Dough-Nation
Read Time: 4-Min 〰️️️ Timeframe: 8 Weeks 〰️️️ My Role: UX Designer
Tools: User interviews, data analysis, usability tests, Sketch, Miro
Overview
This project involved creating an app based on a set of data I thought could be leveraged to inform people, to manage a task, and to make a user pain easier. Harnessing previous data and conducting additional UX research allowed me to gather insights into how an existing human problem can be solved with a digital tool.
I chose to focus on a set of data looking into the donation patterns of Americans over the last twenty years. I found American’s are quite generous, and each year Americans on average donate more and more, however, I also discovered there are quite a few pain points within the donating process. For this project, I tried to understand the big problems first, I iterated quickly, and I gained invaluable insight into an altruistic community of people.
Step 1: Empathize
Exploratory Research
I began this project by conducting generative research. In-depth interviews with persons’ who had either donated in the last year (2019) or were currently donating. My objective for each interview was to understand their motivations for donating and discover any pain points they experienced within the donation process.
In total, I facilitated 5 exploratory interviews. To my surprise, each interviewee had the same complaint. Solicitation and donating seem to go hand-in-hand. Users associate monetary donations with creating an account or giving out personal information, which is then followed up with unwarranted solicitation — spam phone calls, emails, texts, mail, etc..
Step 2: Define
Value Proposition
Defining a value proposition — the reason my target users would want to use my product — ensured that my design delivers what users need by maximizing the app’s benefits, minimizing its costs, and making its value obvious. Users have choices, so a good value proposition would state my product’s value in both absolute and relative terms compared to the alternatives.
Doing nothing is always an alternative for a user and sometimes a formidable one, so I made sure my concept was much better than doing nothing. My value proposition helped me identify:
Defining Core Users
My user interviews and value proposition provided the basis to create two user personas who would represent my target core users. My personas bridged the gap between research and planning. This step also stimulated my next steps in creating user scenarios and the UI flow to ensure I was keeping my core user at the forefront of each iteration.
Ideate
User Scenario
User scenarios describe a user trying to achieve a goal in a specific context. To achieve a user-centered design, I needed to understand what my users are going to do with my product, from their point of view.
Concisely: User Scenario = user + context + task
UI Flow
Building a UI Flow allowed me to figure out feature prioritization before sketching a single wireframe. A UI flow illustrates what the user will see on the screen (on top), and what action the user will do with the screen (on bottom). This helped me eliminate extraneous features and focus on the minimal viable product to stay within the scope of my project timeline.
Low-Fidelity Wireframes
I conducted 7 usability tests with participants on the low-fidelity wireframe. I received the feedback that the flow was understandable, but I was missing something—an escape hatch. This prompted me to not only add a noticeable escape hatch (go back button/arrow) but also include breadcrumbs so the user stays oriented.
Mid-Fidelity Wireframes
Testing revealed the second iteration was intuitive and easy to use. Key feedback I received from the second round of usability testing was the landing page ‘Search’ button was not necessary, and my escape hatch (‘go back’ button) was difficult to find and not where users expected it to be. This prompted me to get rid of the ‘search’ button and to implement arrows as a ‘go-back’ instead and see how they held up in testing.
Key Takeaways:
Users avidly want to avoid clunky interactions; My app must allow the users to recover from their mistakes and match what they’ve experienced in similar, user-friendly apps.
The app must be robust enough to keep up with tech-savvy users and customers who are used to instantaneous interactions.
Without the UI flow and multiple usability tests, wireframing would have been difficult and time-consuming because design variations are infinite.
Overall, my design does deliver benefits. DoughNation reduces costs and its value is obvious with the ability to checkout anonymously, diminishing the unavoidable relationship between donating and solicitation.
Reflections and next steps…
In future iterations, I would increase the simplicity and optimization (what can be removed or hidden by default, is there any unnecessary effort for the user?). I would design the UI flow for the user who does wish to create an account, and I would continue to facilitate small usability tests with each iteration. Additionally, I would create even more UI flows and test my smaller components as I iterate on my designs rather than testing the whole product each go.