CASE STUDY
UX DESIGN · UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN · SI 482 · 2023
Helping Hands
People want to volunteer. Almost nothing about finding it is easy.
OVERVIEW
A semester project built for the CHI Student Design Challenge, a competition run by the biggest academic conference in human-computer interaction. The brief that year came from the UN’s goal on partnerships, so we needed a problem about connecting people to organizations doing good work. We wrote the problem statement first and kept returning to it: how might we optimise the process of finding volunteer opportunities, making it simple and painless for anyone to participate?
WHAT THE RESEARCH SAID
Trust decides where people volunteer, before anything else.
One participant chose organizations based on how genuine he felt their mission was. Another looked for organizations where administrative costs are low so most donations reach the cause, and needed to feel a connection first.
Time is the currency, not money.
People wanted to make an impact where they could put in time over money.
People often have a cause already in mind.
Food pantries, soup kitchens and homelessness came up unprompted from both participants; one named human trafficking specifically. Nobody was browsing for whatever happened to be nearby.
The motivation finding that shaped the product.
Our demographic, students and young professionals, is largely externally motivated. Seeing other people volunteer is what prompts them. That is why the app has a social feed rather than being a private directory.
HOW WE DESIGNED IT
Sign-up asks what you care about.
Sign-up collects the basics, then asks what you care about. Those selections build a personalised home feed. That came straight out of the interviews. People already knew which causes they cared about, so the app should ask instead of guessing.
A feed, because motivation is social.
Users follow people and organisations and see volunteering recaps and updates. The research said the presence of others is the motivator, so the feed isn’t an extra feature. It’s the main reason someone opens the app at all.
Explore is where you go looking.
Popular organizations nearby, sorted by cause, plus search with filters for distance, time commitment and date. This is the screen that answers the question we started with.
Keeping track of what you signed up for.
Everything you’ve committed to, with the date, time and location in one place. Saved Events sits next to it for the ones you’re still thinking about.
An organization’s page, and your own profile
WHERE THE FIRST PROTOTYPE FAILED
You couldn’t do the main thing from the home screen.
Usability testing on the low-fidelity prototype turned up something basic. The whole point of the app is to find a volunteer opportunity and sign up for it, and from the screen people landed on, you couldn’t. We had designed the feed, the profile and the filters before checking that the main path worked end to end.
The mid-fi fixed it: more screens for actually browsing and committing to opportunities, and back buttons throughout, since the first version only ever moved forward. Not a glamorous finding, but it’s the kind you only get by putting something in front of people.