UX Case Study: Unify Giving
Unify Giving is a fairly new company that helps bridge the financial and technological gap between those experiencing homelessness and a mainstream cashless society. Charities partner with Unify Giving to give people in the homeless community wristbands. Donors can load money onto their mobile app and tap their phone to a wristband to contactlessly donate to a person in need. This money will then go on a card that can only be used for essential needs purchases.
However, what if a donor can’t download the mobile app? What if a User isn’t technologically savvy enough to donate through the app; some users are just more comfortable on desktop website.
Users need to be able to donate through a desktop website and fell confident that the site is trustworthy.
My challenge as a UX/UI designer was to use design thinking principles to conduct user research, and based on this research, redesign the desktop website so that someone is able to sign in/ login and donate through the site. This redesign needed to ensure that the site was trustworthy and consistent with the UI of the Unify Giving mobile app.
I first conducted secondary research to begin my user interviews and surveys. In talking with users, I found:
People did not really expect to be rewarded for donating
People felt light-hearted and proud after donating, and this feeling lead them to feel more enthusiastic about donating again
People value financial transparency and mentioned that this was something that helped users determine if a charitable company was trustworthy or not
To further explore this topic of financial transparency, I conducted a SME interview with a treasurer of Praise Community Church in Pennsylvania. Every month, this church posts financial information for all to see (budgeting info, money raised, money donated, etc.).
“if you have nothing to hide, and you’re proud of the direction your finances are going in, you shouldn’t be fearful of sharing it””
He also commented that when people donate and invest in a company, they want to get more involved with that company, and donors should be involved in the budgeting process. When donors are contributing to Unify Giving, they’re investing more, taking on ownership of Unify Giving, growing more involved, and ultimately donating more. Seeing financial transparency makes users more trusting of an organization.
I also created a user persona, Macy, and a User Journey. The User Journey describes Macy leaving for work, coming across a homeless person. Macy wishes she could give to the person in need, but she doesn’t have any cash on hand. So she talks with the person more and learns about the Unify Giving mobile app and wristband. However, Macy can’t give through the mobile app, because she doesn’t have enough storage on her device.
From this User Journey, I created a User Story:
As someone who never has cash on hand, I want to be able to give to those who are struggling with homelessness, so that I can ensure that I always have access to helping those in need.
I also conducted a business and competitive analysis looking at Samaritan, Kanndoo!, Beam, and Robin Hood. Many of these companies focused on helping the individual as opposed to donating directly to a charity. Some of these companies had features to send the people they were helping words of encouragement. I knew this was a feature I wanted to include in the Unify Giving desktop website. I also created site maps of the current Unify Giving desktop website, as well as these competitor companies to get a better feeling for information architecture for the site.
For a mood board for the homepage of the redesign, I wanted to stay consistent with the Unify Giving mobile app that incorporated rounded corners. I also looked at other charity companies that displayed data on the home page.
The original Unify Giving style guide had a lot of various shades of colors. For my own style tile, I only incorporated 3 primary, 3 secondary, and 3 neutral colors in my desktop website to ensure that everything was consistent. I also continued to use Inter as a the typeface, and I changed the font weight and size to establish hierarchy.
I created low, mid, and high fidelity prototypes. I conducted usability tests with 5 people for each prototype, and I annotated the screens to show areas that I needed to change based on testing. I made a lot of changes to the home page. I originally included a lot of information on the home page in my low fidelity. Some of this information was better suited to the Profile page. In my mid-fidelity, I needed to add more space and decrease the size of fonts. For the final version, I made sure that everything was visually consistent.
I also made a lot of changes to the profile page. In usability testing, users were confused by the extra “Donate”, “Dashboard”, and “Rewards” category titles. I ended up getting rid of these buttons, and made sure to include extra information on the points feature whenever users accrued new points after donating.