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Group project: Design Sprint

Homework

Homework is a desktop application for the fictitious NGO Homework that aims to connect the user (donors) to students in need of technology.

View Prototype

Overview

We were given the challenge of designing for social good to help organizations drive impact on challenges experienced by their audience. We had the option of choosing an existing NGO (Non government Organization) or a fictious NGO to help express their value to drive positive change.

As a group, we decided to create a fictious company called Homework to connect donors to students in need of technology.

The Problem

  • The NGO Homework is having trouble expressing their value to donors. Their mission is to provide individuals in need with access to technology.

Our Solution

  • Create a donation website that provides options for donors to provide monetary or hardware support to students in their community.

Project Details

Timeline

4 days
February 22nd -February 25th 2022

My Role

UX Researcher
Wireframer + Prototyper
for mid-Fidelity designs

Platform

Desktop

Tools

Invision
Figma

Project Type

Group academic sprint project apart of BrainStation UX Bootcamp

Team

Sam Chung: Researcher, Asset Collector, Wireframer + Prototyper for Hi-Fi Designs
Derick Yeh: Researcher, Wireframer + Prototyper for Hi-Fi Designs
Fatima G Jhong: Content writer + Researcher

Team

Hydeia Blakey

UX Researcher,
Wireframer + Prototyper for
mid-fidelity designs

Fatima G Jhong

UX Researcher + Content Writer

Sam Chung

UX Researcher, Asset Collector + Wireframer/Prototyper for
hi-fidelity designs

Derick Yeh

UX Researcher,
Wireframer + Prototyper for
mid-fidelity +hi-fidelity designs

Design Process

Map

Sketch

Decide

Build

Test

We mapped out an initial goal to begin our design process and worked on it through secondary research and interviewing. After identifying the solution we wanted to build for our audience, we started sketching which led to voting to decide on the solution that would work best. Multiple sketches and ideations later we built a desktop prototype solution. We refined our solution through testing sessions and finished with our current a hi-fidelity desktop prototype.

Problem space

Discovering the problem space

With the challenge identified, our problem was to figure out how we can help Homework inspire people to make positive change through their mission of providing individuals in need with access to technology.

We identified questions that we wanted to know to move forward in our research.

What is the demographic of people who typically donate?

We wanted to understand the demographic behind who donates to create an accurate solution for our audience.

What are donor's main methods of donating?

Donating can vary by demographic. Looking at the main methods of donating could help us understand which digital medium would be best for a solution.

What are common problems with donation pages?

Understanding issues with competitor donation pages would help us in identifying a solution that is unique.

What are some issues student's face from the lack of technology?

Identifying the cause behind the donation page will help with inspiring our audience to foster change.

From our research, we found out some key data to validate during our interviews.

Insight #1

As a result of not being able to get online, students are projected to have more severe learning loss and become more likely to drop out of school.

Insight #2

Including an enticing and compelling reason that people should donate is essential to the success of donation websites.

Insight #3

From a look at average donation gifts, desktop users rain the highest in donations.

Insight #4

Donors that typically decide to donate are mission driven

Interviews & Affinity Mapping

Talking to our audience

To find out more about how to create the best donation experience, we invited 4 residents to join the conversation.

We spoke with 4 residents that live in North America, all over 18 and are familiar with using a desktop/PC. From our research, we found out a lot of key insights that we organized into themes into an affinity map.

We learned

Interview Insights

We started by organizing our interview insights into motivations, behaviors and pain points. As you can see from the images, majority of our insights were motivations.

Click images to view a larger version

Themes

We created themes from the insights we noticed and organized our interviewee's motivations, behaviors and pain points into them.

Click images to view a larger version

Decision

We chose community + relationship to focus on for our solution because of the significant amount of motivations/goals that we learned from our respondents. We believed that we could find the best opportunity from creating an experience that donors already enjoy or would like from their donation experience.

Persona

Creating the Persona

After hearing from our audience, we created our Persona, Anya Ortega.

Anya represents a millennial that didn’t have a lot of financial support growing up in school and would have benefited from a program such as Homework. She’s fortunate enough now that she’d like to give back but finds it overwhelming to find information about good NGOs. She wants to feel confident that she’s making a difference before donating.

You can read more about Anya below. She represents our secondary and primary research findings.

Project Brief

How might we build a relationship between the potential donor and NGO in order to provide access to technology for those in need

Task Flow

Detailing the path of our Persona

With our narrowed HMW and inspiration in mind, we created a task flow for how Anya (our persona) would find out more information about the NGO impact of Homework.

Sketching

Sketching our idea

We started the process of sketching by performing a crazy 8 sketching session. This session consists of 8 different sketches in 8 minutes to gather ideas in a quick manner.

We sketched ideas that we had for the different pages of our application. We moved onto solutionary sketches after voting on the sketches that best addresses our persona’s needs and motivations.

Mid-Fidelity Prototype

Building our Solution

We created desktop mid-fidelity wireframes to connect potential donors like Anya to students in need of technology.  We wanted our user to be able to choose donation projects in their community which connects with our research that connections drive donations.

I worked on the student wireframes and included screens to allow the donor to get to know the student they are donating to so they are further connected to the cause.

**When viewing the mid-fidelity prototype, you may notice strange white lines/streaks throughout the prototype. This seems to be a known bug on Figma that occurs on Google Chrome. Try switching the browser to see the prototype without the lines or resizing the browser zoom to 90%!

Usability Testing

Testing our product on our user

After creating our mid-fidelity prototype, we invited participants both with and without donation experiences to check the ease and usability of our design.  We asked our users to perform a series of tasks and marked the completing tasks with a check.

We organized the feedback we received from our testing session on a priority matrix to find out which feedback we’d focus on for our hi-fidelity iteration.

Some of the qualitative insights we received that were worked on were: 

Hi-Fidelity Prototype

Prototype

You can view our hi-fidelity prototype below. Homework is an NGO that allows the user to search for a project in their community and choose a student to donate to through monetary or physical hardware options.

View Prototype
To use this prototype, click the screen to enter full screen mode.

Key Learnings & Next Steps

Key Learning: Time Management

As this was my fastest design sprint, I learned how to manage my time and collaborate effectively when going through the different stages of design.


Next Steps: Goal Updates

We’d like to add functionality to allow the user to be updated on a student’s goal that they’ve previously donated to. This could persuade the user to donate again and/or help solidify that their donation has truly made a difference.