FEELING BLESSED DONATION APP
SUMMARY
Feeling Blessed is a donation app for Muslim charities, with Muslim donors being their main users. In addition to fixing "low hanging fruit" and quick issues, the Feeling Blessed team's primary goal was to find a way to implement engagement loops to transform one-time users into repeat users.
Later, the team decided to redesign the iOS & Android apps and the web version from the donors point of view, in addition to the organization dashboard from the non-profits' point of view.
BUSINESS CONSTRAINTS
Limited time and money, difficult to communicate with all the participating organizations on the app so suggested changes can only be aimed towards the Feeling Blessed team.
TOOLS & METHODS
Miro, Sketch, Google Slides, Figma, JIRA, Nielsens 10 Heuristics, Sketches, Low & High Fidelity Wireframes and Mockups, Prioritization Feature Matrix, and Storyboards.
PROJECT TYPE
Volunteer, team of 2 UXR for initial analysis, sole UX researcher with 1 UI designer, 2 app founders, and web, iOS, and Android development teams (part 2 of project).
QUARTER OVER QUARTERÂ RESULTS
54%
Acquisition
46%
Donation Volume
21%
Engagement
DEFINE THE PROBLEM
How might we implement engagement loops?
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How might we improve the donation process for users?
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Can we identify quick fixes to improve usability?
PROCESS
I first conducted an individual initial analysis of both the website and the app (on my iPhone). With my team of 3, we ranked Nielsens 10 heuristics on a scale of 0-4 to help prioritize major usability issues versus minor cosmetic fixes.
We also came up with bigger ideas to help improve the general usability of the app. We then conducted a prioritization feature matrix based on our engagement loop ideas to show the Feeling Blessed team feasible solutions, and we created storyboards to illustrate how these engagement loops would work.
NIELSEN'S 10 HEURISTICS
1. INITIAL ANALYSIS (APP)
The goal of this initial analysis was to identify issues that were obvious to a first time user. With fresh eyes, I was able to identify many problems that would either confuse a new user or turn them off of the Feeling Blessed app entirely.
LOGIN & REGISTER SCREENS
- On the Login screen, the 'Register' button is not easily visible and the text is small.
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- 'Connect With' language is vague and its function is confusing to the user.
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- On the Register screen, the 'Corporate Match' button has no description or mention of its purpose; a user does not know what they are agreeing to.
ABUNDANCE OF ALERTS
- As a first time user, you cannot use many of the app functions such as tracking past donations, donations made in someones honor, or having a gift registry because there is no user data yet.
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- As a result, there are many pop up alerts with the message "No results found," and most of these tabs are unusable and contain no information.
PAYMENTS
- A new user can get as far as the Confirm Donation screen without being asked for credit card information; then an alert pops up directing the user to the payments screen.
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- The tab name is vague; are these previous payments or the users payment method?
LINKS TO EXTERNAL SITE
- The bottom 5 tabs take the user out of the app and to the external website.
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- It can become frustrating to navigate between the app and the website.
2. INITIAL ANALYSIS (WEBSITE)
Next, I conducted a similar initial analysis on the website. Even though the task at hand focused mainly on the app, it was important to check out the site for any visual inconsistencies or other possible errors.
LEARN MORE BUTTON
- This button blends in with the background colors and does not stand out, which it should aim to do since it is located on the home page.
DYNAMIC RESIZING
- When a user adjusts the size of their browser, images are cut off and do not resize accordingly.
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- The quality of these images also decrease significantly.
INFOGRAPHICS & VISUAL INCONSISTENCIES
- These infographics don't move, although giving off that appearance.
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- On the 3 card image, the left and right cards are not clickable and do not become larger.
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- On the app screens image, a user needs to drag in order to scroll through the screens. There are no arrows to navigate.
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- Additionally, these app screens are inconsistent with how the interface actually looks on the app.
OUR TEAM SECTION
- "Want to join us?" implies there should be something clickable, or that there will be a link to a careers or job page.
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- The layout emphasizes the inspirational person and not the Feeling Blessed employee.
3. REDESIGNING KEY ISSUES
After ranking the issues, we were able to identify key items that needed work. It was important to keep the business constraints in mind so that we could suggest realistic changes to the app. Below are recommended changes to the app that we suggested to the Feeling Blessed team.
Color Contrast
ISSUE: The current colors with white text don't pass the color contrast web accessibility standards.
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RECOMMENDATION: Change the text to black to comply with web accessibility standards and increase the color contrast ratio.
Pop Up Alert
ISSUE: An alert pops up when first loading the app and frequently pops up while using; it only appears for a second, so the user cannot even read it. The grammar is also incorrect.
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RECOMMENDATION: This should be an alert the user sees once they first use the app and should have two options: Settings (takes user to settings where they can turn on location services) or Decline (and they never see this message again. Grammatical errors should also be fixed.
Login & Register Screens
ISSUE: 'Connect With' is vague, 'Corporate match' has no explanation, the register and login screens are difficult to navigate between.
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RECOMMENDATION: Add top tabs to easily navigate between screens, clarify 'Register With' and 'Login With' instead of 'Connect With' and provide an explanation for 'Corporate Match.'
Bottom Tab Bar
ISSUE: By iOS standards, 34 points from the bottom of the screen is reserved for the home indicator. Having the action bar here can cause misclicks and covers the bottom text.
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RECOMMENDATION: Move the action bar above the home indicator area for better usability.
Map Icons
ISSUE: The map icons for charities blends in with Google Map icons.
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RECOMMENDATION: Make the Feeling Blessed charity icons drastically different so there is no confusion. A different shape or color would help with this issue.
Payments
ISSUE: 'Payments' as a tab name could imply past donations or payments made, and the user is not prompted to fill out this information once they are registered with the app.
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RECOMMENDATION: Change 'Payments' to either 'Payment' singular, or 'Payment Info' and make sure the user fills out this information when setting up their account.
4. BIG IDEAS AND ADDITIONS
In addition to the key issues above, we came up with bigger redesigns to improve the donation process and overall usability by using heuristic evaluations and competitive analysis.
CHARITY CARDS
LEFT: Currently, there is no way to read about the organization AND donate at the same time. The user has to take an extra long path in order to accomplish both of these things.
RIGHT: By adding the "about" text on the card itself AND on the donation page, the user can read about the organization and immediately decide to donate.
CREATE A GUIDED EXPERIENCE
To create a guided experience, a user would first select a cause they are passionate about or interested in. Then, the app can guide the user towards organizations that best match that cause.
A user can still search for a specific charity, but implementing this idea can help prevent them from feeling overwhelmed when they see all options at once.
5. PRIORITIZATION FEATURE MATRIX & ENGAGEMENT LOOPS
Considering the business constraints of this project, we figured that plotting engagement loop ideas based on their value and effort was a smart and simple way to show the Feeling Blessed team exactly which ideas are worth their time and money.
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Quick Wins is the most desired section here because those ideas require low effort but have high value. Ideas in the Time Sink category require more effort than they are worth to Feeling Blessed.
6. STORYBOARDS
When presenting our ideas to the Feeling Blessed team, it was important illustrate how the engagement loop would work for their users.
I created 3 storyboards for the ideas located in the Quick Wins section of the matrix because they provide high value and require relatively low effort:
- New User Assessment (D)
- Show Donation Impact (B)
- Anniversary Notifications (H)
CONCLUSION
The Feeling Blessed team was right to think that engagement loops would help turn their one-time users into return users, but they needed our help to come up with ideas that would accomplish this goal. In addition, we helped simplify the donation process by making key elements, like the "about" text or register/login screens, visible and clear to the user.
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CURRENT SITUATION:
2,000 return users (20% of their 10,000 users) X $25 donation each (assumption) = $50,000
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POTENTIAL SITUATION:
All 10,000 users X $100 (lifetime value each) = $1,000,000
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By getting users to return to the app using engagement loops, Feeling Blessed will be responsible for $1,000,000 in donations to Muslim charities!