Timeframe
7 weeks
Team
Hsiang-Yi Lung
Tools
Interview
User journey mapping
Click through rate analysis
Wireframing
Prototyping
Encourage Charitable Donation Through Understanding Donation Behaviour
How can we motivate people to donate? This case study answers the question by breaking down people's behavior and thoughts, and transfers the analysis into an app solution that encourages donation. The major design topic and of this case study includes:
Prioritize the appeals on individual
Segmentize the content
Put emphasis on the user donation impact
PROBLEM
People lack motivation to donate
According to a study done by Indiana University, the share of Americans donating to charity fell from two-thirds in 2000 to half in 2018. As a Gen Z, I've noticed that almost none of my peers do charitable donation, including me. For millennials or above, people still seldom do charitable donation even if they are financially capable. It seems that donation does come across our minds, and we all appreciate the act of donation. However, we always lack motivation to donate. This sparks the questions - why is there this discrepancy in our minds and acts? Is there any ways we can motivate people to donate?
SOLUTION
3 Major design solutions
Potential design opportunity: People tend to donate to single individuals than a group of victim
WHITE PAPER RESEARCH
“If I look at the mass, I will never act. If I look at the one, I will.”
Several studies have found evidences that people are more likely to give aids to a single individual with a name and a face than to an anonymous victim or a group of victims. This suggests that with the good use of the "identifiable victim effect", the willingness for people to donate could potentially increase significantly.
USER RESEARCH
68% of users want to donate, but seldom or never donate
16 people were asked to fill in a questionnaire regarding their donating habit. According to the questionnaire results, respondents can be categorized into 4 types. The 4 types are defined through their willingness to make donation, and their donation frequency. Based on the diagram of distribution below, roughly 68% of the respondents belong to Type 3 - Want to Donate; Seldom/Never Donate.
Type 3 Users Consist of One-Time Donors and Recurring Donors
Given that more than half of the respondents belong to Type 3, I further interviewed 5 of the Type 3 users to uncover more insights. Type 3 users can be categorized into two personas - the recurring donor and the one-time donor.
User journey map →
Interviewees failed to find a charity/recipient worth donating due to a lack of understanding and emotional connection to the cause
INSIGHTS
TOUCHPOINT MAPPING | EXPLORE DESIGN DIRECTIONS
New Directions to Encourage Donation
I explored the possible design solutions based on the below touchpoint mapping. Huge variety of digital and physical mediums are used throughout the journey, resulting in the inefficiency and the higher friction of donation. 2 directions are considered: app solution, and a website add-ons solution. However, I realized that the website add-ons solution only targets the one-time donors, overlooking the importance of recurring donors ( According to research on nonprofit giving, the average recurring donor will give 42% more in one year than those who give one-time gifts). The app can be cater for both one-time donors and recurring donors, hence I stuck to an app for my solution platform.
CHALLENGE 1 | PRIORITIZING APPEALS ON INDIVIDUAL
Many users use app to search for their target causes, rather than browsing options.
The user research shows that donors feel more emotionally connected to individuals. In light of this, I highlight the story of individual at the entry of the app in the first iteration. However, the first iteration encounters push back from the user interview as indicated in the figure below. The second iteration is designed to cater for the multiple usages of the app. While users can easily search for their targeted cause, they can also browse through options. Individual stories are put inside the description of each cause to eliminate the forcefulness.
CHALLENGE 2 | SEGMENTIZE THE LONG CONTENT
Implement card format to create digestible bite-sized content
User research shows that the vision of the charity greatly affects a user’s willingness to donate. Users also highly value the transparency of the charity. All of these actually already take place in most charity websites. However most users still find it hard to fully understand the core value of the charity. The problem lies in the difficulty for users to digest long-formed text content.
Click-through rate analysis: what to include in the donor impact summary?
CHALLENGE 3 | EMPHASIZE USER IMPACT
Tools: Gmail, Gmail Button, Hubspot email tracking
I propose to include donor impact summaries in the user personal dashboard. To figure out what to include in the donor impact summary, I reached out to the users I interviewed in the initial user research for the click-through rate research.
Findings: Discrepancy Between User Research Insights and Click-Through Rate Analysis
An interesting finding from the analysis the discrepancy between the insights in initial user research and the click through rate analysis outcome. In the initial user research, it is reported that users will be motivated to donate if they can see the fellow users’ donation behaviour. However, in the click through rate analysis, users seem to be not interested in the information regarding other users (ex. record amount collected in a single giving day, number of donors who contributed to the same issue).
