Reimaging charitable giving with altru
Disrupting traditional giving and designing a modern, inclusive charitable solution
Duration 8-week sprint, 3 person team
Tools Figma, Zoom, Google Slides, Sheets, Docs, Forms, Asana, Mural, Photoshop, Illustrator
Project Type Mobile App, Social Good, Passion Project
Project Overview Responding to a challenge set by IDEO’s social impact platform, my team and I designed an app in hope of making charitable giving more convenient and racially equitable. After conducting research, we were better able to account for cultural giving habits and design accordingly.
My Role I led UX Research and Prototyping to ensure our research insights played a vital role in the final interaction design of the product. I also headed Brand Design - creating a positive, yet dependable brand identity.
THE CHALLENGE
Like IDEO, I believe people are innately generous. Today, however, giving is so complex as to discourage the regular practice. Donors need a product that slashes past moral and logistic hangups and encourages them to give and give often.
This product was originally inspired by a challenge set by OpenIDEO, IDEO’s social impact and innovation platform. Unfortunately, my team came across the prompt too late to enter the challenge. As many Americans face food insecurity and homelessness for the first time during the COVID-19 pandemic, I was still interested in exploring solution to this problem.
PROBLEM STATEMENT
How might we reinforce a culture of generosity by creating charitable giving solutions that are more accessible, inclusive, and effective?
A SHADE DEEPER
Living in Chicago, one of the most racially segregated cities in America, I wanted to take this opportunity to deeply contemplate why economic disparities exist in the first place. Why is charity even necessary? This brought me to questions around how wealth and resources are distributed across not only Chicago, but the country at large. After revisiting some chapters in Larry Bennet’s The Third City, I amended our original problem statement to focus in on racial equity as a core challenge.
How might solutions specifically empower BIPOC donors, inspiring racial equity across the giving ecosystem?
KEY RESEARCH METHODS
UX Research Methods 01: User Survey
We collected and interpreted data on giving habits across race, gender, age, region, and socioeconomic status.
Seeing a lack of information during our secondary research, we sought to gather information around users’ goals, values, and biases when it comes to giving and receiving charity. Our survey consisted of 27 questions and was answered by 41 respondents over a 48-hour period. The survey collected qualitative and demographic data. This gave us a firm base in examining donor behaviors by ethnic, racial, and cultural background, as well as a sound overview of opinions and attitudes that we could later explore in interviews.
Pictured above: 100% stacked bar graph depicting donor answers from “I strongly agree” to “I strongly disagree” on questions about giving and receiving charity
Other insights from racially delineated data analysis were…
White respondents were most likely to report finding value in politically and financially transparent charitable organizations.
Latino and Black respondents said they were more likely to feel shame when asking for help.
Latino and Black respondents felt least confident in knowing what organizations in their communities need help.
UX Research Methods 02: User Interviews
We dove deeper into the pain points and goals of donors and non-profit organization leaders.
Giving and receiving charity can be a deeply personal experience. To give our data more depth, we conducted user interviews. We interviewed 4 donors and 2 non-profit organization leaders. Donor interviews illuminated the thought process behind specific giving habits and hangups. Organization leader interviews helped us to understand and eventually bridge the gap between the organization and their supporters.
Pictured above: Video snippet of user interview recording 2
Pictured above: Video snippet of user interview recording 4
UX Research Methods 03: Affinity Mapping
We brainstormed on social and ethical considerations to ensure positive social impact and prioritize features.
By this time in our research, it was necessary to consolidate our findings and begin identifying patterns. As a group, we affinity mapped our ideas around our secondary research to give more context for user inquest. After our survey and interviews, we had an extended affinity mapping session to highlight trends in our interview which would later translate to key features in our product.
RESEARCH TAKEAWAYS
According to Washington Post, despite having a lower average net worth, Black Americans donate a higher share of their wealth than White Americans.
Information on giving habits across race are relatively scarce. This includes publications examining intercommunity giving. Nevertheless, our research revealed that motivations, habits, and attitudes around charity vary greatly across race, religion, and community. We found the following as key tenets of our design:
To better conceptualize the dynamic betwixt our two users, we created personas to encapsulate the above findings and guide us through our design phase.
illustrations: humaaans
Next, we conducted a design studio with our collegues to brainstorm on solutions and expand our design thinking.
THE SOLUTION
By matching volunteers with organizations based on their skills and preferences, enabling donors to keep up with their organizations and causes, and making inclusivity and transparency paramount, we will see more equitable and more frequent charitable giving.
MID FI & TESTING
Based on our preliminary sketches and insights from the design studio session, we created a mid-fidelity prototype.
This mid-fidelity prototype was intended to test the interaction design, UI elements, and UX writing. We conducted usability tests with 5 users asking them to complete three key tasks: sign up with altru, discover an organization, support an organization. Insights from these test went on to support our high fidelity iterations.
USER FEEDBACK
Appeared clickable.
During usability testing, the size and placement of this text made users believe it was clickable navigation and drew attention away from the call-to-action.
Unclear user goals.
In testing, users had ethical misgivings about the personal goal tracker and wondered about the versatility this features. Users also didn’t understand the purpose of ‘X’ a charitable organization or how it would affect their experience in the app.
Imperceptible affordances.
Because of the donation flow’s lack appropriate signifiers and inconsistency, users would stagnate looking for their next step or next button. This collapsable menus proved to be a particular holdup.
Vague language.
Overall, the language was lacking specificity, particularly during important interactions like onboarding and donation. Users were left with questions about the outcome of their actions and ramifications of the app.
PRESENTING…ALTRU
KEY FEATURES
Onboarding for the individual.
The onboarding flow prepares users for regular app use and helps build brand credibility. Large, concise copy caters to various optical abilities and literacy levels. This flow allows users to immediately begin customizing their in-app experience and ends by educating users on what to do next.
How it connects…
The onboarding contains major two features to empower BIPOC donors and organizations. First, donors can choose in what form they’d prefer to give. Our research shows that Black and Latinx donors prefer to give time or goods, rather than money or expertise. Second, donors are offered organization in their community first and foremost and are encouraged to continue supporting organizations they already know and love, keeping BIPOC dollars within their own communities.
Browse based on your preferences.
The Explore and Org Profile pages offer our users transparency and security as they browse. The Organization Profiles feature info on leadership, financial information, social media and more. On the Explore page, users can browse by their preferred cause and favorite organizations they’d like to support. Using the navigation bar, donors can also track their philanthropy goals. Forget to sign up for a volunteer event in advance? The QR feature allows orgs to scan a user’s QR code and credit them for their time in-app.
How it connects…
BIPOC donors are more likely to give to orgs that have a leadership team that mirror their background and personal values so we rewarded the organizations that are doing this work by highlighting the leadership team on the org’s main page. The QR feature assists grassroots organization with little time for technical holdups. A simple scan and they can get back to doing the important work.
Donate or volunteer with ease.
altru is versatile! Users can donate time, money, expertise, and goods. When donating money, users can set up recurring payments or even dictate where they’d like their money to go within an organization. For example, when donating to an animal shelter, a donor can give money specifically for veterinary expenses.
How it connects…
BIPOC organization often struggle with unique needs. altru is designed with this in mind. Organizations can ask for transportation, volunteer fundraisers, and more. In BIPOC communities, a local organization often raises money for a specific community need, such as a child’s medical costs. Donors can choose to support a specific campaign within an organization while checking out.
DESIGN SYSTEM
With the DIY-esque, paper cutout effects, vibrant colors, and fun iconography, I wanted to make altru’s branding jubilant — reminiscent of the joy one feels by giving back. While altru’s branding wasn’t a focal point for this project, I wanted to ensure the UI elements I built were a part of a clear and accessible system. While all of the components are WCAG AA-compliant, with more time, I’d like to continue to make adjustments to make this system AAA-compliant.
NEXT STEPS
01 - User settings
Users want to be able to change preference and account information after onboarding. To do this, I want to further build out the side navigation.
02 - Org leader view
A large part of our app relies on organization leaders being able to set up an in-app profile easily and efficiently with no expertise.
03 - Payment methods
altru needs a payment intro flow, possibly added to the onboarding. Next, I would further build out payment options for Paypal, Apple Pay, etc.
04 - QR interaction
Further testing of the QR interaction with volunteers and organization leaders would allow us to assess it in-person feasibility and better design back-end interaction.
WHAT I LEARNED
🧭 The ethics involved in designing for social equity
Social equity in design requires a new level of intentionality and asking hard questions. How do ensure our platform is fair? How do we protect against incentivizing users to support one organization over another?
🤲🏿 How our product fits into the lives of real people
Products are only as effective as they are integrated into the lives of their users. We had to think deeply about user habits and attitudes, including considering in-person interactions between organization leaders and volunteers/donors.
💬 Collaboration requires sustained communication
Having worked on this project completely remotely, I became familiar with various tools for remote user testing as well as facilitating remote design jams, brainstorm sessions, and stand-ups. While I’ve participated in these in the past, I finally had the chance to lead in a remote setting!