Context

Donation helps. But people are donating less.

Donation helps the people in need, especialy for the last few years under covid pandemic. However, ordinary Americans are giving to charity at the lowest level among three decades. They trust the donation agencies less, have less to spend on their hand and lost their interest in the long-term donation programs.

Donation needs new platforms

Traditional charity platforms, like gofundme, excels as a public fundraising platform. However, there are plenty of similar products in the market and business, and they share the similar design and workflow for donors and requesters more or less.

Issues of existing platforms

Trust Issues
‍‍Donors want their donations to go to those in need and be used for their intended purposes. However, crowdfunding scandals on platforms like GoFundMe have led some donors to be skeptical as funds can be sent to third-party organizers.

Lack of Contact Information
‍Donors require contact information to obtain additional information about the donation project or to verify its credibility. Lack of contact information increases the risk of encountering fraudulent projects.

Other Inconvinences
‍‍International donations can be complicated due to SWIFT transactions, cultural and language barriers. Some places that urgently need help might not be able to receive donations in time due to those barriers.

Why Cryptocurrency?

Blockchain is a decentralized data structure that stores data in an interconnected chain of blocks. It's secure and has given rise to popular cryptocurrencies. Compared to traditional finance, it's safer and more transparent. We have analyzed and summarized several pros and cons for the traditional and crypto charity platforms below.

As for business value, blockchain system could replace SWIFT for reconciling financial institution's ledger, eliminating the need for custodial services and correspondent banks. Transactions could be settled directly on a public blockchain, potentially reducing costs of maintaining a global network of correspondent banks.

Research

To conduct user research effectively, we divided it into two phases.

In Phase One, we utilized several quantitative and qualitative research methods to help us better understand the problem. We conducted a rapid ethnography session, used Qualtrics surveys, and held 15(7 by myself)interviews to ensure that we understand what our potential users faced during their donation process.

In Phase Two, we conducted a competitive analysis to similar products, engaged in secondary research and concluded the stakeholders with their corresponsive journeys to better understand our user group. We then conducted a comprehensive usability test to address usability issues in the previous generation of the product.

Survey

As the main UX researcher for this co-op program, I aimed to gain an understanding of the current experiences of various groups of people who have participated in a donation project. To achieve this, I designed a brief 15-minute survey with 26 participants. The objective was to explore their perceptions of the donation options they are currently using or have used in the past.

Interview

Since this platform will be used in a multi-stakeholder environment, I conducted 5 out of 10 in-depth user interviews to gain a deeper understanding of how different groups of people currently experience and behave in donation projects. The interviews lasted 45-60 minutes and included a wide range of interviewees from various backgrounds, including charity NGO managers, donation receivers, and donors.

The interview contains a list of questions, which include demographics, finance management, previous experience with donation platforms, and special questions regarding to interviewee's previous occupation(e.g. donor, manager or donation receiver). TISTA employees helped us to organize those events as well.

Here are some representative quotes from participants who shared their feedback with us. We have obtained permission and anonymized their identities.

Insights

Both surveys and interviews helped us understand the problemspace from quantitative and qualitative standpoints. Through these methods, we were able to gain insights into the needs and sentiments of our stakeholders within the problemspace, as well as identify their primary pain points.

Long-term ConnectionsWhile current platforms allow both parties to show their contact informations, many people using temporary phones or emails makes long-term connections difficult.

Effective ManagementsNGO managers often found it's difficult to contact and understand the status of people who received donations, thus making the management difficult.

Trust, Trust and Trust. More than one interviewees reflected that scam projects are impacting their proper chartiry projects. It's difficult to build trust but rather easy to lose them.

Competitive Analysis

I also analyzed multiple donation platforms, both non-crypto based platforms and crypt-based platforms, to understand how major competitors and their products work, and identify the advantages and disadvantages they have in their designs, products and user journeys. A brief overview of the analysis is attached below.

GoFundMe

Pros

Known for its publicity
Simple User Interface
Contact information provided

Cons

Text-Heavy in Campaign Page
Cluttered categories for charity types
Limited access toward other media types
Publicity attracts potential scammers

Fundly

Pros

One of the mainstream platform
Better Categorization on charity types

Cons

Limited campaign information
Difficult to tell the actual donation type until scrolled to the lower section
Very limited contact information to verify identity/credibility

Stakeholders

After conducting surveys and interviews, we summarized our findings and identified three main stakeholders of our product: donors, requesters, and vendors. Each stakeholder has unique experiences with existing donation platforms, so we need to specify their requests separately in order to better understand their needs.

Stakeholder Relations

We have identified the donor, vendor, and requester and how they collaborate on the platform. Donors can either donate directly to the requester or donate to a third-party vendor in large-scale donation projects. Requesters receive donations from donors or seek assistance from vendors if they are unable to express their needs directly. Vendors are responsible for managing, promoting, and publishing donation campaigns.

We have visualized the corresponding relations below and aim to enhance the experience of each stakeholder when using the product.

To gain a deeper understanding of the experiences of each stakeholder while using donation platforms, we created user journey maps. These maps visualize the stakeholder's experience throughout each step of the donation process. By doing so, we were able to identify obstacles and pinpoint areas where we can improve our design to make the process easier.

Information Architecture

We have established an information architecture that organizes the hierarchy among various stakeholders. We worked closely with the developers to create a concise and user-friendly hierarchy to build upon.

Information Architecture

Research Highlights

With both stages of user research completed, we first consulted our findings with TISTA members to understand their feedback toward the product development direction. Then, we summarized our key research findings here and began to ideate the design prototypes.

Complicated Navigation

Users often find the navigation on similar platforms to be too complicated. They want a platform that provides clearer and simpler information display and interaction methods. Additionally, campaign managers would prefer a simpler and more efficient tool for managing and publicizing charity events, to help them organize the event more effectively.

"I felt isolated because I had just moved to Seattle and hadn't formed any new friendships. This made the seasonal depression even worse."

Lack of Direct Communications

Users have expressed the importance of communication in understanding each charity project. They would like to communicate on a moderated and trustworthy platform.

"Is there a way to keep me updated about this long-term charity project?"

Unverified Information

Users want to improve transparency between donors and requesters or campaign managers, allowing them to donate without worrying about scams. Additionally, requesters and campaign managers aim to establish credibility for long-term donation projects, with in-time updates.

"After everything is done I would like to track every penny I've donated and see if they really helps."

Privacy & Payment Concerns

While the users would like to keep the charity campaign transparent, they also want to ensure the privacy of each transaction's details in order to protect their payment-related information.

"While privacy is important, I'd like to keep my transaction information private to avoid any scammers or unwelcomed transactions. Heard too many story on donation platform before."

To recap, our goal is to create an easy-to-use and trustworthy fundraising and charity program. Our research results have helped us refine the problem space, and we aim to improve those issues we found in the design and iteration stage.

Design

Creating the userflows for our stakeholders would help us to outline how will they navigate the system to finish their tasks. We used this to identify and highlight potential flaws, improvements and rooms for new designs in the following steps.

Define Solutions

We summarized and addressed each research finding to reflect the user pain points. Our focus was on solving these problems using creative methods.

User Flow

We have summarized our previous information architecture and preliminary UX research findings to create separate user flows for three main stakeholders. Since all targeted stakeholders prefer to use the desktop website for searching, donating, receiving, and managing charity campaigns, we have created user flows specifically for desktop users. In future iterations, we will present a slightly different version of the mobile workflow.

Along with the donor's flow, we also polished all 4 different flows for all stakeholders and visitor's main page flow, and presented them in the following section.

Learner's User Flow Map

Lo-Fi

Account Registration

We simplified the account registration process, added social media account registration, and included a skippable verification option for visitors. Users need to verify their information to make donations, either during the account creation or later.

Learner's User Flow Map

Donation Process

We have created a search and donate flow to address two user pain points mentioned earlier. Firstly, we have made it easier to find different categories of charity projects. Secondly, we have reduced the number of clicks required during the donation process while ensuring that all essential information is still provided.

New Request

We have simplified the process of posting a donation request on the platform for receivers and vendors. This is because all verifications are completed during the account creation step. We encourage them to provide various information to ensure transparency and trustworthiness for each donation project.

Design System

To ensure that our design is diverse and inclusive, we have redesigned the design system based on TISTA's request. The goal was to make it more concise, intuitive, and user-friendly, especially for individuals with disabilities.

First Round of Iteration

To ensure that the product achieves its design goals, we first conducted an mini usability testing within the team members(Developers, PM, Peer UX Designers and Researchers, along with TISTA employees) to evaluate the current performance of the product and pinpointed the room for improvements thereafter.

New Request

User Testing & Feedbacks

We conducted comprehensive user testing before revising our design, and designed different tasks for three different target stakeholders.

Firstly, we developed quantitative tests, mainly using system usability scale related surveys before and after each task to understand user feedback.

Considering that we had more donors than vendors and requesters in the previous stage, we conducted qualitative user testings, mainly for vendors and requesters (with assistance), to gain insight into which components we could improve in our prototype to enhance their experience.

Quantitative Usability Tests

I have conducted 7 out of 27 usability tests to gather quantitative findings for our usability test results. The majority of the users were able to complete each task within 10 minutes. However, some users who required assistance faced difficulties in completing these tasks.

During the design iteration stage, we generated a data analysis that has statistical significance to further analyze our results. Our goal is to improve navigation and simplify interactions on the main page. The report will also include a more detailed statistical analysis.

Qualitative Usability Tests

To provide stakeholders, particularly requesters in need of assistance and campaign vendors/managers, with more information about our prototype, I have conducted 3 out of 7 qualitative usability tests. These tests primarily consist of in-person and remote interviews with think-aloud sessions.

After all the user testing sessions are done, we have summarized our findings and evaluated our current design using Nielsen Norman Group's 10 Usability Heuristics.

The first set of tasks primarily involves creating an account and setting up the necessary information for account verification. Participants provided feedback on adding functionalities, improving nonintuitive interaction methods, and selecting different stakeholders.

The second set of tasks primarily focused on creating new requests, publishing new campaigns, and managing campaigns. Requesters and Vendors provided valuable feedback on their use of similar platforms and suggested ways to make different parts more intuitive.

Results

We summarized our user testing feedback in business matrices and UX matrices.
‍
In the business matrix, the click rates for relevant sample campaigns saw a significant increase. The newly designed interface has greatly improved the efficiency of different stakeholders in finding their target pages compared to the previous platforms.

In the UX matrix, we have received mostly positive feedback, along with some areas for improvement. Overall, users have spent less time on each task, and their satisfaction rate has significantly increased. There is still room for improvement on the campaign page, as well as the possibility to create a "glanced" version versus a more detailed version depending on the users' interest in specific donation projects.

↑ 72% Satisfaction

when the donation campaign was completed. Additionally, 78% of the participants reported increased confidence in understanding and managing the entire donation process.

↓ 65% time

Searching for target charity campaigns from the main page. Additionally, over 70% of the participants reported spending less time to complete a donation compared to previously complicated donation processes.

“You all have done an exceptional job, team! 😊 This service is absolutely amazing, and I'm genuinely thrilled to dive into the next steps.” - Shiva Thirumazhusai, CTO of TISTA

“Projects like this show how technology can positively impact society by addressing challenges and improving well-being. It demonstrates the potential of technology in shaping a better future.” - Sharlane Cleare / Course Coordinator, Cornell University

Information Architecture

Design

Learner's User Flow Map

Learner's User Flow Map

Learner's User Flow Map

Final Design

User Testing & Feedbacks

Reflections