A Trackable Start for Eva’s Initiatives
The UX process reveals. One feature at a time.
Project Timeframe — 3 weeks
Team Size — 4 people
Client — Eva’s Initiatives
Style — Studio with ocassional Scrum check-in
My Role — Played a main role in Research, Planning & Opportunity, Assisted in Design as guidance and lead on branding
The Eva’s Initiatives project begins with a rough start. It started with redo the website to can’t change the site and our initial brief had multi-goals.
Our brief states:
1. redo website with improved site structure and features such as membership system, sign up and portal for past clients and SuperSupporters
2. improve e-newsletter sign up
3. build website engagement and participation through gamification
4. build engagement with past Eva’s clients and its existing Super Supporters
5. donor retention to increase donation
6. gamified the giving process to increase donation
“So, anything goes?”
“Not quite.”
Let’s Begin. Fasten your seat belt.
Research
During our first meeting with our client, she mentioned:
- Eva’s Initiatives had asked too much from their existing donors and/or volunteers, she wants to reward them
- There are exceptional leaders from their past clients that they would like to retain and keep in contact with
- Budget is a concern within the organization
- She doesn’t know where the web traffic comes from, but people do find them through their website. They did a rebranding 1.5 years ago, and that traffic started to grow. In general, she thinks people know Eva’s Initiatives through word-of-mouth
- She thinks the rebranding persona does not reflect all of Eva’s Initiatives’ donors
- She wants positive, multi-ethnics youth and authenticity in her communication vs. the stock image displayed on the current website as that reflect more of Eva’s Initiatives
- Monthly donation is something they would like
- Current volunteers mainly come from corporations
- Eva’s Initiatives is currently on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram
During our research, we found out about Eva’s Initiatives, its funding sources, its current donation page, its volunteer, its competitor, and what and how donor thinks:
(skip to Planing if Research Key Findings is enough for you)
About Eva’s Initiative:
- Eva’s Initiatives had been operated for almost 20 years, but it is still not recognizable to many due to its focus on programs and serving youths
- Eva’s Initiatives is willing to do the non-glamour work such as serving and offering a safe place for youth with drug addiction
- There are only a handful of past youth that kept in touch with Eva’s Initiatives
- Due to privacy concerns, Eva’s Initiatives doesn’t keep record of the past youth they served; nor there is a system to track who donated, how much they donated, why they donated, and who volunteered
- Eva’s Initiatives’ program quality depends on their funding and donation income of the year
- Eva’s Initiatives’ current online donation service provider, FrontStream, supports many donation situations, yet it restricts the information filling in a one-page form format
- Google Analytics tells us the website visitors of Eva’s Initiatives mainly come from Toronto
- Eva’s Initiatives’ current e-newsletter is text heavily and not appealing enough to retain people
Its funding sources:
- Eva’s Initiatives is very dependent on corporate and foundation funding, which is great but also volatile and not easy to replace if a funding is discontinued
- Eva’s Initiatives supports many ways of giving and has fundraising programs such as small-scale peer-to-peer fundraising event, Giving Tuesday that matches donation, donation campaigns such as #TheOrangeDoor and #InYourShoes and more
- There is a group of dedicated volunteers/donors, (which we call them SuperSupporter) who tend to be 40 to 60, that donate supportively
Its current donation page:
- Doesn’t give enough flexibility and appreciation to donors and by default, donors are checked to enroll Eva’s Initiatives’ e-newsletter and being asked a lot of questions
- Monthly donation, which can offer a stable income, is all the way at the end
Its volunteers:
- Volunteers that feel benefited, belonged and engaged with the charity tend to donate more and can potentially bring in new supporters
- Volunteers come and go at Eva’s Initiatives, only a few come more often, but no one is there to engage them
Its competitors:
- Eva’s Initiatives’ competitors are using youth stories on their social media
What and how donor thinks:
- Donors like to see where their money goes and donate to a more well-known charity
- Donors need to be attracted and feel empathized to the cause of the charity in order to take the step to donate
- Donors prefer short and sweet donation forms that put information filling in small chunks
Our research methods: We put together 2 surveys with approximately 40 respondents combined. We also have 4 interviews with Eva’s Initiatives’ related people for more qualitative understanding. In domain research, we looked into the homeless youth field, competitor landscape, Eva’s Initiative’s related PR, building an online community, gamification for engagement and more.
Continue.
Planning
To sum up the research, I put together the Persona, Scenario, User Stories, User Flow and Use Cases to illustrate the key people and their interaction with Eva’s Initiatives.
Persona
The Donor
Intellectual— logic base thinker
“I want to know my donation is helping families and how it is benefiting individuals.”
Pain point: He has not found a charity that can touch his heart and mind together. He needs to feel empathized to the cause of the charity, knows where their money goes and feel valued or connected.
The Super Supporter
Royal — use his or her knowledge and power wisely
“I want to see donations increase and give back to donors and volunteers by engaging them in Eva’s Initiatives’ community.”
Pain point: Eva’s Initiatives just lost a big government, corporation or private funding that can’t easily recover, therefore, seeing the need to increase steady donation. At the same time, he also sees volunteers come and go and not being retained.
Eva’s Representative
Visionary — who see the future as the mission
“I want to bring more donations to Eva’s, have it become donor’s choice and build Eva’s Initiatives community.”
Pain point: Would love to bring Eva’s Initiatives forward, but without Eva’s Initiatives being known, a strong community and/or any tracking system, it’s unable to bring Eva’s Initiatives forward.
Key Scenario and User Stories are also used to strengthen our understanding of our users. For example,
John had been searching for where to donate for awhile. He can’t yet find a charity that he can empathize with, and, at the same time, provides him with detailed information about the charity, its financial expenses and a convenient way to donate.
As a donor, I would like to be donating at my convenient and donate to the charity that I feel connected with, both its cause and how they use their money.
User Flow was created to explain a general potential of how a user found Eva’s Initiatives and his or her path leading to finishing up his/her donation in an optimized way
Use Cases was also used to see how to create a delightful experience for users looking to see what their donations can do and then donate
“Almost there!”
Opportunity
Our final solution
Therefore, we need to familiarize Eva’s Initiatives to more people, increasing small donation base donors for stable income and creating a rewarding community that is trackable.
And, the ideas to support them?
Brand Strategy? At a point, we wanted to create a brand strategy for Eva’s Initiatives to strengthen its brand message, brand imagery, and brand personality, but we found everything was in their Brand Guide, and what was missing was having the right and brand-aligned content carried out.
We come up the first-person-authentic-real-youth-life-changing-stories to add to their content and that can be the important piece that was missing to touch prospect volunteers, donors and everyone else to engage and contribute more. And youth stories are moderately used at our competitors. I also researched on Eva’s Initiatives’ Fresh Start rebranding campaign done a year and a half ago and by using first-person youth stories, we can continue and inherit this campaign.
One of my teammates focused on writing the stories, but as we research and dig in deeper, I see the opportunity to expand the story types to Eva’s Initiatives’ people! (Yes! This is the community that we try hard to build, but in fact, we don’t need to build it, it is there, we just need to visualize it!)
“That’s the online community!”, I screamed, after a long wait and trying hard to dig out a solution for community building, at one of our scrum meetings.
Therefore, the story type is expanded to:
- Youth — how youths’ lives had a new start
- Donors — how donors had helped one’s life for a fresh start
- Contributor — How a company or corporation had contributed in services and show in acknowledgments or a spotlight post
- Volunteers — the stories of these who made Eva’s Initiatives a place special
- Staffs — who closely engaged with youths and know them first hand can share their stories
By doing this, we can:
- achieve brand awareness
- increase donors
- encourage volunteers and recognize contributions to increase stable volunteers, convert regular volunteers into SuperSupporters and inspire volunteers to donate more than non-volunteer donors
- appreciate, ties and build the community together to enhance a sense of belonging
To implement, we thought of all possible distribution channels based on Eva’s Initiatives’ constraints:
- E-mail ( for the current community/the current email subscribers )
Other than that, one of my teammates thought of having a closed Facebook Group for volunteers as a feasible social media hub Eva’s Initiatives can do that is low in budget and while headcount is limited.
We also redid the online donation form to ease and appreciate donors, and redesigned the e-newsletter by adding visual interests, first-person stories and integrating social media icons and posts for sharing to retain subscribers’ interests.
“Finally!”
Design
During the design phase, I acted as an observer or guidance for my team members when they need input, advice or comments, especially on understand Eva’s Initiatives’ Brand Guide — the imagery, copy style and tone. I continue researching, putting together ideas and planning at the same time.
By my teammates, here are our first-person story examples at social media posts:
The online donation form re-design and a follow-up Thank You for Your Donation email:
E-newsletter re-design, act as an example:
User Testing
We done one user testing for our donation page re-design from UserTesting, our tester said one-page donation form is still too long for her, but she can still understand the information presented and she likes the fact that we show how each donation amount makes a difference to the beneficiaries.
“So, how would the future look like?”
The Future
A trackable, measurable and engaging future for Eva’s Initiatives.
By creating great content, it would increase social media engagement and great SMA data to work with. That can help Eva’s Initiatives to continuously understand more of their people who come in contact with their social media.
And, better emails increase engagement, belongings, and great data to work with.
“Our results!”
Client’s Appreciation
Our client appreciated our works and twitted us!
Our Work Reflected at Eva’s Initiatives
Hurdles during our UX process
- Creating a community or an online community is not easy, when digital marketing is not in place, budget or headcount is limited and the client has concerns of not having enough social media followers, passionate insider, or advocates to start it, love it and manage it
- We also looked into crowdfunding platforms like KickStarter or Indiegogo for large funding income, but Eva’s Initiatives might not be ready for it yet
My Learning Highlight
I learned to communicate in a studio environment to update and keep contact with teammates periodically vs the highly reactive agile environment.
If I have the chance, I would also like to use heat maps as a way to see how users click on Eva’s Initiatives’ current donation page, so we can get a more solid understanding of where users like or dislike on the existing donation page, in conjunction with our survey answers.
I would also like to look into KickStarter or Indiegogo more as they seem to be interesting funding platforms, and use these platforms for other clients if they need crowdfunding funds.
The End.
Other UXUI projects: SafeMap, AskMom, Kensington is Kensington, FeedBack, Connects Fashion Professional
