Rapid Prototyping of a Volunteering App
Designing VolunteerHub — The place on the web to find volunteer oppertunities.
Concept
Design an mobile app to enable charities & organizations to easily connect with volunteers in their communities.
Hypothesis
Volunteers and organizations have difficulties finding opportunities to give their time whilte accomodating their busy schedule and making good use of thier skills. By designing a mobile application that filters local organization based on users weekly schedual the experience would be
Design Process
I will be using IDEO’s human-centered design thinking process for this study.
Personas
The app has two sides of users: the volunteer and the organization. In this scenario, I have decided to focus on just the volunteer side. After looking through existing volunteer statistic and discussing with my circle, I came up with the below user personas.
Keeping in mind these user personas, here is the primary motivation of a prospective user.
When I want to volunteer, I want to be able to easily find an oppertunity nearby that makes use of my skills & free time.
Storyboard
Sarah finds 4 hours in her busy week thats free, instead of taking time off, she wants to use her time to volunteer.
Sarah feels frustrated shes unable to find an organization that understands her busy schedule nor makes good use of her skills & interest.
Sarah wishes she could easily be able to volunteer when she pleases womewhere that values her skills
She Opens Vollunteer hub, creates an account with her skill sets. Opens calender page entering her week’s free time. Browses through an organization, finds Oaktree, a local charity 5 km away. She applies and gets accepted within the hour.
Later that week, Sarah goes to volunteer with Oaktree.
AppStory
I wanted to set a brandvoice early on, decided to go for a friendly voice, laying the groundwork to design a fun and easy volunteer experience.
Hi, We’re Volunteerhub
- We bring amazing people together to give their time towards a cause you beleive in
- Tell us who you are, what you like and what you’re good at.
- Every week, let us know when you’re free and we’ll accomodate. We know you’re a busy person so we’ll work arround your busy schedule.
App Flowchart
With these input in mind, it’s time to start sketching out solutions. First, I drafted a userflow chart.
Paper Wireframes
Based of the flowchart, I did several lo-fi UI sketches:
Sketch Wireframes
Prototype
https://marvelapp.com/5j5f44e/screen/29186317
Next Steps
Create a monitized platform for the organizaion side.
Final Thoughts
It would have been great to get real data on how customers are actually using the product since the above suggestions were made hugely based on my assumptions and the limited feedback obtained from user testing.
Be Great.
I’m Simon, a self taught designer with a passion for storytelling, a love for climbing mountains and building good stuff. Follow my biggest creation yet Amplified Whispers, its a work in progress.
