solution to help them manage their charitable giving and track their impact.
DEFINE
User Persona
Considering the previous research and insights, I created the following user persona:
Experience Map
Following the creation of a user persona, I built an experience map to help myself to understand better Julia’s journey while experiencing different services related to nonprofits and charitable giving.
DEVELOP
Task Flow
After, I wrote out user stories, selected a core user story and created a task flow based on it.
User Scenario:
Julia loves the work of her favorite charity and she supports them every time she can. Today, Julia decided she should enroll to a monthly plan so she can help the charity more consistently. She wants to contribute $50 every month.
Paper Sketches
In the sketching phase, I was able to sketch out a few screens for the chosen task flow above and I could try out different ideas and iterate them before settling on one.
Wireframes
Next, I created greyscale wireframes to visualize the skeleton of the application. A link to the mid-fidelity prototype built on Invision can be found below.
Usability Testing
To learn how users perceive and use the app, I started gathering feedback on them via usability testing.
I created a test plan, recruited users, facilitated usability tests, analysed the information gathered and created a test report. I conducted two rounds of tests with 10 users in total. After collecting the data, I mapped the usability issues identified during the testings, and focused on the most relevant problems first. After listing the issues found, I ranked them and then I translated test findings into design, as shown beside.
