GA UXDI Project 4: Matching Volunteers
My Role: UX Researcher/Designer| Duration: 2.5 Weeks| Project Status: Completed
Project 4 Overview
After being sorted into groups based on personal preference of topic, each group was tasked with creating a new product and choosing a business partner to potentially pitch the idea to in future hopes to either sell or integrate the product with their already existing services.
MatchingVolunteers Overview
My group (who chose Social Good and Community as our theme) created a product proposal for a mobile app called MatchingVolunteers that would provide services that could help volunteers connect with each other and register for events. Our proposed business partner was Volunteer Match, a US based nonprofit organization that already connects volunteers with both domestic and global volunteering opportunities.
Problem Statement and Assumptions
Our problem statement for the scope of our project was centered around people who are often intimidated by unfamiliar environments and people. We then conducted research to validate our assumptions.
How might we help people who want to volunteer but don’t want to do it alone?
Limitations and Research Methods Used
Our team was given full rein to determine our own research methods and process to complete the project. We decided to conduct the following:
Screener survey
User Interviews
User Journey
Mission Model Canvas
Competitive Matrix
Competitive Feature Analysis
Usability Testing
User Persona Vince and his User Journey
After creating our persona, Vince, based on user interview insights and research, we mapped out an average day for Vince and the emotional highs and lows he might experience through everyday tasks. We determined that as a passionate volunteer, he would aim to find companions to attend events with him, and feel emotional lows when unable to find a friend or partner.
Research to Design
The final design iterations (seen above) incorporated two rounds of usability testing and feedback as well as critiques from instructors and a class pinup. Usability testing conducted with ten different users revealed that some of the copy and wording was difficult to understand and confusion about lack of labels or wording such as who the organizer was or where to find certain tasks.
All of the feedback we received from our initial mid-fidelity prototype (Round 1) was incorporated and re-tested in a Round 2 high-fidelity prototype. Overall success rates increased an average of 10% with time to complete improving also an average of 11 seconds.
Some users still had feedback about confusing labels that prevented them from completing the tasks but this would be planned to be updated and improved for future versions of our product.
Prototype
Key Performance Indicators
For the overall success of MatchingVolunteers, our team planned to measure success based on a variety of key performance indicator metrics or KPIs such as new account signups, engagement in the app, and successful connections with other volunteers and event signups.
APIs
Volunteer Match has already partnered with Google Maps as a third party extension before, and our team proposed to expand the product’s extensions to include partnerships with social media companies such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram. We believed users will be more engaged to connect with people on our product if they feel they can incorporate products that they already use to connect with others for convenience and greater engagement.
Proposed Next Steps
The team’s proposed next steps were to continue to test further iterations of prototypes and make sure that we are making the features user-friendly and accessible for demographics of all ages, as well as conduct more research on opportunities for volunteer users who have mandatory obligations through school and work — which was a suggestion from one of our usability testers.
Feedback from Mock Presentation with Stakeholders
Our project was drafted into a professional presentation for mock “stakeholders” with the scenario of proposing this project to be greenlit by our bosses at a design agency. We prepared for a 30 minute informal presentation and our team was able to provide answers to questions that our mock stakeholders had. Some general feedback that our stakeholders had (who were people within GA or GA’s network whom we did not know) was that there was opportunity within our research to create a secondary persona and that we could have fleshed out certain areas such as the unique business opportunity and a followup to Vince’s user journey. Some design feedback given was also that our product’s name and visuals were a little too similar to the proposal company and there was opportunity to widen that scope to make it more saleable to another potential company other than Volunteer Match.
Reflection
This project taught me valuable skillsets in handling group dynamics and how valuable research is to proposing design features — which was something that was already taught previously, but this project provided another opportunity to really focus in on that. I would love to expand on this product through future research and tweak the final design for my future portfolio — the general feedback from all of our interviewees and testers was that this was a great idea with huge potential. Especially as the nonprofit market aims to find ways to engage younger volunteers or people, this would be a great mobile app that could help kickstart many new relationships and volunteer opportunities.
