Wealthsimple design challenge (highest score)

A donation app for gen Z and millennial Canadians to donate money to local charities of their choice.

01. Overview

Context

In 3 business days, I finished the design challenge and scored the highest amonst the applicants. Here is the initial prompt:

What I did

  1. UX strategy

  2. Research (interviews)

  3. Branding

  4. UI

02. Discover – what am I solving? who am I solving for?

Understanding the problem space

  1. Why do people donate?

  2. What are the donation behaviours of millennials and Gen Z?

After secondary research, here are the answers to my questions above:

  1. Motivations (source)

    • donors fall into 3 categories: purely altruistic (value social good), “impurely” altruistic (I value knowing I did good), not altruistic (show off)

    • Value narratives more than figures

    • Influenced by others (friends, the amount others donate, celebrity support)

    • It’s contagious (more likely to give seeing others give)

  2. Behaviours (source)

  • Want to see impact reports, usually look through non-profits’ social media to find it

  • Want monthly updates containing stories about people they helped and about how their money was used

  • Attrition reasons: “feel like my gift didn’t matter”, “can’t afford”, “feel unconnected to the mission”

Explorative interviews with 4 target users (2 millennial + 2 Gen Z)

Questions

  1. What do you donate to?

  2. How do you donate?

  3. What trigger you to donate?

  4. How much do you donate?

  5. What would make you want to donate?

  6. How do you decide frequency and amount of your donation?

  7. Do you care about impact? Do you keep track?

Insights

  1. Trigger: social movements saw on social media, friends’ recommendation

  2. How: web, crowdfunding apps

  3. How much: mix of arbitrary, convenient amount and internal calculation

  4. Deciding factors: location proximity, trustworthiness, friends’ donations, cause

  5. How often: a mix of “one off because poor” and “monthly because it was default”

  6. Impact: care about impact, but difficult to track besides financial report

Target user snapshot

  • Age 18 – 41

  • Have bank accounts 

  • Comfortable with technology

  • Some are working 

    • has more income

    • need to budget donation amount

    • too busy to track impact and connect with charities

  • Some are students or unemployed

    • has less income

    • may not be money-concious: donate little or too much

  • Emotions: curious, concerned, proud, hopeful

Common pain points

Existing product analysis

3. Define – which problems can I solve?

HMW ideation

HMW make donating to charities simple, trustworthy, and personal?

Using MoSCoW to prioritize

Must have

  • Recommend monthly donation amount based on user income

    • This is ethical, putting user’s financial capabilities first

    • Users can reject and donate one-time

  • Make users aware of their impact

    • Users with altruistic motivations will feel proud, reducing attrition

  • Only include vetted charities

    • So users don’t need to do research, they trust the app

Should have

  • CTA suggests an amount to donate

    • How is this amount decided?

      • If users already hit their monthly recommended amount, it’s lower

      • If user has lower income, it’s lower

      • User’s average donation

    • Default bias, shows a default amount so user can make less decisions

    • May backfire – too high can decrease conversion rate, too low may decrease donation amount

  • Charity update feed: charities post high quality stories that show user impact

    • Can be low frequency but high quality, important to not spam

    • Connect users with charity and visualize their donation impact through stories than data

  • See friends’ donation

    • Social proof. Users value and trust friends’ decisions.

    • Users can choose public vs. private when making donations

Won’t have

  • Tiered goals

    • Not implemented by most charities

  • Round up to invest

    • Conflict with existing WealthSimple app

    • Doesn’t fit success criteria

User flow

The onboarding flow is critical to how the app works. So I explored it even though it’s not in scope.

App structure

Branding

4. Design – solving HMW

Low-fi Exploration

Mid-fi Exploration

Final design assumptions

  • Users linked bank accounts and set up monthly donation

  • Users linked their social media and agreed to see their friends’ donations

  • Users gave permission for location

  • We have personal metrics for user impact

  • Charities, as secondary users, can host fundraisers on the app

  • Charities posts high quality stories weekly to monthly

Design walkthrough (Figma prototype)

Impact statement

Personal and changes every 30 sec to different charities user donated to in the past
Much like a carousel, once user interacts with it, it stops automatic advancing
Swipe for different statements
As the first thing user sees, it primes user to be in an altruistic mindset.

Donation overview

Upcoming

  • Donation amount is the most important info, so I used color to grab attention

  • Called out donation streaks and user achievement to make users feel proud

Past

  • Gives insight into what causes users donated the most to

Impact stories

Research showed that users want monthly updates containing stories about people they helped and about how their money was used.

Comparing to tracking down different charities on their social media, Kindness app has all the high quality impact stories in one place.

It aims to connect users and charities.

Recommended

A mix of charity and fundraisers recommended based on

  • Friends’ donation

  • What others around user donate to

  • Social media trends

  • Causes users have interest in

It aims to simplify finding charities and fundraisers

Almost funded

It’s motivating for users to be the “deciding factor” in whether fundraisers get completed. 

Charities are recommended to write goals focusing on individuals due to singularity effect. 

It’s also a good opportunity to ask more than $10 due to goal gradient effect. 

It aims to increase frequency and amount of donation, also makes users feel good knowing they helped make something happen.

5. Next steps

Let’s talk feasibility and more user research

Is this feasible? Is it worth it? (talk to engineering and PM)

  • Is onboarding flow realistic? 

  • Personal impact statements 

  • Sliding scale of amount suggested on donation CTA

  • Having charities as users 

  • Users can host fundraisers for charities on this app

I want to know more about (talk to UXR, data analysts)

  • What do people want to see on the past donations overview?

  • Do people read impact stories?