DANTES - Charitable platform
Goal
Identify a problem space and develop a digital solution using the user experience methodology
Tools
Figma, Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, InVision, Zoom
My Role
UX Designer, UI Designer
OVERVIEW
Dantes is a platform for donors to connect with small and mid-size charitable organizations in Canada. Donors contribute towards local causes, supporting the communities they live in. Users can donate and fundraise with friends and family to earn points that can be put towards raffle tickets.
RESEARCH
Problem space
The 2019 Generosity Index, Fraser Institute reports that charitable donations by Canadians have hit a 20-year low, lower than the amount given by Americans. The pandemic has put even more downward pressure on the charitable sector. Most charities in Canada have been affected by drops in revenue, by a need to change and adapt their services, and by a lack of access due to pandemic restrictions.
Small and medium-sized charities that make up the bulk of charitable organizations in the country often lack the capacity to fundraise, and therefore are the most affected by the pandemic. This is where I want to focus my project: I will develop a solution for smaller charities in Canada that would increase monetary donations.
* Charities with more than 200 employees. Sources: The Giving Report, 2018 | Imagine Canada Report, 2014
Why are individuals not donating to charities?
The 2018 Global Trends in Giving report highlighted the following reasons individuals do not donate to charities.
What incentives can we offer for individuals to donate?
A study on incentives in charitable giving (Chao, 2017) indicates that, although past donors might not be motivated by rewards, offering incentives to new prospects could be an effective tactic to attract donations as long as it doesn’t diminish the sense of doing “good”. Obtaining non-refundable tax credits might be another incentive for individuals to pick one charity over another.
How might we educate and incentivize individuals to donate so that they help small and mid-size charities during the pandemic and beyond?
Primary research
After conducting preliminary secondary research identifying the problem space and areas of opportunity in the charitable sector, I developed a few assumptions and a hypothesis to be tested. Due to the nature of the problem space, I relied on user interviews to probe the established assumptions. For this instance of the project, I opted to reach individuals with varying donation patterns (frequent and occasional donors) residing in different provinces. I asked about their giving experiences, their motivations, and what they value the most in charitable organizations. I also used prompts to understand what factors are at play when choosing between donating to a reputable charity and a lesser-known one. From six interviews emerged the key theme and insights that informed my digital solution.
Selected Theme: Transparency, authenticity and incentives
Main takeaway from interviews: Before donating to a charity, especially to a charity that someone has never heard of, it is important to have learned about its mission, track record, overall impact, and reviews and to have seen a “stamp of approval” from a regulatory body. People donate for various reasons, with the “feel good” factor as the strongest reward, along with the incentive of getting a tax write off.
PERSONA DEVELOPMENT
Upon the completion of user interviews and synthesizing the insights, I focused on building a primary and secondary user personas. The persona highlights the behaviors, pain points and aspirations that my interview participants faced when donating to charities. As I learned in the process, the persona is an excellent way to communicate and summarize research trends and patterns that will inform all the design decisions going forward. In order for the project to succeed, I removed personal bias allowing my research to guide the next steps.
The Giver
Ultimately, the primary persona “Marlene”, enjoys supporting local community initiatives and local businesses. She has a strongly ingrained value system. She feels it is her responsibility to take care of the community and help people in need. She also wants to feel safe, secure and comfortable when donating online. Donating to authentic and relatable charities she can trust represents a key factor in her decision.
The Pragmatic
My secondary persona, “Rob”, worked very hard to get where he currently is in his career and has developed a “self-made hardship” mentality. He is somewhat pragmatic about charities and would rather spend his salary on his family. He would occasionally make donations to reputable charities if convinced of the campaign cause and its authenticity. Making a positive impact is important, but Rob wouldn’t mind getting rewarded for his contribution. He also wants to be satisfied that his donations are not being diverted to improper or illegal uses.
USER experience MAp
Having the main protagonists established, it was important to develop a better understanding of the personas’ pain points to identify opportunities, ensuring consistency, and a seamless experience at all touchpoints and across all channels. The mapping exercise helped me narrow down the focus to the following two stages:
(1) Exploration, and (2) Engagement and feedback.
TASKS ANALYSIS
User Stories and Epics
As a next step, I developed user stories reflecting the tasks my persona would like to accomplish and grouped them under epics. Keeping my personas’ pain points and goals in mind, a decision was made to focus on a single core epic that will further organize and inform the product functionality for a minimum viable product.
Core Epic & Selected Tasks
EPIC: Learning about charities, campaigns and incentives
PRIMARY TASK: As a new user I want to learn about various charities, campaigns and incentives so that I find a campaign I can relate to.
SECONDARY TASK: As a new user I want to be rewarded for my donation so that I feel more motivated to repeat my donations.
USER FLOW
I started with a simplified version of the user flow that was later refined as I moved into wireframes development and testing. An important consideration for building the final user flow was the inclusion of an onboarding flow explaining the app functionality and value proposition. It was equally important to give the user the option to filter campaigns and to explore campaign and charities pages before donating and participating in the raffle.
IDEATION
Low-fidelity and mid-fidelity wireframes
The user interviews guided me to pick a direction for the overall look and feel of the app. The users expressed interest in an image-heavy platform that highlights the community, the cause, and the charities. The intended product look will be minimalist and intuitive. I started with paper sketching to map out the content I wanted to include and then created greyscale digital wireframes. Since I was designing for an Android phone, I consulted the Material Guidelines and sought inspiration in terms of UI design and specifications. I also used inspirations from other UI components and looked at functionalities from e-commerce payment flows and campaign page details used by other charitable platforms.
Usability testing - background
In order to obtain practical, real-time feedback that can be incorporated to improve the design, I developed an InVision prototype that was subsequently used in usability tests (two rounds of testing, five people per test). Two rounds of testing resulted in two iterations in order to provide a more optimal user experience. A final and third iteration was implemented once the UI design system was set in place.
Key Results
1 OUT OF 5 USERS was not able to successfully use the filter/sorting function to identify a campaign. It was also brought to my attention that the expectation was to see a filtered list of “Art and Culture” campaigns before selecting a campaign. By replacing the filter icon, changing the card display, and revising the filtering flow, this task was successfully completed in round two of testing.
2 OUT OF 5 USERS were unable to proceed to the reward stage without a prompt. The main concern was identifying how to reach the rewards page. The issue was resolved by changing the rewards icon from the bottom navigation menu and adding labels. Additional improvements were made to the copy of the donation confirmation page to make it easier for the user to associate the SharePoints with rewards. To minimize the user’s memory load, I also added the number of SharePoints available to the individual rewards page.
Based on the feedback I received in testing round one, design changes were made to the prototype. I took the next iteration of wireframes to round two of usability testing and continued to refine the product. Below is another important revision I made to the campaign and charity pages. Additional “Donate Now” call to action items were introduced to the charity and campaign pages for flexibility and efficiency of use.
VISUAL IDENTITY
Moodboard
To develop the app’s visual identity I referred back to the persona aspirations and pain points. To reiterate, the primary persona enjoys supporting local community initiatives and local businesses. She wants to feel safe, secure, and comfortable when donating online. It is of high importance for her to donate to authentic and relatable charities she can trust. Hence, the decision was to source visual inspirations that would convey feelings of trust, safety, kindness, modernism, inspiration, and impact. A moodboard was created to develop the app color palette and draw inspiration for the wordmark.
Source: Dribbble, Instagram, Behance
I decided to use the birds’ illustration throughout the app with the intent to emphasize the metaphor of "people - birds". Drawing from the pigeons’ illustration presented in the moodboard, I wanted to convey the idea that people, like birds, are feeding into the future via collective charitable giving. Dantes, translated as “giving” from Latin, was developed as a minimal and clean logo and wordmark. A decision was made to use the elegant serif font Recoleta for the logo, in combination with a modern sans-serif typeface, Graphik.
HIGH-FIDELITY PROTOTYPE
Features
Dantes was built to meet user needs and address current pain points with online donations. Using a complete and iterative UX design process, I was able to narrow the design down to the critical features. If you are interested in exploring the interactive prototype, please check the link below.
MARKETING WEBSITE
After developing the native app, I focused on designing a product marketing website to raise awareness of the new digital product. That project was an important opportunity to establish and develop my product’s brand voice, and a compelling brand narrative for the product offering. To successfully complete the task, I referred back to the native app visual identity, the mood board, and gathered inspiration from other successful responsive website designs. If you're interested in the interactive responsive web prototype please click on one of the buttons below.
Multi-Platform Adaptation
After designing the native Android app, I decided to explore other platforms. Going back to Marlene’s aspirations, I felt that she would benefit from a profile dashboard illustrating a summary of her activity on the app. Since it is an image-heavy app, I believe Marlene would enjoy exploring it on an iPad. The dashboard would allow Marlene to check out the saved campaigns and rewards, see the SharePoints total, and have the option to donate the points to a family member or friend. The dashboard will also include such features that enable the user to invite friends, check notifications, and set up methods of payment. Additional user tests would be required to validate these features.
DESIGN IMPACT
I looked at some future considerations using the Tarot Cards of Tech.
The card I picked asked the following questions:
THE BFFS: If two friends use your product, how could it enhance or detract from their relationship? How does your product create ways for people to interact? Does your product change or fill a role previously held by a person?
In the long term, I anticipate that the app will enhance the relationships between friends and family members. Relationships are strong if they have common interests and causes. Based on my interviews I learned that people are more likely to donate to a campaign if it is promoted by a friend via social media. The future goal would be to develop a few features addressing the problem raised in the above-mentioned tarot card of tech:
Share campaigns and rewards via social media
Fundraise with friends and family
Donate the SharePoints to a friend
Invite friends to use the app
See what campaigns your friends are supporting
NEXT STEPS
After multiple iterations based on user testing, the app design has considerably improved. And yet, more enhancements would benefit this project:
It would be imperative to integrate features whereby the individual can donate the SharePoints to a beneficiary of choice, fundraise for a relatable campaign and check the campaigns the friends are supporting.
Based on my persona’s aspirations, it would be beneficial to develop non-tangible rewards to accompany the raffle experience.
Improve the app accessibility by conducting an accessibility audit and complete additional user testing by recruiting people with disabilities.
