Volunteering Made Simple and Impactful
Volunteers Connect App Design
Timeline: Jan - Mar 2024
My role: Product, UX/UI, Research, Branding
Tools: Figma, Miro
1. Problem
University students want to contribute to their community but often find it challenging to identify suitable volunteer opportunities.
The difficulty lies in matching personal interests, skills, and availability with the right roles. Volunteer information is scattered across various platforms, making the search process cumbersome and frustrating. The ever-changing nature of community needs adds another layer of complexity, making it harder to keep up with new opportunities. This highlighted the need for a centralized platform to simplify the search and ensure meaningful, accessible volunteer experiences.
2. Solution
HelpHub: Volunteering Made Simple and Impactful
Emerging from the need for a smarter way to volunteer, HelpHub is the answer for those looking to mesh their talents and time with causes that matter. With interest matching, personalized opportunity discovery, and an engaging user interface, HelpHub makes finding the perfect volunteer opportunity easy.
Users gain the tools to navigate the volunteer landscape effortlessly, turning goodwill into action and paving the way for impactful, fulfilling volunteering experiences.
3. Research
Part 1: Identifying Opportunity
Method: Interview
To explore whether others felt the same tug between wanting to contribute to their community and the challenges of finding the right volunteer opportunities, I crafted a set of questions aimed at uncovering their experiences and preferences. Focusing on key inquiries that I believed would shed light on the core issues, I engaged in 15-minute interviews with 5 students, spanning a range of ages and backgrounds. This approach was designed to dive deep into the collective volunteer experience, offering a window into the shared struggles and aspirations of those eager to make a difference.
How do you usually find out about volunteering opportunities?
What factors are most important to you when choosing a volunteer opportunity? (e.g., type of work, location, time commitment)
What kind of support or resources do you expect from an organization you volunteer with?
Part 2: Understanding the Problem
Method: Affinity diagram, User Persona
Affinity Diagram
I sorted the notes from the interviews and categorized them to find emerging themes.
Personae
Findings
A strong preference for volunteer opportunities that align with personal interests and career goals.
Struggles to find suitable opportunities and navigate onboarding processes.
A platform that offers user-friendly interfaces, matches based on interests and facilitates community engagement.
4. Design
I designed the new user experience by first mapping out the user flow, followed by creating wireframes and a complete prototype. Each step was accompanied by thorough user testing to ensure a seamless and intuitive interface.
Usability Testing
In this stage, I focused on onboarding personalization to enhance user engagement.
To gather early feedback, I asked three participants to navigate the prototype. My objectives were to see:
How intuitive was it for them to navigate
If anything were missing, such as features or information they would find useful
How they felt throughout the process
This approach helped identify areas for improvement and ensured that the onboarding experience was user-friendly and informative.
Findings
Positive:
Tabs such as favorites, scheduling, and landing page to see opportunities were well-received.
Profile page effectively allows users to check their accomplishments.
Areas to Improve:
Onboarding categories: People volunteer at shelters, food banks, and other social services, as well as in neighborly activities like shoveling snow and mowing lawns. Consider adding more categories to cover these areas.
Availability selection: When selecting times for volunteering, consider adding an option to indicate seasonal availability.
5. Final Product
Personalized Onboarding
Users’ journey starts with a tailored onboarding process. Here, users indicate their volunteer interests across categories such as animals, education, technology, etc. They then specify their available days and times for volunteering, followed by their preferred location. This personalized approach ensures that HelpHUB aligns opportunities with users' passions, availability, and geographical preferences.
Discovering Opportunities
Following onboarding, users are greeted by a homepage uniquely curated for them, showcasing upcoming volunteer opportunities that match their interests and availability. Whether it’s exploring specific organizations' pages for more opportunities or diving deeper through our comprehensive search page, HelpHUB makes finding the next volunteer venture an effortless experience. Filters allow for fine-tuning search results by categories, dates, and even potential reward points, ensuring users find opportunities that fit their criteria perfectly.
Gamified Experience
A quantitative measure of progress and rewarded behavior helps keep the user engaged by introducing a positive reinforcement cycle.
Interact with the prototype here!
6. Conclusion
What I learned
The Power of a Systematic Design Approach: Implementing a systematic approach to design, especially through creating reusable components for frequently occurring elements, significantly enhanced efficiency and consistency across the app. This method streamlined the design process and ensured a cohesive user experience.
Valuable User Insights: Engaging with users through interviews was pivotal. It provided a wealth of insights that directly influenced the evolution of HelpHUB. Listening to real-world challenges, preferences, and feedback grounded the project in practicality and user-centricity.
Heuristic Principles:
Real-World Match: Ensuring the app's language and operations mirrored users' experiences made it intuitive.
Consistency: Sticking to design conventions reduced learning time and enhanced usability.
Effective Naming: Clear terminology improved navigation and understanding.
Moving Forward
Partnerships with Organizations: Establish partnerships with more volunteer organizations to offer a diverse range of opportunities, enriching user experiences on HelpHUB.
Incorporating Skills Selection: Enhance the onboarding process with skills selection to improve the matching mechanism, benefiting both volunteers and organizations.
Final Thoughts
Creating HelpHUB has been a journey of learning, growth, and innovation. Each insight and feedback loop has brought us closer to a platform that connects volunteers to opportunities in an insightful, intuitive, and impactful way.