Good Deeds
A volunteer application for York residents
ROLE
Lead UX Designer
DURATION
1 Month
DESCRIPTION
A user-friendly mobile application intended to serve as a bridge between volunteers and organizations looking for assistance.
DESIGN GOAL
To streamline the process of finding, joining, and managing volunteer opportunities, encouraging more people to get involved in their communities.
TOOLS
- Notion – Project Management and Repository, Competitive Analysis
- Zoom – User Interviews
- Qualtrics – User Survey
- Figma – Affinity Mapping, Brainstorming, Prioritisation Matrix, User Personas, Wireframes, Visual Design and Prototyping
- Xtensio – Customer Journey Map
- Pen and Paper – Sketches
- Google docs – Documentation
Design Thinking
Design Thinking Process
User Research Planning
- Identified potential user goals for the app, and how they might vary based on user type.
- - Planned data collection around user characteristics, volunteering experiences, motivations, roadblocks, and pain points.
- - Aimed to understand user contexts, usage scenarios, and the influence of environmental factors.
- - Focused on exploring user goals, behaviors, capabilities, and contexts, rather than just explicit needs.
- - Prepared and received approval for the required information sheets and consent forms.
Identifying Participants
Primary Group
Decided to focus on people with technical familiarity living in york.
User Research methods suitable under the budget and timeline
- - Competitive Analysis: how other companies are approaching similar issues
- - User Surveys: provide a large amount of data from various types and demographics of people in short time
- - User Interviews: to gain more in-depth insights into their motivations and behaviours
- - Reading Case Studies and Research Articles: to gain a better understanding of the user’s motivations and behaviours
Desk Research
Competitive Analysis:
Conducted competitive analysis and reviewed case studies and research articles for an industry-wide perspective on user motivations and behaviors.
Quantitative User Research
User Survey:
- - Designed a 26-question survey on Qualtrics platform targeting both volunteers and non-volunteers.
- - Used branching logic, and a mix of scales, and open- and closed-ended questions to obtain comprehensive data.
- - Recruited participants through convenience sampling via email and social platforms.
- - Gathered 45 responses revealing key insights.
Survey Findings
- - 59.1% are between the ages of 18 and 24
- - 63.6% are currently students
- - 77.3% had prior volunteering experience
- - The most popular sources of finding volunteering opportunities amongst participants were through friends & family (40.63%), online forums, notice boards, chat rooms, etc. (34.38%), website or mobile applications (34.38%), and student societies (31.25%)
- - Participants reported limited information & range of opportunities to name a few as problems they’ve experienced while searching for opportunities.
- - The majority of participants who had never volunteered (66.67%) reported not knowing where to start as a factor that has prevented them from volunteering.
Qualitative User Research
User Interviews:
- - Conducted semi-structured interviews on Zoom to gain more specific insights into user behaviors and motivations.
- - Recruited participants via convenience sampling, providing information sheets and consent forms in advance.
- - Conducted interviews with eight individuals.
- - Focused on their volunteering experiences, methods of finding opportunities, motivations, and daily routines. This offered valuable context to our survey findings.
- Interviews had been transcribed and findings had been written along with survey findings for data analysis.
Data Analysis
Affinity Mapping
- Transcribed data findings, labeled them with keywords, and grouped them into categories and themes. This process helped reveal connections and identify innovation opportunities.
Key User Needs Identified
- - Desire for personalized recommendations.
- - Need for information about volunteer organization credibility.
- - Interest in detailed event information.
- - Requirement for location and time flexibility.
Customer Journey Map
- Mapped user behavior, emotions, and needs at each stage of the user journey.
User Personas
- - Created detailed user personas based on data analysis.
- - Representing the goals, motivations, and pain points of our target audience.
- - The personas guided design decisions to ensure a tailored user experience.
Scenario-Based Design
- - Incorporated problem scenarios and activity scenarios into the design process to understand user interactions in various contexts.
- - Developed storyboards to visually depict potential user paths, identifying key user needs and how the design might address these needs.
Idea Generation
- - Conducted brainstorming sessions where a multitude of potential solutions were generated individually to address the needs and pain points of our target audience.
- - Aim was to explore a wide range of potential solutions without constraints, promoting innovation and creativity.
MoSCoW Prioritization
Used MoSCoW Prioritization matrix to categorize and prioritize ideas, dividing them into Must-have, Should-have, Could-have, and Will Not Have based on the votes received.
Page Tables
- - Further refinement was done by grouping Must-have and Should-have ideas into key themes of the app.
- - Developed page tables outlining features per page, providing a cohesive information architecture to guide the design process.
Created Sketches using pen, paper and digital mockup tools.
Created wireframes in Figma.
Created visual designs following Apple human interface design guidelines.
Heuristic Evaluation
- - Used Nielsen and Molich’s 10 User Interface Design Heuristics for a comprehensive evaluation.
- - Developed a template to systematically record findings, encompassing: used heuristics, problem number, task, screen/page, usability problem description, and individually rated severity.
- - Conducted a briefing session to review user research data and identify primary user tasks within the app.
- - Performed a collaborative inspection as a team of four, appointed one member as a scribe, one member as a facilitator and the remaining three group members as evaluators namely E1, E2 and E3.
- - Identifying and discussing potential usability problems, then recording these along with their severity using the template.
Heuristic Evaluation Findings
- - Noted issues with confusing UI copy, missing features providing user control and freedom, and error prevention.
- - Averaged individual severity ratings for each problem to achieve a consensus score, providing an objective measure of overall app usability and assisting in prioritizing recommendations.
Addressing Issues: Redesign Strategy
- Issue: Lack of a feature to view past volunteer events and download event certificates.
- - Solution: Introduce a section in the user profile for tracking past events and downloading certificates.
- Issue: Lack of a feature to view past volunteer events and download event certificates.
- - Solution: Introduce a section in the user profile for tracking past events and downloading certificates.
- Issue: Difficulty in filtering and sorting volunteering opportunities.
- - Solution: Develop a filtering system based on user interests and skills, and include a sorting option to organize opportunities based on criteria like date and location.
Usability Testing
- - Used task-based, remote-moderated usability testing to gain qualitative data on user experience.
- - Participant recruitment, task definition, test environment preparation, planning of task execution, protocol creation, data compilation, and design recommendation generation were key steps in the usability testing process.
- - Goals of testing were to test product concepts, reveal friction points, and identify improvement areas.
- - A total of 10 participants were recruited for the study, with a diverse range of ages, genders, and volunteer experience levels.
- - Testing channels included local universities and accommodations for in-person testing, and Zoom or Google Meet for remote testing. Figma prototype was used to access the prototype.
- - Testing setup was in natural environments like dorm rooms and cafes, asking participants to perform tasks using the app.
- - Moderation involved guiding participants through tasks, answering questions, and obtaining user data consent.
- - Post-test questions were designed to gather feedback on the participant’s experience with the app.
Usability Testing Findings
The overall concept of the volunteering app was well-received by the participants. They appreciated the app’s ability to connect volunteers with local organizations and opportunities, and they found the app’s user interface to be intuitive and easy to use. The errors faced were common to the majority of participants.
- - 90% of participants understood the core premise and overall concept of this product.
- - Almost 70% of participants successfully completed all tasks related to the overall concept of the product.
- - 90% of participants enjoyed the concept and the overall experience of using the product.
- - 10% of participants experienced difficulty using this product.
Addressing Issues: Redesign Strategy
Task 3 – View your previous volunteering events & certificates
- - Participants had trouble locating the option to view previous volunteering events in the user profile.
- - The proposed solution is to enhance visual salience using font size and color.
- - Additionally, repositioning the action near the top of the page can make it easier to locate during initial scanning.
- Task 2 – Search for the term “Clean” and apply it to participate in a clean-up event and Task 3 – Search using the filter to refine your search
- - Participants reported difficulties in finding the search function.
- - The search and filter options, while present on the Discover page, were not available on the home page, causing confusion.
- - The proposed solution is to introduce the search and filter options on the home page, providing users with more control and flexibility.
