Summary

The problem

Non profit organizations need more volunteers and donations. Insufficient resources prevent non profits from having their desired impact. Millions of people cannot survive without goods and services from non profits. My research indicated that most citizens are willing to volunteer, it is just not something that is top of mind.

Key Activities

The Solution

I optimized the volunteer experience by making it social and incentivized. Volly does 4 main things to encourage volunteerism. Number 1 - people connect with ‘best match’ volunteer opportunities that align with their passion and schedule. Number 2 - Volly encourages social sharing and inviting to make volunteerism top of mind. Number 3 - Volly logs volunteer hours and automatically produces impact reports so volunteers and organizations can view their cumulative social impact. Number 4 - Volly partners with local small businesses who offer discounts based on volunteer hours.

I conduct face to face interviews to learn about our end user’s frustrations, motivations and behaviour

Exploratory interviews

I engaged in face to face conversation to get a visceral understanding of the problem.

My interview style I maximize perspective by conducting conversations, not interviews. I establishing myself as positive, approachable and free of judgement. Creating a guided conversation allows the user to navigate the conversation towards important topics that the researcher may not be aware of yet. I create 50-75 discussion points to guide the conversation. Always ask whywhywhywhywhy and listen actively.

A few discussion points from conversations with the ‘Prospective Volunteer’ personas

• Describe a recent volunteer experience you have had, from beginning to end

• Describe the process of how you discovered the opportunity

• Explain to me the things you did while you were there

• Discuss what attracted you to it and/or what drove you away

• Talk to me about why you continued or discontinued your engagement

• Explain to me what products and devices you love to use regularly and why

• Lets talk about free time and who you spend it with

• Think about how you get info on news and events. Talk to me about where and how you get information

• Discuss the major influences in your behaviour (friends, family, rules, weather etc)

• Talk to me about what frustrating things in your life, why do these things bother you

I visualize my insights for everyone to reference throughout the design process

Persona Definition

experience mapping

My entrepreneurial background has me thinking “Is this profitable? scalable?”. I scoped out the competition to find a competitive advantage

Complete Market analysis

I discovered platforms trying to solve some of our user pain points. The market’s current offerings leave an opportunity to introduce a modern, socially oriented and gamified user experience with an emphasis on volunteer loyalty.

Market Barriers

Non profit organizations often lack resources to reward volunteers. Even if they did, rewarding volunteers is a legal grey area. My experience as a small business owner and consultant gave me the idea to have small businesses offer discounts to people for contributing to their community for volunteering.

HOw might we Selection

HMW legally incentivize habitual volunteerism

Now that I understand my users pain points and the market opportunities, I begin working towards a solution

user story writing

Task FLow creation

You are a user and you want to filter the results page to show volunteer openings that fit your interests, location and availability.

Idea sketching

Rough Sketches

Let’s look at what our users had to say about our wireframe and the Hi-Fi screens that evolved

usability testing

Filter Screens

Responsive product website design

Hi-fi mobile prototyping

When viewing the prototype, imagine you are looking for a volunteer opportunity. Explore the search and filter options.

Click here to view volly’s interactive prototype

Thank You!