Client: Vollie

Vollie is an online marketplace that connects skilled volunteers to non-profits, charities, and social enterprises for skills-based online volunteering. Vollie projects are exclusively online, meaning that people can donate their skills and experience from anywhere in the world, and around their busy personal and professional schedule. The website has a focus on millennials. 

The Brief

Develop an app (for IOS and Android). Vollie is growing well, but the communication between our charities and skilled volunteers needs to improve to ensure projects are delivered on time and to a really high standard.

 3 Week Sprint / 4 UX Designers                                                                          Tools: Sketch, InVision, Post-its, Pens

We looked at a range of competitors here and overseas including Good Company, Pro Bono Australia, Catchafire and UN Volunteers. We found that apps did not appear to be commonly used by Vollie’s competitors.

Interviews

We interviewed 10 people (4 charities, 7 volunteers and 1 business that had considered using Vollie for CSR)

• The charities we spoke with felt the main point of difference with Vollie is the account management.
• The majority of our research indicated charities didn’t consider communication with volunteers an issue. ‘No issue with communication with volunteers. Everyone was really on top of things’.
• We learned that the people posting the projects and managing the volunteers tend to be desk-based working on desktop computers. The kinds of projects the volunteers do via Vollie means they are also largely desktop based.  
• The preferred method of communication for both charities and volunteers is email and phone.

Contextual inquiry

All volunteers went through a contextual inquiry style of interview so that we could gather their thoughts on the Vollie website and application process. While most users were positive about the website and thought it looked professional, the interviews revealed a wealth of information regarding:

Time to synthesise our data

After using an affinity map to synthesise our research findings, it became clear that an app was not the answer for Vollie. An app is a large investment for any company. In order to justify that investment, you have to be certain the product will address a need. In addition to that, people have to want to download it. Neither the charities or the volunteers we interviewed expressed a great desire for an app. Most of the pain points we discovered during our research phase related to the website. We felt our priority should be to address these issues first.

We met with our client, Vollie, and agreed that our focus would be:

• Adjustments to the website to improve the readability and functionality.
• Improve the application process and dashboard.
• Improve the communication between volunteers and charities (primarily to allow volunteers to communicate with the charities before they have been accepted to work on a project).

Sketches + Wireframes + User Testing + Iterations

At this stage we ideated various ideas. We took a pragmatic approach keeping time and money in mind. We wanted our solution to be realistic and feasible and something that Vollie could implement right away. We took our best ideas and created paper prototypes. We primarily wanted to address the communication issues, the readability of the website and the functionality. We tested with the paper prototypes and made various iterations based on user feedback. We tested again and used the feedback to fuel our interactive prototype design. 

Interactive Prototype

At the end of the three-week sprint, we presented Vollie with an interactive prototype that we believe addressed the major pain points found during our research. Changes include:

• Readability was improved across the website.
• Top line navigation was updated to make it clearer for users.
• The user journey for volunteers was amended allowing for volunteers to communicate with charities before applying for a project via a comments section on the project page. This solution means that charities do not have to make their contact details available to volunteers they do not wish to work with. 
• We added in an extra step into the application process to make it clearer for volunteers. This also allowed the volunteer to send a personal note to the charity about why they want to work on the project. This was significant pain point for people we interviewed.
• We emphasised the project management aspect of Vollie and reduced the copy around the costs. Our testing turned up mixed results regarding this so we recommend further testing.
• We completely redesigned the dashboard to improve the hierarchy. We included space for recommended and favourite projects on this page.

We also provided recommendations to address the issue of Vollie's email notifications going to spam. 

Many thanks to Vollie for all of their help and support throughout the three week sprint.

*This project was completed as part of the UX Design Immersive at General Assembly.