Giving Better
Thrown into an unexpected public health crisis people want to help -
Their neighbors, family and friends. Our class was brought in to create a tool that promoted community, and centered around the human connection built by generosity.
Our stakeholders were interested in gaps found in current giving models, in the idea of random acts of kindness and in exploring unsolicited giving.
HOW MIGHT WE...
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Make giving within the community easier and more effective?
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Create a new way to build connections through generous acts?
PROJECT & TIMELINE
This was part of a "Projects in HCI" course at the University of Texas, Austin. Our industry partner and stakeholder was Sentier Strategic Resources, a research and design agency.
June 2020- August 2020
Role
Working mainly on the research team, my responsibilities included:
Secondary Research
Survey creation & data analysis
Generative Interview Moderation
Mapping, Sprint Questions, Concepting
Rite Testing Moderation and Analysis
Final Recommendations
Team Members
Researchers:
Aylin Saribudak
Meg Patton
Project Plan
Empathize
"Who gives and why?"
Secondary Research
Competitive Analysis
Insights Surveys
Generative Interviews
Define & Ideate
"What do Givers need?"
Mind Mapping
Sprint Questions
Crazy 8's
Concepting
Prototype
"How to connect ideas?"
Create Prototypes
Test
"What do Users think?"
RITE Testing x 3 rounds
Iterations on each
1. Who gives and why?
Secondary Research Findings
Giving to be Social
Seeing other people give can increase your own giving.
Giving Motivations
People's motivations fall on a spectrum from self serving to altruistic.
Giving to Individuals
People are more likely to give to individuals with stories, rather than face-less causes with stats and figures only.
Giving to Connect
Kind acts of generosity can promote connection.
Giving as a Norm
People adjust their behavior to fit the social norms they associate with their identity.
Giving is Popular
There is a high rate of charitable giving in America. Age and religion can effect giving but gender, income and race less so.
We organized our findings
by thinking of the
BJ Fogg Model of Behavior
Behavior = motivation + ability + prompts
Consider Motivation, Prompts and Ability
Motivations- Spectrum of motivators
Prompts- Priming and signaling
Ability- Financial, social, cultural
Market Trends
Competitive Analysis
Created in Figma by Design Team
27 competitors compared
Competitors
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Donation specific apps/sites
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Popular apps/sites that allow donation in addition to other goals
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Non-digital giving formats
One Feature Overview from Competitive Analysis
Findings:
Must Haves & Should Haves
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Gift Recommendations
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Background Information for research purposes
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Trust-building aspects
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Easy on-boarding
Findings:
Secondary Research Support
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People want options, but over 5 options and it feels overwhelming- this can be obstacle to giving.
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Researching cause is an important trust-builder in donation process.
Findings:
Opportunities to Consider
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Make giving easier
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Gamify giving
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Allow auto-giving path
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Allow incentives
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Create donor ranking or community aspects in app
Mixing Methods with Surveys
Surveys
Created in Qualtrics
~220 participants
We asked our participants questions about...
What motivates them to give
What is their most common form of giving
How do they learn about giving opportunities
What types of app features might be interesting
We screened out
People outside of the US
People without smart phones
People who did not give in the past year
Some Insights
Motivators on the spectrum were confirmed. Additionally we found 'demotivators' like social anxiety, can keep people from giving when they want to.
People look to friends to get information on trustworthy giving opportunities, because it saves them research time and reduces anxiety.
People are interested in varying levels of anonymity but want to control how public the donation will be.
*Our competitive analysis findings pointed to social media type features as popular, or potentially a 'ranking' of donors being an opportunity. However, after validating our feature ideas with survey participants, we found that these features were not popular within a 'giving' framework or app.
Our survey findings helped us write our Moderation Script for generative interviews!
Understanding the 'Why' with Interviews
Generative Interviews
Method:12 interviews, 1 hour each with Zoom and Miro.com
(Worked as moderator for four interviews, notetaker for four interviews)
Interview Structure
1. Discussion
Have participant define their understanding of 'giving'
Move into what forms of giving they participate in
Ask about their experiences, habits, like & dislikes
2. Journey Activity
Ask participant to write out steps of recent giving experience
Have them label the emotions they felt at each step
3. Feature Ranking Activity
Rank list of features (1 for least important, 5 for most important)
Ask "What do you think this feature is about?"
Ask "Why is it important?" if high, or "Why is it less important" if low
Analyzing Interview Data
Part of the affinity diagram related to the giving journey
Method:
The researchers did an affinity diagraming exercise in Miro.com with interview data to find themes.
We considered Fogg behavior model while analyzing
What are prompts, signals, motivators and obstacles while giving?
Some Motivators
Seeing impact right away
Seeing friends give
Some prompts
Media
Community need
Some Obstacles
Financial concerns
Trust
Ease of giving
2. What do Givers need?
Review Research
Go through all the research data and take notes
Crazy 8's
8 bad ideas, and 8 better ideas in 16 minutes flat
Sprint Questions
Reference original HMW's and create sprint goal
Scenarios
Chose scenarios to ideate on
Story Mapping
Identify customer, and flow. Use HMW's to narrow focus.
Concepting
Create 3 unique concepts to address goals
Design Thinking Steps
Long Term Goal for App Concepts
People will be able to give spontaneously with their phones and will be inspired to give more often and will be able to give with friends, building community.
Playdate feature allows users to schedule meetups with other dog owners
Concepting
Scenario for Concept #1
"A friend sends you $30 on the app to get dinner, but you decide to pass the money to someone else on the app..."
My first concept based on the research
Concept #1: Ideating on How to Give with Friends
Research- Interviews, surveys and secondary research implies people want to give more.
*Create a giving account. This also helps with budgeting which was a concern for some when it came to spontaneous giving. A giving account is a pre-determined amount that can be given on the app each month.
Research- People who need help might not want to feel like they are receiving charity.
*Everyone on this app can give or receive. Giving a friend money to buy coffee as a special treat is as easy as giving to another friend's favorite charity.
Research- People feel overwhelmed with too many giving choices and often look to friends to find trust worthy giving opportunities
*Create an "Inner Circle" with a small group of friends. This helps filter options that you see, and aids in feeling connected by working together to meet giving goals
Research- People like to know who they are helping and who else has given to a cause
*Create opportunity to give to individuals or community organizations.
Scenario for Concept #2
"At your favorite coffee shop you overhear another regular customer say they have been struggling lately. You'd like to buy their coffee anonymously..."
My second concept
Concept #2: Ideating on Giving at a Business
Research- Priming a person to give by showing them that others are giving in the area
*Show a map that indicates where others have given using the app in the local area
Research- People want to know that the money they give will go to what they expect
*Allow app users to give directly through stores in the form of a credit or gift card
Research- Interviews and survey showed that people want the option to give anonymously, but sometimes want recognition for gift
*Allow user to send money anonymously OR to sign their gift with a note
Goal- To help create a habit or routine of giving by making the app delightful to use
* Create an AR visual component to the app. When a person gives with the app (or is outside of an establishment where someone else gave) they can open the app and look through the AR view finder to discover unique images and messages. These are AR landmarks that make using the app more fun and delightful.
Voting on Concepts
My 'giving
map' idea, was
upvoted by
team
My "Inner
Circle" of
friends idea was upvoted as well
3. How to connect the ideas?
After voting on features we broke into three teams to design different parts of the app. As a Team Lead for the "Inner Circle" feature, I worked with designers to story map the feature progression and to create screens for the prototype. At the same time, myself and the other researchers started our RITE testing protocol.
Early draft of my Inner Circle Feature
What do users think?
It was time to doing some user testing! We decided on RITE testing because it was a time efficient way for us to iterate, get feedback and move closer to a viable app concept.
RITE Process
After creating our research questions, we crafted a protocol script with five unique tasks. We recruited from the pool of individuals who responded to our survey and as in all parts of this project, we did our interviews remotely over Zoom.
11 remote interviews over 4 days. Researchers collected and decided on priority changes and designers worked on redesigns at night.
Research Questions for this Phase
● Do people understand the app concept?
● What features are most important to potential users and why?
● What features are least important to potential users and why?
● How does/doesn’t the app fit into the lives of potential users?
● How can the key flows and interactions be improved?
Task 1. Onboarding Quiz
During Onboarding Quiz does participant feel comfortable answering these questions? What do they expect will happen with their answers?
Likert Scale: How difficult or easy was this task? (we asked this after each task)
Task 2. Exploring the Main Tabs
What does the participant expect to happen for each navigational button?
Task 3. Giving to a Friend
What does the participant think about giving to a friend through this app? Is this how they expected they would be giving to a friend over the app?
Task 4. Giving through a Business
What does participant think about giving through a business? How do they feel about the giving map? What do they expect to happen when they give?
Task 5. Receiving a Gift
Would you be interested in ability to pass money forward to a cause? Would you be interested in establishing a group of friends that you work with to give in the community? What do you think the inner circle would be? What would you want it to be?
Closing: Overall Prototype Feedback
How would you change the prototype you used today? Do you wish that the app might include a kind of giving that is not presented? If anything, what did you like about the prototype you interacted today? If anything, what did you not like about the prototype?
RITE Testing Conclusion
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24 changes were made in three re-design sessions
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The number of issues decreased with each iteration
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The average Likert scale for the session tasks was 4 out of 5
Major Changes included...
Clarifying language: "What does 'Pass' mean in this app?"
Eliminating extraneous features: Participants weren't interested in photo album functionality, as an example
Creating a more direct route to give: In the first round of testing, users had trouble figuring out how to give to a friend. After edits, they easily were able to give. This improvement was foundational to the CORE function of the app!
RITE Testing Hand-Off
This was my first time using the RITE method. It provided rich feedback and helped us streamline our information architecture and main features. I learned on the job how to work with the design team, in quickly sharing findings and providing context.
Interviewing Users on a Tricky Subject
Being a generous person is a positive quality, and not being generous - well no one wants to admit that! Because people want to give a good impression it was important to ask for specific instances, to build rapport and to take some responses with a grain of salt.
It was Big Team!
We had 12 designers and 3 researchers. Working remotely to coordinate workshops was a challenge but getting to work with so many talented people made it work it!
We didn't have a Developer's Lens
This project was meant to be as close to an industry project as possible - but it was missing the developers perspective. In the future I'd like to gain more experience working with dev teams.
Overall, this project was a great chance to try new research methods, learn about presenting ideas and practice team collaboration.