MUTUAL IMPACT: VOLUNTEERING MADE EASY
Mutual aid and volunteering made easy through user focused design.
THE CHALLENGE
Conceptualize a volunteering app and design a user flow to quickly and easily schedule volunteering appointments.
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Product research, market analysis, user research, insight generation, concept building, prototyping, user testing.
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8 Weeks
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Conceptualize an app that acts as a one stop shop for aid needs.
Design a primary user flow for the app.
Design with a focus on accessibility considerations.
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Figma, FigJam, Adobe Color
RESEARCH INSIGHTS
Based on the market research the potential market for the volunteering app is as follows :
Total Available Market (TAM): 109 million
Serviceable Available Market (SAM): 20.7 million
Serviceable Obtainable Market (SOM) - Targeting California ~ 9.8 million potential users
*Image courtesy UN Volunteering report (2018)
Further, a user survey and competitor analysis helped yield four Jobs To be Done (JTBD):
When I am looking for volunteering opportunities, I want to see organizations that align with my values so I can easily and quickly find causes that are a great match.
When I make a donation I want to see tangible difference being made with my contribution so I know I can feel like I’m making a meaningful impact.
When I find a volunteer I want to be able to mitigate and/or decrease any possibility of a no-show so I can have enough capacity for my volunteer initiative.
When I care about a cause, I want to be able to share it with my social circle so I can create more awareness about it.
In this project, I decided to tackle the first user flow i.e quickly and easily find volunteering opportunities that align with the user’s values.
To learn more about my user research process and insights click here.
DESIGN PROCESS
After identifying my main user flow, the task was to ideate potential designs for the flow. Using the Crazy 8’s exercise I landed on some neat features:
Highlight feature to share urgent requests
List volunteer requests in the area with distance
Feature new causes
Display vacancies available
Using this information I created a user journey map, a user flow map and digital wireframes.
ideation
MOckups and high fidelity prototype
The app's visual language combines trustworthiness and modernity, using a monochromatic blue palette to maintain focus. Accessibility was ensured through contrast and color blindness tests, guaranteeing a seamless user experience for all. A high fidelity prototype was created that was used to perform a usability study.
“But the usability study revealed some issues…”
Usability study insights
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Clear contrast and instructions.
Intuitive flow design.
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Replaced hamburger menu with back button to improve navigation.
Enhanced highlight feature with visuals and labels to provide context.
Causes near me sorted by distance; filters for category and rating.
“And so, we took the feedback and adapted!”
Finished user flow
“I really liked how clear the app was. I was able to easily navigate through the it to complete the task”
IMPACT
Designed an easy to use volunteering app flow that allows users to find and schedule volunteering opportunities that align with them. The success metric I would use to identify the impact would be the conversion rate of the number of users who used the app to actual number of unique appointments scheduled.
Future work
Research revealed a preference for community-oriented over formal volunteering (70% vs. 30%). A potential feature could enable users to initiate and engage in community-driven volunteering via the app. Further development aims to design user flows, especially for donation and onboarding/check-in processes, addressing the prior identified pain points.