Case study-Bangzhu

The Project

Volunteering provides physical and mental rewards, but finding volunteer opportunities can be a frustrating process, involving multiple web searches and volunteer websites.
It would be easier to bring volunteers and organizations together if all of the information was in one place. I set out to try and find a solution to this particular problem while applying all aspects of the UX design process.

The Strategy

Discover and understand users

First of all, I conducted an online survey. I asked people about their behavior when looking for a volunteering opportunity such as how they most often find volunteer opportunities, what was their role as a volunteer and when they select a volunteer opportunity which aspect takes precedence over etc.

User feedback

Here is what some of the users said when asked about the challenges they face when looking for volunteering opportunities.

Main results of the user research

The target market is between 18 and 44 years old.
Schedule, location and activities play essential roles for the users when choosing or considering a volunteering organization.
Those who had looked online for opportunities whether via a search engine, social media, or volunteer-specific websites tended to find those searches to be time-consuming or were dissatisfied with the results.
When looking for a volunteering organization, users face a lot of problems. The top two are it is hard to find something that fits their schedule and that they don’t know any available organizations around them.

Next, I create a user journey map to map all the doing, thinking, feeling, challenges, and opportunity on each step the user takes when using the app.

The Scope

Problem-Solution Statement

From the user journey map, I conclude the fundamental problems the users have are as follows:

When looking for a volunteering organization:
Users essentially need information about the organization’s location, activities, credibility, and schedule before deciding to join the organization.
Users prefer and need to know the organization around them and the one who fits their schedule.
Users prefer to know the review or credibility of a certain organization.

When participating in volunteering organization
Users can’t give reviews or rate to a particular organization.
Users don’t know the updates of the organization they’re following.
Users sometimes forget the schedule of the organization they are participating in.

Solution

I created a top priority features chart to set out the features that the users need the most while also considering the feasibility in terms of time and resources I have.

The Structure

Site Map

I developed a site map to arrange the features that I found from the top priority features chart . This map is handy to build a functional hierarchy and way-finding inside the website. I divided it into five main areas: About us, Projects, Events, Organizations, and User Profile.

The Skeleton

Early sketches

By developing 4 versions of the homepage( A, B, C and D), the final wireframe was extracted, by bringing together all of the starred elements.

As the initial design phase progressed I made sure the design was based on user feedback and research.
I used Figma for the development of my wireframes. Developing low fidelity wireframe before making the high fidelity helps me get the big picture and narrow the scope of the design.

conclusion

Takeaways

I learned that specific text used in the searching process; or the small elements such as the color of a button, have a large impact on usability overall. Going forward, I would improve and spend more time on individual elements, i.e. developing organization managers and volunteer user account dashboards.

Next setps

Usability testing: I did not carry out user testing in this exercise. Ideally, I would incorporate feedback from users on the designs through usability testing at various stages of the design process.
Develop the organization elements: dashboards for organization manager, with effective communication and status updates for teams, project timelines, and to-do lists.

Bangzhu