Freelancer Volunteer
Removing friction for volunteers
Freelancer wants to connect charity and volunteer organizations with the people willing to offer their skills to make a difference in the world around them.
(CONCEPT PROJECT)
Team
3 Person Project
Role
UX Researcher
Methods
Surveys, Phone Interviews, Competitive & Comparative Analysis, Affinity Mapping, Sketching, Paper Prototyping, Wireframing, and Rapid Iteration Testing & Evaluation(RITE)
Tools
Pen & Paper, Whiteboard, Photoshop, and Figma
Platform
Desktop
Deliverables
Mid-Fidelity Interactive Prototype and Presentation
Hypothesis
If we connect volunteers with organizations based on their availability and personal cause, people will be willing to offer their services.
Solution
Freelancer already has a platform for employment purposes. We can take this existing structure and adapt it to streamline the sign-in process, and better organize the structure of information to focus on the needs of potential volunteers.
Surveys
Online Survey completed by 66 individuals. Data compiled and synthesized to give us direction.
Began to gather feedback from potential target audience and scope.
Information gathered in an affinity map which gave us direction for questions in the phone interviews.
Phone Interviews
A select group of individuals from people who took the survey were called to give us more insight into there responses.
Gathered a deeper insight into why some of the responses were given during the online survey.
Affinity Mapping
Data compiled from the surveys and interviews were placed into groups to find the
commonalities between the responses and define our scope.
Found 3 areas in which the biggest focus should be directed.
Time and Knowledge being the biggest areas of pain for our target audience.
“Feeling Good” being the biggest motivator for why people continued to volunteer.
These finding informed our Persona/Archetype.
Competitive Analysis
Took a deep dive look at the businesses that are the direct competitors in Freelancers current field, and into the field in which they look to expand.
Usability Testing
Utilizing the method Rapid Iteration Testing and Evaluation(RITE), we built and tested in portions to gather the most insight in the shortest amount of time.
The more that we were able to iterate, the more we were able to narrow our scope into information that was able to help us build a optimal prototype.
Key design decisions
Progress bar
Lets the user know where they are in the sign up process.
Adapted sign up form
We only require the absolute necessary information from our users to prevent overwhelming them or frustrating them.
Causes and skills selector
While this is still part of the form, it does not feel like the user is filling out a form and is frustration-free. We adapted this concept from VolunteerMatch’s sign up process.
Hours and availability selector
As indicated by our research, timing is a really big factor for our users. It is important for them to be able to find volunteer opportunities based on their schedules and availability.
Deliverable
We used the insights from our research, competitive/comparative analysis and archetype development to create a design solution that would encourage and excite our users to volunteer.
Results & Reflections
Results:
Users understood our site and were able to easily flow through the application process. Our prototype still requires more testing to improve and iterate on what we already have, but the framework solves our problem.
Next steps:
We would continue to conduct more usability tests and improve the product to benefit our users and the business more.