Wave
Role
Timeline
Client
Tools
Lead UX / UI Designer
4 - 6 weeks
ANZ Billing, Inc., 2024
Figma, Procreate, Maze, Optimal Workshop
Mobile App | UX/UI Design Lead | 2023
Empowering communities through volunteerism – a purpose-driven app fostering connection and positive impact.
Challenge
Solution
As someone who's passionate about community engagement, I've seen firsthand the challenges people face when trying to find the right volunteer opportunities. Many of us share a desire to make a positive impact, but we're sometimes held back by the complexity of finding the perfect match. So, I started wondering – how can we make this process easier and more efficient?
There is a significant gap between individuals who are eager to volunteer and organizations seeking dedicated volunteers, often resulting in missed opportunities for community engagement and social impact.
So, I rolled up my sleeves and created Wave, a user-friendly app that simplifies the volunteer discovery process, connecting like-minded individuals with opportunities that fit their passions and timetables.
View prototype
Insight generation
Crafting a detailed affinity map was crucial for distilling insights from both volunteer and volunteer management perspectives. Initially, my data collection covered both areas, contributing to a comprehensive map. As the project progressed, I focused more on the volunteer experience.
Overall, my interviews highlighted key themes of community and social responsibility in shaping the volunteer experience.
Competitive analysis revealed a major gap—no leading volunteer apps help users seamlessly integrate volunteering into their schedules. POINT offers basic date filters, but lacks robust scheduling and tracking tools. Most platforms focus solely on listings, overlooking the power of community-driven engagement. Golden is the only competitor leveraging incentives, highlighting an untapped opportunity to motivate volunteers.
Many users struggle to discover opportunities that align with their availability and interests, making it harder to volunteer consistently. They also want clear insight into their contributions—whether through tracked hours or meaningful milestones—so they can feel a sense of fulfillment and accountability in their efforts. A platform that personalizes opportunities and highlights impact can encourage long-term engagement.
Insights
Scheduling Challenges Engagement
Participants face difficulties aligning volunteer opportunities with their busy schedules, affected their engagement levels.
Communication Gaps Hinder Participation
Diverse Interests, Varied Causes
Users exhibit diverse interests and are passionate about various causes, underscoring the importance of offering a wide array of volunteer opportunities.
Impact Measurement Matters
Intrinsic Motivations Drive Volunteerism
Volunteers seek opportunities that allow them to track and understand their impact, highlighting the significance of transparent impact measurement.
Interviewees are primarily motivated by personal growth, skill development, and a desire for meaningful experiences when volunteering.
I created two user personas because individuals have diverse interests and motivations for volunteering. While debates exist about the ethics of intrinsic and extrinsic motivations, as a designer, my focus is on creating a solution that caters to both types of people.
User personas
Volunteers face difficulties in discovering relevant opportunities, lack clear insights into their impact, and struggle with inefficient scheduling tools, making it challenging to have a seamless and rewarding volunteer experience.
From this point, I knew that I had to create a user-centric, streamlined solution that features:
Personalized Search.
Tailored recommendations based on interests, location, and past activities help volunteers quickly discover meaningful opportunities without endless browsing.
Integrated Calendar Management.
A built-in scheduling tool lets users sign up, track, and manage their commitments in one place, reducing friction and making planning effortless.
Impact dashboard & Badges.
A visual breakdown of hours, causes, and trends keeps volunteers engaged, while milestone badges add motivation and a sense of achievement.
Site map
Site mapping was a key part of the process because it helped me visualize the whole app, showing how the pages are organized, connected, and how users will navigate through it.
Task flows
I developed three user and task flows by leveraging the sitemap I designed, and tested them to align with common tasks performed by the target user. The aim was to ensure that the user could intuitively navigate through the site.
The primary goal was to provide users with essential information to quickly assess the suitability of a volunteering event.
Volunteer card:
I initially prioritized event name, date, time, and organizer but incorporated distance based on user feedback. Research on users' community-driven motivations led me to downplay the organizer thumbnail’s prominence, except when donating to a cause.
Users prioritized details like event popularity and capacity. As a result, I replaced the organizer thumbnail with a donut chart indicating event popularity.
Research showed that users are driven by their impact on the community, so I designed a dashboard to help them track hours and spot trends in their volunteering.
Dashboard:
I started with a pie chart to showcase users' volunteer activity ratios but found it lacked context. Exploring richer data displays led to visually overwhelming designs, prompting a need for a clearer approach.
To simplify the experience, I switched to a semi-circle chart for a cleaner visual breakdown of volunteer history. I also introduced a horizontal carousel of cards below it, adding context and motivation without overwhelming users.
This final design not only offers users a better visual representation of their volunteer history but also provides valuable context and analysis to keep them engaged and motivated.
After defining success metrics and accessibility guidelines, I conducted a week of usability testing, organizing insights into an affinity map to identify key patterns. Based on this analysis, I prioritized and implemented iterations on three key screens per task flow, refining interactions for a more seamless and intuitive experience.
User testing
Sign up and create an account
Users often ignored the "Create Account" button, and instead were drawn more toward the email input field for returning users.
Sign up for a volunteer activity
Users misclicked when trying to access volunteer events, as the Discover icon in the bottom navigation was often overlooked.
Edit availability
Some users found the filler text within the calendar input fields confusing when trying to adjust their availability, so I removed it.
Flow 1: Sign up
Homescreen
Flow 2: Sign up for an event
Flow 3: Edit availability
Profile and dashboard
As someone who tends to lean toward perfectionism before sharing work, I felt that I sometimes went down design rabbit-holes. However, my main a-ha moments were often when I shared my progress with my peers and my mentor. In retrospect, I could have jumpstarted the iterative process by sharing work more frequently.
Throughout this project, I aimed for a harmonious design, keeping things visually cohesive. I paid special attention to interaction design, ensuring buttons and input fields felt just right. Subtle animations chimed in with user feedback, making tasks smoother. This project refined my approach, underlining how structured design systems, user-friendly interactions, and smart state management can create a smooth and approachable interface.
I’m interested in delving deeper into understanding user motivations related to impact tracking. Uncovering more about what truly motivates users to track their impact in volunteer activities would enable me to create more tailored and engaging features. For example, I’m intrigued by how the use of gamification can be more effectively integrated into the app to tap into users' intrinsic motivations for making a positive impact on their communities, kind of like Duolingo does. Additionally, I really would like the opportunity to build out the volunteer management side of this app. Although I embarked on this project with the intention to do so and got some really good research, it ultimately wasn’t feasible in timeline and scope. I look forward to expanding on that research and putting it to use.
Iteration is key
Design Systems