How We Use No-Code Tools to Power-up our UX Process (Part I)

Becoming the first marketplace for humanitarian aid, deployed in 20+ countries, and directing $20M+ in resources comes with a lot of challenges, especially with a small team. We spend time improving our processes with the right tools so we are able to power humanitarian work on a global scale.

Even if our platform is built with code by our awesome engineering team in Argentina, we still use no-code to maximize the impact of the steps we take in our design process. The concept of no-code is in our roots after all!

NeedsList was born during the refugee crisis in Greece. We needed to collect information from the responders on the ground and connect them to people that want to offer support around the world. Of course, spreadsheets was the default tool for organizing this data — but it wasn’t great for collaboration and consistency of information.

What did our clever founders use instead? A WEDDING REGISTRY ⚡️🧠⚡️ Albeit off-brand for the situation, it got the job done.

Fast forward to today, NeedsList has our custom developed platform that has directed over $20 million in resources to local communities. Reaching that mark came with a lot of product challenges, especially with regards to user experience.

For instance, we wanted to learn how our app would work in places where there is very limited internet connectivity.

We used Adalo to simulate how our app would work in a place with limited internet connectivity. We learned that the user flow we designed for syncing needs posted offline during a crisis was great — which we expected.

This took us one week to build. It worked with real data inputs & displays. It was a fully-functioning mini-NeedsList. You would not have believed it was our first time using it.

What we didn’t expect is that users went for the hamburger menu (the long way!) to create a post instead of the buttons we had placed prominently on the screen. We weren’t even testing for that! Because our prototype was live, we were able to let our users roam free and teach us more than what we came for.

Here’s the before & after where we suggest possible journeys right away in lieu of our orange plus button:

This is just one part of the whole design process that we have at NeedsList, where we take our ideas from paper to prototype to product!

We’re sharing our processes, tools, and hacks at our upcoming bootcamp! Register now at https://eventbrite.com/e/336709215327