The Helping Pot
The helping pot started out as a small idea for non-profits. The more our team pondered on the idea we thought this project would be a great opportunity to stream line the process of finding volunteer opportunities for non-profits. This prototype was created by using the goal directed design process (GDD). We used this GDD process to make informed decisions to help users reach their goals within our app. As a team we completed this project within 10 weeks. We used many tools like discord, Miro, Figma, etc. to complete this project.
My role in this project was apart of the UX research team. On the team we completed a kick-off meeting, literature review, competitive analysis, and user interviews, built a persona, and built context scenarios.
The Goal Directed Design method
Role: UX/UI Designer
Duration: 12 weeks
Introduction
Research method: Goal-Directed Design
Tools: Figma, Miro, Microsoft Teams, Discord
The project objective was to start with the user flow created by designers before myself. The client wanted to create a better ordering system. The current system that Cumberland had were for potential customers to look through a 200 page catalog and call Cumberland’s customer service line to order. Once the customer service representative got the customer’s order they would input the order into a spreadsheet. The quote was created and sent back by email. This system was time consuming for both parties. The objective was to turn a spreadsheet into a webpage.
The problem
The Research Phase
The helping pot started out as a small idea for non-profits because of the current state of finding volunteer opportunities. The more our team pondered on the idea we thought this project would be a great opportunity to stream line the process of finding volunteer opportunities for non-profits.
First we started off with a kick-off meeting to align our goals and figure out roles for each team member. In this meeting we asked questions like why and what would help the overall experience of finding volunteer opportunities.
Our team completed a literature review. I was in charge of completing the competitive analysis. I looked up multiple companies that specialize finding volunteer opportunities like Point, ThatHelps, American Red Cross, etc.
Then, we completed user interviews. I was the moderator for the user interviews. My focus for these interviews were to find out what was their experience in finding, participating, and information given through volunteering.
Volunteering app competitor ThatHelps
The Modeling Phase
In the modeling phase our goal was to create a persona for our volunteer users. We did 5 user interviews with questions that were geared towards users that have volunteer experience. From the data we used affinity mapping to find common trends within the interviews. The User interviews we took the data and developed a story that reflected our user goals.
Our persona was a college student looking for volunteer hours to complete the goals. Our pool of candidates were limited to college students so the result was Phoenix Halle. Phoenix’s life goal is to help the unfortunate and giving back to her local community. In her free time, Phoenix found it hard to find a stream-lined process to find volunteer opportunities that she was passionate about. It is important for Phoenix to know the impact of the organization in the community and transparency from the organizations that she volunteers for.
Primary Persona image
The Requirements Phase
Interaction designers build context scenarios as a basis to out user requirements. Requirements are anything that needs to be in your service or products so that the users can achieve their goals. Our team came together to brainstormed the features that would best suit the app. The context scenario guided us to have a calendar, multiple filtering options, verified organizations, and organization profile, and a search feature.
The Visuals
Once we go out goal of our primary user we were able to map out the how we would build our The Helping Pot. The user flow is starts with a login screen. User of the helping pot need an account to use the app. Once the user creates the account the first screen displays the volunteer opportunities. The user can explore different organizations and the type of volunteer experiences. The features that were in the requirements phase were added to the app’s flow.
Our team did conduct user testing on our lo-fidelity prototype to see how the user would interact with the app.
Wire frame of our user journey
Conclusion
The helping pot is a way for everyone to find volunteer opportunities in a streamlined app. We created this app through the goal directed design process. The research based process helped us have creditable evidence to back up our design decisions. We reached our goal of meeting our target users needs. Check out the logo created by myself for the Helping pot prototype app.
Helping pot logo
