Embedded Files
App and responsive website for social good
App and responsive website for social good
'Local Access' is a donation app and responsive website that makes giving back easier than ever before! This app and website are designed to make it easy for you to donate essential items, such as food and clothing to people in need within your community by showing you exactly what is needed most in your area. With a user-friendly interface and a transparent donation process, you can feel good about giving back knowing that your donations are making a real impact in your community. Plus, both the app and website allow you to see exactly where your donations are going and how your donations are being put to use, so you can see the direct impact you're making.
Click here if you would like to see the prototype and use it yourself!
Overview
Overview
Background:
Local Access is a New York based organization i created to focus on giving in-need residents access to clothing and food when needed, also providing pick-up services so that people with donatable items can give items to those who need it most. The organization needed an app that would allow target users (young adults to older adults) to easily organize donation pick-ups and information for people to access donated items.
Role:
Product Designer
Visual, Interaction and Motion Designer
User Research
Prototyping
The Problem:
With 30-40% of food being wasted and 85% of clothes in the US ending up in landfill, the team at Local access wants to make it easier for people that could benefit from what gets thrown away to access it. They found that the way to give people better access is by making it easier for people to donate items. They also found that lack of process information meant people don’t really understand the impact of their donations
Timeline:
February 2022 - March 2022
Goal:
Design an app that will allow people to easily donate, see how their donations are put to use and therefore make it easier for people in need to access those donations
Research
Research
User Research:
For this project, i conducted interviews, in person and online. I also conducted Usability studies and created empathy maps.
As someone who didn’t really understand the whole process of donating and receiving donations it was definitely an eye opening experience. I didn’t fully understand how many people needed simple necessities and being sheltered from this reality gave me many biases that i did my best to overcome. I wanted to use this research process as an opportunity to really learn and figure out how i can help and how these designs could help.
Personas
Personas
Dr. Patricia
Dr Patricia is a busy doctor with a full family who needs an easy way to cut down on household wastage and teach her kids about being charitable because she wants to help people in need.
Steven
Steven is a recently unemployed father who needs a way to quickly find places that offer donations because he needs help to provide for himself and his child
Low-Fidelity Designs
Low-Fidelity Designs
Paper
Paper
Ideation Exercise
I performed a quick ideation exercise called crazy 8s to come up with quick rough ideas on how i can approach the design problems and opportunities addressed in the aforementioned audit.
My focus for this exercise was simple and straightforward information delivery
Rough design
After the ideation exercise i further explored a simple user flow. When drawing these wireframes, i wanted to answer the user pain points with design. I wanted an intuitive design that was deliberate about the features and what it provided making it easy to use and navigate through
With each iteration, i starred what i wanted to keep and the final design i chose.
Design
Variations
With the screen variations i wanted a consistent design through the sizes but one that wouldn’t take away from offered features due to lack of size.
Digital
Digital
After drafting the paper wireframes, i created simple digital designs for the Local Access app. These designs focused on giving users easy access to information.
my goals were:
to provide recent images and information of upcoming drives and opportunities allowing easy access of information
Easy and straightforward navigation for the user to find what they need
Desktop Variation
I wanted to provide a consistent seamless feel from mobile to desktop so i created some desktop wireframes to match up with the mobile version.
Low-Fidelity Prototype
Low-Fidelity Prototype
After designing mockups for the rest of the pages in the app, i then entered my favorite part of UX Design, Interaction! I created a low-fidelity prototype, showing the flow of a user donating items and deciding whether to drop them off themselves or use Local Access’ pickup services
CLICK HERE to try out the low-fidelity prototype for yourself!
Usability Study 1
Usability Study 1
Parameters:
Study Type:
Unmoderated usability study
Participants:
6 Participants - 3 woman, 3 men
Location:
Remote: New York, United States
Length
15-20 minutes
Findings
1
Participants wanted a better way to select their date and time of pick-up.
Felt it was too small.
2
I hadn’t sized the buttons correctly and participants noticed this. They said the different sizes threw them off a bit
3
Participants didn’t connect with the help button at the bottom. They said it felt like a second thought so i have to incorporate it better
High-Fidelity Designs
High-Fidelity Designs
Iterating on Designs
Iterating on Designs
When redesigning this page after the usability study i took into account the feedback received and used it to create high-fidelity mockups that display more design choices.
I opted to go for a simple design choices, not a whole lot of imagery or colours, so that users with older less expensive devices won't have problems trying to load pages and to keep storage size down.
Before Usability Study 1
Home Page
After Usability Study 1
Home Page
Based on the insights i gathered from the 1st usability study, i applied design changes such as the movement of the help button so it would feel more like a deliberate design choice rather than a second though as stated by some users
Before Usability Study 1
Donation Pick-Up
After Usability Study 1
Donation Pick-Up
After Usability Study 2
Donation Pick-Up
After using the insights from the 1st usability study, i made changes and conducted another study. One of the insights discovered was that users would like a better select date and time process. So i used that insight to incorporate a drop down selection feature for a cleaner look and feel.
Prototype
Prototype
After incorporating the design changes from the insights gathered in the first usability study, i created a high-fidelity prototype following the same user flow so that i could then test it again with users
CLICK HERE if you would like to try out the prototype for yourself!
Sitemap
Sitemap
After completing the designs for the apps various pages, i began work on designs for a responsive website to accompany the Local Access mobile app. I used created this Sitemap to guide the structure of each screens design to ensure a consistent user experience across devices
Desktop High-Fidelity Prototype
Desktop High-Fidelity Prototype
After creating the designs for various screen sizes, i created low and high fidelity prototypes so that i could test the user flow alongside the app version of the Product to ensure that i provided a consistent user experience.
Screen Variation Mockups
Desktop Website
Smart Watch Browsing
Tablet Website
Accessibility & Inclusion Considerations
Accessibility & Inclusion Considerations
When designing the app, i wanted to ensure that users of various abilities and backgrounds abilities would be able to use it without issue.
With the colour scheme, i took into account people with different types of colour blindness. So i chose colours that aren't difficult to differentiate.
I designed the site in a way that allows for easy navigation so that users that don’t have a range of mobility or require navigation through keyboard alone or other devices can move through the website easily. I also have plans to make it possible to operate the app and search functions through voice.
I included clear and descriptive labels for interactive elements so that they can be read using screen readers
Conclusion & Takeaways
Conclusion & Takeaways
Lessons Learned
Lessons Learned
While taking part in this project, i learned that no problem is to big to make an impact on. While there’s a lot more to do in really tackling the problem of people not having access to necessities, with the right steps of really putting people first, you can move one step closer to doing a lot of good.
Impact
Impact
Users of the app and site shared that they felt their experience using Local Access was positive. the impression they got while using the products was that they felt that Local Access put a lot of thought into how they can really help.
Quote from user feedback
Quote from user feedback
“i like that we can see what happens with our donations. Rather than donating and not thinking about it, it was nice that we can see the direct impact we can have with people in need”
Thanks for checking out my case study for Local Access!
To check out other projects, click the button below!
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse