Big Education
A Mobile platform that simplifies educational donations with easy campaign discovery and support
Team Members:
Yan Wei
Jasper Ling
Calvin Lin
Manideep Vangari
Role:
UI Designer
UX Researcher
Led User Test
Tools:
Figma
Double Diamond
Project Time:
2023 (Jun - Aug)
10 Weeks
OVERVIEW
Who's Big Education?
Big_ED is a mobile platform that supports global education by offering easy access to donation campaigns. Donors can discover and support campaigns for school supplies, equipment, meals, and girls' education. The platform provides convenient options for pick-ups, drop-offs, and one-time or monthly donations, all designed with a focus on UI/UX to ensure a seamless and intuitive user experience.
Context
Our Goal
To create a user-friendly and transparent donation platform that supports educational initiatives worldwide.
DISCOVER
Research
Our initial research aimed to gain a broad understanding of the donation domain, focusing on donors, organizations, and recipients. We conducted comprehensive online surveys to gather insights from each of these key stakeholders.
We found that:
• Transparency Issues: Donors lack clarity on how their donations are utilized, leading to mistrust.
• Limited Donation Methods: Existing platforms often restrict donation options to in-person or time-limited contributions.
• Scattered Campaigns: Donors struggle to find and follow multiple educational campaigns in one place.
• Perceived Donation Impact: People may feel their donations are too small to make a difference.
• Decision Paralysis: Consumers browse rather than donate when presented with too many options.
The Design Challenge
Design a platform that convinces donors their small donations matter, ensures transparency in showing donation impacts, and simplifies the donation process amidst choice overload.
Initial Ideation
Our initial research aimed to gain a broad understanding of the donation domain, focusing on donors, organizations, and recipients. We conducted comprehensive online surveys to gather insights from each of these critical stakeholders, ultimately narrowing down our ideas to three main concepts: pick-ups, pen-pals, and emergency relief.
DEFINE
What We Focus
Our focus on educational organizations is not just strategic, but also a testament to their pivotal role in managing donation campaigns and ensuring resources reach the students in need. By supporting these organizations, we can amplify the impact of donations and make them feel valued and integral to our project.
By synthesizing our research findings, defining our target audience and goals, creating user personas, and refining our initial ideas, we have laid a solid foundation for the next phase of our project. Our solutions are user-centred, ensuring that we address the correct problems and make our audience feel their needs are being considered.
Key Insights:
Persona
We developed two primary personas to deepen our comprehension of the objectives, challenges, and requirements of our target audience. This strategic approach allows us to tailor our solutions more effectively to meet their specific needs and address their concerns comprehensively.
How Might We:
We applied the HMW (How Might We) method by transforming our insights into actionable questions, beginning each blue sticky note with "How might we..." Following this, we generated potential design solutions which match the HMW for these questions using yellow sticky notes.
HMW determine
the appropriate
donations received
for recipients?
HMW make the
donation process for potential donors more convenient?
HMW more directly showcase the impacts and results of a donor’s donation?
HMW increase campaign transparency regarding goals and donation usage?
Organize donation options & proper donations include items, money and subscriptions.
Create features to my donation tracking & history.
Provide discover campaigns in progress and find campaigns that matter to you.
Offer the latest
updates on the campaign's progress.
DEVELOP
Journey Maps
We developed two detailed journey maps based on the personas, thoroughly analyzing the users' interactions and experiences. We identified vital emotions and pain points they encountered by mapping out each journey step. Using these insights, we crafted a simple user workflow that addresses and responds to these emotional cues, ensuring a more seamless and empathetic user experience. This process allowed us to create a design closely aligned with the users' needs and emotional states, enhancing overall satisfaction and usability.
Userflow
Using these insights, we then crafted simple user workflows based on the journey maps, focusing on four main areas: profile, news, discovery, and donations. These wire flows address the specific emotional cues identified in the journey maps to ensure a seamless and empathetic user experience.
Wireframes
After outlining the user flow, we developed medium-fidelity following the initial sketches to visualize the interface design. These wireframes detailed key functional interfaces, such as onboarding, news, organization, profile, donations, and discovery.
Hi-Fidelity Prototype
Here is the high-fidelity prototype we developed, which we have utilized for comprehensive user testing.
DELIVER
User Test
Our team utilized research methodologies to test the prototype's feasibility. These included conducting online and face-to-face interviews, observing user behaviours, and engaging in discussions. This method gathered valuable insights and user feedback, which informed our design decisions and helped refine our prototype.
User Testing Notes
We have summarized the notes from our user testing interviews, categorizing the issues and potential solutions. This process allowed us to identify key pain points and areas for improvement, ensuring that our design effectively addresses user needs.
Refinement
After the user tests, I took responsibility for redesigning the credit system. I moved it from the profile to reduce confusion and placed it in the main navigation bar for better visibility. Additionally, I redesigned the profile to include a user image and a progress bar for the credit system, providing a more visual and intuitive experience. The profile also lists the user's contribution statistics with specific tax and item icons, enhancing clarity and engagement.
Before
After
Before
After
Final Design
Here are our the final prototype for Big Education:
Personal Takeaway 😮💨 ：
01 - In-depth Research:
Our research could have been more thorough. We needed robust, authoritative data to support some of our design decisions. More comprehensive and credible data sources would have strengthened our design process and outcomes.
02 - User Testing Quantity:
The user test needed more samples. Including several professional charity workers in our tests would have been more beneficial. Their insights could have provided a deeper understanding of user needs and potential challenges.
03 - Prototype Development:
The prototypes, particularly in Figma, could have been better. This project was my first time using Figma to create a complete app, and many small details were overlooked due to my inexperience. However, I learned a great deal throughout the process, and this experience has significantly enhanced my skills and understanding of prototyping.
© Yan Wei. 2023-2024
UX/UI Designer