The Brief
Goal:
Challenge:
To create a mothers support community and encourage donations to fund charitable projects.
ActionAid is a charity that provides support for women and young girls living in poverty around the world. The task set by ActionAid was to explore a way in which mothers in the UK (and to a lesser extent fathers), could be connected with other mothers around the world who are in need of support. The idea from this would be to create a community based on motherhood and to encourage donations to fund projects for those in need.
...only 8 hours to come up with a solution!
Hackathon:
ActionAid
In a one day sprint, myself and fellow Experience Haus Alumni were tasked with helping ActionAid connect mothers across the globe.
1
Discovery
The Day Begins.
The day kicked off with a presentation with Kerri, where she explained the purpose of ActionAid, the brief and initial concepts that had been trialed by the charity. Some key points brought up were:
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Authenticity is very important. Donors want to know their money is having an impact on people's lives.
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The aim is to encourage a 6-12 month commitment for donors.
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Tech access can be tricky in some communities
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The concept has to be scalable.
Taking these points away, our team began to research other charity organisations and the platforms they used to support donations and community connections.
Surprisingly a minority of charities researched utilised apps, instead relying on their websites for donations and social media for community outreach.
Of the charities we found that did use apps, they show donors how money is spent and facilitate the ability to make donation top-ups.
Competitor Research
(to the right) The app interface for the
International Charity Organisation (ICO)
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User Research
Despite the time restraint, we were able to set up some interviews with mothers and parents who had previously made donations to a charity organisation. Some points they raised included:
I can’t guarantee how much every month, it makes me nervous
I have to just go do one off donations in case I can’t carry on with continuous payments
... don’t know where the money goes really and I’m not paid enough to
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Based on the reoccurring concern users had with the proposed direct debit system, we began to look into the possibility of utilising micro donations.
One of the concepts we explored was the round up method used by apps like Monzo and PledJar, whereas a payment can be rounded up, with the additional cost being donated.
Micro donations
Interview with Former Charity Worker
As we were beginning to wrap up the research phase of the day we got an opportunity to talk with the former Global Programmes Operations Officer for Save the Children. She brought up some interesting points about the issues with directly connecting donors and beneficiaries.
This interview proved to be very important as it raised some important ethical considerations related to the transactional nature of linking the donor with the beneficiary.
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Would create a heck of a lot of admin, costly but I think it might be manageable. You would need to monitor all interactions.
The ethics concern me... the safeguarding and fraud risks of one to one contact.
You’d have to introduce minimum interaction demands, does the beneficiary have to comply or lose the benefits?
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2
Define
What we learnt from the research.
From the interviews we conducted and the competitor research we started to develop an understanding of what we wanted to address:
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Donors want to see what happens to their money
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Flexibility with donations is important
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The ethics must be considered. There should be no pressure for the beneficiaries to post content.
User Problem Statements
From the development of the personas and the analysis of the user experience, we defined three problem statements:
As a donor I would like to view the projects I have supported so that I can track the campaign progress
As a parent I would like to connect with fellow parents around the world so that I can receive and offer support
As a rights holder I would like to share my story so that I can promote the work ActionAid is doing around the world
A problem statement was selected and refined, with a possible solution being developed as a hypothesis:
The Problem
Hypothesis
ActionAid needs a way to share stories of motherhood from around the world with mothers in the UK because research shows donors like seeing the difference donations make.
We believe that by creating an app with a primary focus of fostering a mothers community, ActionAid will increase campaign awareness and thus donations.
Ideation
and Wireframe
With only a few hours remaining we were forced to move through the ideation process quickly, with the key pages and elements being mapped out.
Home Dashboard
The key for this screen was to present the user with the key bits of information. We determined these to be firstly the amount the user had donated so far, followed by any projects that they are actively involved in and those they donated to previously.
This provides an instant connection between the money the user has donated and its effect. Imagery of the mothers being supported can also be seen at the top.
Direct Messaging
Donations Screen
The purpose of this screen was to provide an easy way in which the user could immediately donate. From our research it was apparent that users appreciate the ability to donate when it suits them, rather than being solely held to a payment plan.
An option to begin contributing to a featured project is also seen at the bottom.
The original idea of this screen was to demonstrate how the user would be able to directly communicate with mothers around the world.
As concerns regarding the ethics of creating a potentially 'transactional nature' were raised, we discussed with Kerri that this is something that could require further research and testing before deciding to proceed with.
Social Media Feature
We determined that an effective way to create a sense of a 'motherhood community' was to implement a social media feature.
This would allow ActionAid workers and potentially the mothers they worked with, to post updates regarding projects, family news, and inspiring motherhood quotes (something ActionAid was keen to include).
Once again ethics were in consideration here, we made sure to emphasis the importance of consent in regards to mothers posting content.
The time constraint of the day obviously had a large effect on the project, and due to this research and user testing was very limited.
Therefore I consider the next steps to focus initially on user testing, with parents (primarily mothers) who have donated to charities previously, being considered to test out the prototype we have created. This would obviously create an understanding of what works within the prototype and what could be improved upon.
Also ideally there would be an opportunity to conduct further research, as some of the issues raised in regards to ethics would be good to explore further.