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Art Sphere Inc Volunteer App
A streamlined app for remote, asynchronous volunteering
At a glance
Platforms: iOS and Android
Timeline: One year, part-time
Project status: In development
Tools: Figma & MS Project
My role: Volunteer UX Lead
Team: Margot Field, UI Designer
Dan Elliget, UX Designer
Tristin Guanzon, UX Designer
Using extensive pre-design interviews, my team created an app for a non-profit to meet the needs of both volunteers and the organization. Users can volunteer from home by entering info on an arts-related topic. The organization gets a larger pool of volunteers without the hassle of managing them in-person.
Click thru for the main app flow– choosing an instrument, answering a question and adding volunteer time.
Background
Providing arts education to the community through free teaching materials
Art Sphere Inc (ASI) is a local non-profit organization that supports arts education in under-served Philadelphia communities. One key resource ASI provides is a large library of arts lesson plans– available online for free and created by ASI volunteers. Art Sphere requested an app that would allow students to volunteer by researching basic information on an arts-related topic.
Needs assessment
Balancing the organization's needs with users' needs
After semi-structured interviews with ASI leadership and the target audience (students with required volunteer hours), user needs were identified:
Meeting the unique needs of student volunteers
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Users need to log their volunteer activity (date, duration and description) so they can submit a record to their schools.
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Middle school students prefer to volunteer with friends, while high school students prefer to volunteer solo.
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Users expected to volunteer either ~daily for 15-20 minutes or ~weekly for 1-1.5 hours.
Solving organizational dilemmas for ASI leadership
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Students often lack the reliable transportation and consistent schedules needed for in-person volunteering, which causes logistical headaches for ASI’s leadership.
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Trained teachers and graphic designers spend their volunteer time researching basic information on lesson topics. ASI wants to use their time/skills more efficiently.
The UX team created affinity maps and mock user flows to help solidify our design plan.
Click to expand
Click to expand
Project goal
Want to support arts eductions? Click, click, done.
Design an app that provides a positive, convenient volunteer experience, while also providing control to ASI’s leadership and real value to Art Sphere’s mission.
Design principles
Volunteering made easy
Users wanted a straightforward app to complete their required volunteer hours as easily as possible, so we decided to put the main functions front and center with a three-button bottom navigation.
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Easy to track progress
​Most users are volunteering as part of a school assignment, so our designs were inspired more by productivity and project management apps than other volunteering apps.
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Time-saving for ASI leadership
Various administrative tasks were automated through the app to help the ASI leadership team focus on more important work.
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User testing
Refining designs based on user feedback
User testers were recruited through Art Sphere's connections with local schools. Testers were students age 13+ with mandatory volunteer hours.
FINDING
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“Set volunteer goal", without other indicators, did not mean a time goal to some testers.
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SOLUTION
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We adjusted the screen to include 1) "time" in the prompt, and 2) an editable number input section with the label “Hours”.
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FINDING
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Some users didn’t realize the demographic section was optional because they filled out the questions as they scrolled down, only seeing the skip button after completing the whole screen.
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SOLUTION
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We moved the skip button to the top of the screen to give users more freedom and privacy.
FINDING
Test users were afraid to navigate away from the screen without some assurance their work would not be erased.
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SOLUTION
We included a permanent ‘Save draft’ button on the research question screen.
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App MVP
"There's an inviting vibe to the app... It's approachable, not overly technical."
–Student tester, male, age 30
Users loved that using the ASI Volunteer app was “easy” and “intuitive”, keeping them on track toward meeting their volunteer goal. Even though the volunteer experience is virtual, volunteers found that the app felt personal.
Art Sphere’s leadership team is excited about the time-saving features that app provides, such as automation of volunteer documentation and out-sourcing lesson plan research.
Going forward
Boosting engagement
Increased engagement on the app will foster a deeper connection with Art Sphere, which could lead to long-term volunteering or ways of supporting the organization. The UX team's next project aims to boost engagement by:
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Coordinating the app's UI with ASI's website and marketing
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Creating microcopy with more personality
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Adding images and animations to make the experiene more memorable
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What I learned
Importance of images in communication
No graphic designers were available to make images for the app's walkthrough, so we used AI to get somewhat generic images that mostly coordinated with the text. However, because the images did not exactly match the walkthrough text, users had difficulty fully understanding the app’s function.
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I found this surprising because I assumed text was the primary driver of understanding, while images were more decorative. In fact, users looked to images as much as text to make meaning.
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Speak up!
I do not always feel comfortable critiquing others’ design work, especially if the feature in question isn't within my realm of expertise. In one case, we went forward with a design I had reservations about, and the design ended up failing in testing. We had to redo a large section of work, which could have been avoided if I had raised my concerns (politely) from the beginning.
Check out some more of my design work:
Sha'arei Orah Congregation Website