UX-Marketing Synergy: Donation Dashboard
About This Project
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Team project: 1 Developer & 1 UX Designer (Me)
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Duration: 2 months
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My role: Strategy, UX/UI Design
What’s The Giving Circle
The Giving Circle (TGC) transforms corporate giving from a cumbersome task into a joyful experience, allowing companies to easily set up donation activities and encourage employee participation.
The most rewarding part of this project…
was leveraging both my UX and marketing expertise. With 7 years of marketing experience, I brought a strategic perspective to identify opportunities for the product's long-term growth while addressing key donor pain points. I designed an intuitive donation process, ensuring the platform inspired employees to join and fostered a sense of community.
By combining these approaches, we built a tool that enhances companies’ reputations and drives meaningful, collective impact.
Pain Points
Let’s be Honest– Making Donations isn’t Everyone’s Favorite Activity
UX Perspective
Complex Donation Process Discourages Initiatives and Participation
The abundance of charities can overwhelm companies, making it difficult to find a good match. Donors often lack motivation due to uncertainty about how their contributions are used and the impact they make.
Marketing Perspective
Corporate Social Responsibility: A Necessity for Business Success
While companies are increasingly expected to be socially responsible, many struggle to launch their own initiatives. This presents a challenge for them looking to enhance their brand, boost employee engagement, and build customer loyalty.
Design Goals
Beyond the Donation: Building a Sustainable Culture of Giving
UX Perspective
Simplifying the donation process could improve user participation. But solving this problem alone was not enough for the product’s long-term success.
Marketing Perspective
“So… is there a more sustainable approach to attract companies and their employees for ongoing and proactive giving?”
Strategy
Understanding Constraints and Finding Opportunities
The founder aimed for a rapid MVP launch. As I studied his early research, I looked for ways where I could improve on the existing ideas and identify opportunities of critical functionality.
The “How Might We” statements helped me stay focused on three areas we wanted to tackle for the MVP:
Donation Activities
How can we make donating easy and fun?
We wanted to offer flexible donation options, inspire employees to give, and use compelling messaging to get people excited.
Seeing Impact
How can we show employees their progress and how they're helping?
We wanted to use charts and graphs to make them feel like they're part of something bigger. We also wanted to show them a personal history of their donations with pictures and stories.
Communication Management
Although companies can’t set up and update the program on their own in the MVP, how can we provide easy access to outgoing communication details?
Edge Case
What if urgent business priorities arise and the emails are no longer suitable? How can we empower admins to quickly respond to the changes?
Solutions
Designing an Ongoing and Proactive Donation Experience
Donation Flow: Less is More
Each month, we offer 3 charities or causes to choose from. I simplified the steps, which allows donors to complete within just a few clicks.
Donation Section is Hard to Miss
At first, I used a popup to flexibly present different monthly activities. However, it took an extra click to start from the home screen, and it was hard to find where to donate.
To attract ongoing and proactive giving, I moved the donation section to the most prominent spot on the home screen to maximize engagement. Now, donors can donate right away after logging in.
Keeping Donors Engaged and Informed
Activity Tracking: I wanted to make it easy for donors to track the current and the previous activities. A toggle at the top of the home page lets them switch between this month's real-time progress and last month's accomplishment.
Data Visualization: While the MVP's data was limited, I made sure its presentation was comprehensive and highlighted the company’s collective efforts.
Feel Good to Use
Brand Voice: Companies can use messaging throughout the product that reflects their core values and beliefs.
Achievement: I wanted to ensure donors knew their contributions were valued. I relocated the section of donors’ over-time contributions to the side bar, making it more visible for donors to see the good they’ve done.
Communication Management
We tailored communication emails for different groups of employees: everyone, donors, and non-donors. Admins can identify these emails using colors and filters on the calendar.
If companies need to pause all communication emails for a specific reason, the “Stop All Comms” button will do the job right away without manual updates by us.
Conclusion
Feedback & Reflection
Project Impact
While the project was discontinued, I found great satisfaction in designing a meaningful product for the community. This experience allowed me to leverage both my UX and marketing skills to create a valuable solution.
The founder's demo of the MVP to potential investors was a success, with 100% positive feedback on the design:
“My customers immediately noted the look and feel of the app and how it was integrated into TGC's brand.”
Grant Dollar, Founder of The Giving Circle
“The feedback I received from customers included the ease of use, low barrier to making donations, and great design throughout the app.”
Grant Dollar, Founder of The Giving Circle
Design Process
During the design process, I explored various creative ideas, but constant communication with the founder kept us focused on our design principles and the timely development of the MVP.
Areas for Improvement
There are areas I wish we could explore further:
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Onboarding: Simplify the onboarding process to help new users understand the platform and start donating.
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Personalized Insights: Provide personalized donation impact insights to motivate and excite users. For example, "You're a top 5% donor," "You've contributed $5,000 to the community," or "Donate today to maintain your 6-month streak."
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Admin Tools: Explore ways to help admins leverage donation data, such as enabling data export or report sharing/sending.