Community Engaged Volunteering Platform
An interactive volunteering app prototype for York's local community.
October 2022 - 2 month sprint
5 person team
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Questionnaire design
Wireframing & prototyping
Heuristic Evaluation
Usability Testing
My Role
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Designing a questionnaire using Qualtrics and piloting it for data collection.
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Conducting data analysis to develop multiple personas and scenarios.
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Crafting user workflows, sketches, and wireframes in Figma.
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Performed Collaborative Heuristic Evaluations (CHE), facilitated usability testing for an interactive prototype, and iteratively redesigned the prototype based on expert and user feedback.
Background
The team encountered several challenges while designing an interactive volunteering app prototype for York's local community. Balancing a wide range of opportunities with user-friendliness was a key difficulty. Specific challenges included creating user-centered solutions that efficiently allowed users to select their preferences and availability for volunteering options and designing a user-friendly interface for recording experiences.
Throughout the process, we adhered to principles of good interaction design and usability guidelines. We ensured continuous improvement by conducting heuristic evaluations and usability testing, refining the design based on feedback. Despite the challenges, the project provided valuable learning opportunities in effectively connecting volunteers with meaningful opportunities, thereby promoting community engagement and well-being.
Research & Planning
Questionnaire Design
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Our target user group was people in York looking for volunteering opportunities. We distributed a questionnaire through the University and 'Opportunities at York'. The questionnaire gathered information about users, their volunteering habits, and interests. It focused on how participants discovered opportunities, factors they considered, and the sign-up process. For previous volunteers, detailed questions delved into their past experiences, expectations, and reflections.
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Personas
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The data we collected from our research helped us craft 2 personas embodying 2 different volunteer archetypes in our target user group. We created one male and one female; one who had never volunteered and one who had volunteered for a while within the York community respectively.
For personas, we chose John (male, 18-23) and Catherine (female, 24-30) based on user data. John represents Instagram users, while Catherine represents those who use email for volunteering advertisements. To cater to the masses, we focused on previous volunteers and newcomers, reflecting their interests and frustrations in the personas.
John seeks opportunities related to Computer Science, while Catherine prefers roles related to Reading and Arts. John looks for CV-building opportunities, while Catherine volunteers without expecting anything in return. Both personas desire convenient and abundant volunteering options. Catherine seeks a simple platform for all volunteering needs. John faces challenges in finding Computer Science opportunities and time flexibility. Catherine struggles with a lack of organized reflection space and unclear role descriptions in opportunities.
Designing the Solution
User Flows & User Journey
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To begin the core design process, the team crafted a user journey to gain insights into the user's thought process effectively. The prototype's pages and accessible elements were thoroughly listed to ensure a smooth user experience. Key principles, including Nielsen's and Norman's design principles, guided the overall prototype's development, emphasising Consistency, System Feedback, Visibility, Constraints, and Mapping for seamless navigation.
The prototype was finalised through three major iterations - initial, after heuristic evaluation, and after usability tests.
Figure 1: User Journey
Figure 2: User Flows
Early Sketches
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Figure 3: Wireframes
Collaborative Heuristics Evaluation
We undertook Nielsen and Molich’s Heuristics for the expert evaluation. A total of 5 tasks were used for the evaluation. We prioritised tasks which let the user explore the "Advanced search" options for Volunteering Opportunities and the Reflection Page. During the evaluation, several usability issues emerged with our prototype. Each usability problem was described with the rule we thought it violated.
Figure 4: Task Sheet
Figure 5: Issues discovered during the Expert Evaluation
Usability Testing
The usability test with twelve users was conducted after the redesign of the issues found during the expert inspection evaluation. During the usability testing, we adopted the think-out-loud method, in order to observe where users were getting stuck during the evaluation. The think-out-loud procedure seemed most appropriate, as the team received more information from users. This, however, also relied on the users being comfortable enough to talk a lot and be open when they felt stuck.
During each usability test, users were first presented with an information sheet and consent form allowing us to record their participation and explicitly got their permission to record their audio. After consent was given participants were given the same five tasks to perform using the prototype presented to them on a tablet. Upon completion of the tasks, users were asked to fill out a short survey in order to get a clear idea of where the user also felt the prototype could improve. We found several user issues where some were deemed more critical than others.
Figure 6: Issues discovered during Usability Testing
As can be seen, the user issues were rated using a three-point Likert scale of Critical, Serious, and Minor. If an issue was marked as Critical, it was an issue that stopped the user from completing a task; oppositely if an issue was marked as Minor, it did not have a big impact on the user’s completion of the tasks. After identifying the issues from the user evaluation, a final redesign was proposed to address these issues.
Final Low Fidelity Prototype
After three stages of iteration, here are some of the finalised wireframes.
Figure 7: My Opportunities page before final redesign
Figure 9: My Reflections Logbook page before final redesign
Figure 8: My Opportunities page after final redesign
Figure 10: My Reflections Logbook page after final redesign
Conclusion
The Impact
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Our Community Engaged Volunteering Platform created such excitement that even The City of York Council reached out to the Computer Science Department to verify its existence. Moreover, we were delighted to receive encouraging emails from people across York, showing their support and enthusiasm for the project!
What I learned
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Human-Centred Design and Research is an iterative process, teaching me the value of staying open to improvements and not becoming overly attached to specific design elements or prototypes. The heuristic evaluation highlighted some anticipated issues, but the multitude of findings during usability testing was unexpected. This experience demonstrated that things seldom go exactly as planned.
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Additionally, I gained valuable insights into accessibility guidelines, emphasising the significance of clear labelling and visual feedback through the iterative design process of our prototype.
What I would do differently
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Our initial plan was to interview volunteering organizations alongside our volunteer user group, but time constraints prevented us from doing so. This missed opportunity meant we couldn't gain valuable insights into the frustrations these organisations may have with their volunteers or understand the characteristics of ideal volunteers. Having this information could have been immensely helpful in enhancing our prototype.