At a glance
AllGood helps volunteers plan, organize, and execute their community projects during their free time. Volunteers now have all the information they need about their project, their team, and the work that needs to get done.
Role
UX designer. Worked collaboratively in all stages with ownership over user research, and ideation.
Team
Me (designer), one researcher, one PM.
Methods
Ethnography, Personas, Wireframing, Usability Testing, User flows, Interaction Design.
Duration
10 Weeks
“How might we enable volunteers to Plan, Organize, and Execute a community project during their free time?”
Problem
Although we recognize and care about important causes, it is a struggle to know how to mobilize to solve these problems. As people who have commitments to work, school, and our families, devoting energy to a volunteer project can be intimidating. Even if we connect with like-minded people, how do we continue to work together effectively enough to follow through on our goals?
User Research
When creating ALLGOOD, I needed to learn more about our users’ behavior, needs, and pain points about the volunteering process. We used several approaches and observation methods including online surveys, semi-structured interviews, and ethnography.
Research Findings
Volunteers rely heavily on their volunteer coordinator for team-wide communications and sharing their individual needs.
Collaboration is an important aspect of volunteering and the ability to exchange information with their peers is very important to a volunteer.
Volunteers are passionate about what they do and care about the result. An individual volunteer’s output affects another volunteer’s task, whether or not those two volunteers directly collaborate with each other.
Volunteering is a way for people to learn, develop and implement their skills. Volunteers are motivated to use their experiences to develop their skills and CVs while also contributing to the project.
Online Surveys
Our survey sample (35 participants) included existing volunteers, Coordinators, and donors mostly from the Greater Seattle area and internationally from India and Palestine. The following is a sample of the questions we asked and the data we received.
Semi-Structured Interviews
We virtually Interviewed four participants, Questions were open enough to elicit far-ranging response. Some of the questions we asked were:
Tell me about your volunteering commitments ?
How do you balance work, school, and volunteering ?
Can you describe any pain points you experienced ?
Ethnography
I conducted an Ethnographic session in UW pantry to observe and probe users as they work in their natural environment, from receiving packages, sorting inventory, and helping students
Personas
Synthesizing research insights, I created three user personas to embody the people our team's designing for and guide the design direction.
Ideating and Testing
sketches
Following our design requirements , we ideated more than 18 concept sketches that ranged from creating chatbots , Interactive kanban board , teams maps and more.
Lo-fi Wireframes
The paper prototype was an amalgamation of all the ideas generated from the sketching phase. The main goal of this exercise was to focus on the functionality of the application.
Moreover, the simplicity of the prototypes allowed us to quickly test ideas with five different users without diving into details.
User testing 1.0
User Testing was conducted on the paper prototypes with 5 different users. We created multiple scenarios to test the various modules of the prototypes such as ‘Task’ and ‘Home’ and ‘Profile’.
Mid-Fidelity Prototype
We created the mid-fidelity prototype with the persona in mind, focused on demonstrating 5 key features:
Usability Testing
We invited 3 potential users to test out the mid-fidelity prototype. In total, we had a comprehensive list of 24 tasks. Each participant was given a scenario related to a task and we measured the success rate and the time taken to complete each task.
Takeaways
Information Architecture
I developed a sitemap to map the different layers of information needed to accomplish the volunteer's various flows. Due to time constraints, we didn’t consider the coordinator POV and its respective IA.
Moodboard
Final Solution
On-boarding
We approached the Sign Up flow with the intention of keeping it more engaging. Instead of having a traditional form, we opted to have a conversational flow.
Navigation
Navigation
The hamburger menu provides users with a quick option to switch between different projects.
Tasks
Perhaps the most important module in AllGood, the tasks screen allows users to track their assigned work in a project.
Other Wireframes
Figma Prototype
Reflection
Post MVP
The intent behind my design is to empower the all members of a volunteer team to self-organize and connect.
While a platform can never replace true human interaction, I believe that by helping volunteers better understand their project and reach each other, they will be able to foster stronger relationships when they work together in person.
Main Takeaways
Be intentional when using user research methods
Doing Ethnography was very useful in my research as it introduced the “coordinator” as the main user to design for, I learned how important it was to be strategic and intentional in choosing the right methods with respect to the problem.
Always have a second opinion
I learned how valuable users feedback was while iterating, it is important to always remind myself that I am not the user and always seek a second opinion from users and peers.
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