Design System

Product Design

STAR Platform

Empowering Youth Volunteers: Connecting Passion to Purpose for doing good in the world




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STAR Platform

Empowering youth volunteers: Connecting passion to purpose

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Services

Client

Skills

Non profit

UX Research and Design

Design System design, User Research, User Testing, Prototyping

Overview

The Star mobile application aimed for creating a platform that connects passionate young volunteers with meaningful community volunteering events, empowering them to channel their energy into positive social impact. The main challenge was seamlessly integrating multiple complex functionalities into a prototype that remained intuitive, requiring extensive user research and rigorous testing to ensure usability and alignment with the mission.

Context

The primary goal was to empower youth volunteers by providing a seamless platform to discover, register for, and engage with events aligned with their passions, addressing a gap in accessible volunteering tools.

Goal

Key constraints included a tight 8-week timeline for prototyping the first version, a limited budget relying on free tools like Figma and Dovetail, and the challenge of balancing feature richness with a simple user interface for first-time users.

Constraints

The Process

Research

Secondary
Research

Conducted secondary research to understand the volunteering landscape and identify trends among youth volunteers, ensuring our app would meet real-world needs.
By analyzing reports, articles, and statistics from various sources, following key statistics were discovered:

Key Insights

01

Top causes included hunger and homelessness. Young females are more likely to volunteer than young males.

02

Number of people volunteering atleast once a month rose in 2020-21 (COVID19 Pandemic)

Primary
Research

Survey

Conducted user interviews and a survey to find pain points and gain insights.

Distributed an online survey to 40 youth aged 16-24 who had volunteered in the past year. The survey asked about their volunteering habits, preferences for digital tools, event search issues, etc. with total 27 responses.
The survey was distributed via Google Forms and analyzed using Dovetail to identify key themes.

Key highlights from survey results

01

Volunteering Frequency

A significant portion (44.4%) of participants volunteer 1-3 times per year, indicating a need for a platform that encourages more frequent engagement through relevant, accessible opportunities.

02

Digital Adoption

59.3% have used a digital platform for volunteering, and 51.9% are very comfortable using mobile apps, supporting the decision to develop a mobile-first solution.

03

Current Challenges

The major challenges are lack of local events (33.3%) and no personalization (29.6%),tailored for youth.
Conducted semi-structured interviews with 5 participants via Zoom, including 4 youth volunteers and 1 NGO event organizer, to identify critical pain points.

01

Desire for impact and community connection

Many participants volunteer to make a tangible impact on causes they care about and to connect with like-minded peers, but they often feel disconnected after events.

02

Ease of accessibility

Finding volunteering opportunities that align with their interests and are local, tiresome registration processes, unaware of local NGOslack of event reminders, etc. discourage participation, especially for youth with busy schedules.

Interviews

Key Insights

"It’s hard to find events near me —I have to dig through websites, and half the time the events are too far away.” -P3

"The process of registration is so long and boring..and I forgot about it because there was no reminder—I ended up not going.”

User Persona

Storyboarding to better understand and visualise the problem

Design Process

Brainstorming

The problem was then brainstormed to ideate solutions considering multiple perspectives and possibilities.

Features and
Architechture

The process began with feature ideation to generate potential functionalities, followed by feature prioritization to align them with user needs and product goals.

Feature Ideation

Next, task card sorting was conducted to analyze how users naturally categorize and organize information, ensuring an intuitive and user-centered information architecture. This method provided insights into mental models, guiding the content structure for seamless navigation and improved usability.

Feature priortization

Task Card Sorting

App architechture (a part)

Finally leading to the creation of the app sitemap/architecture map.

Visual Design

A moodboard was then created to inspire the visual aesthetics.

Wireframing

First paper sketching was done to explore initial concepts quickly, followed by low-fidelity wireframes to define layout and functionality.

These evolved into high-fidelity wireframes, that refined interactions and usability.

Design System

Design
System

Built the complete design system for consistency, scalibility, cohesive user experience.

User onboarding, Sign up flow, cause selection

Event discovery by cause/NGO, Registration

Home screen, Cause-based event filtering, Notifications, Side nav bar

Prototyping

Prototyping various flows and interactions

Profile information, volunteer history, community

Event reminder, upcoming events notifications

Deatils page for causes, current event listing

The goal was to evaluate the usability of the app, feedback and recommendations for further iterations

Goal

Recruited 6 participants, 3 using UserTesting.com, aged 16-25, to complete a series of 6 tasks.

Participants

Testing design

01

A pre-test questionnaire was shared with participants to understand their familiarity with volunteering apps and their expectations before the session.

02

A warm-up question was asked to gather the user’s first impressions of the Star app interface.

03

Six task scenarios were presented to participants to evaluate the usability of key features in the app.

01

A warm-up question was asked to gather the user’s first impressions of the Star app interface.

04

A post-test questionnaire was used to gather qualitative insights, which were then analyzed and visualized in an affinity diagram.

01

A warm-up question was asked to gather the user’s first impressions of the Star app interface.

05

Participants were encouraged to think out loud while completing tasks to capture real-time feedback.

01

A warm-up question was asked to gather the user’s first impressions of the Star app interface.

06

A pilot test was conducted to refine the testing process and identify gaps in the approach.

01

A warm-up question was asked to gather the user’s first impressions of the Star app interface.

Testing environment

Testing was conducted remotely via Zoom, with participants’ audio, video, and screen-sharing recorded for analysis.

Testing and Evaluation

Task List

Severity Rating Key

Task 0

Task 1

Recommendations

Participant Quote

Task Completion Rate

Add a clearer instruction during onboarding (e.g., “Select at least 3 causes to continue”).

01

Remove or make the “Skip” button less prominent to prevent accidental skips, or add an option to revisit onboarding.

02

Display cause tags more prominently on event cards on the Home screen (e.g., color-coded tags).

03

“I wasn’t sure if I had to pick exactly three causes or more. The button to proceed wasn’t highlighted until I picked three, which confused me.” -P3

67% :4/6 participants completed the task without assistance

Task 2

Recommendations

Task Completion Rate

Participant Quote

“I wasn’t sure if I had registered successfully or need to do anything -P3

Redesign the confirmation message to clearly state “You’re registered!” with a celebratory visual (e.g., confetti animation).

01

100% :6/6 participants completed the task without assistance

Task 3

Recommendations

Task Completion Rate

Participant Quote

“It wish it would be easier to spot Education as there are many causes. - P3

Display cause cards e.g., color-coded, for easy differentiation and faster search.

01

Make the Cause icon more intuitive and symbolic.

02

83% :5/6 participants completed the task without assistance

Task 4

Recommendations

Task Completion Rate

Participant Quote

And I wasn’t sure what I was sending without a preview.” -P3

Add a preview of the shared content (e.g., event title and date) before sending.

01

Add multiple ways to share an Event.

02

100% :6/6 participants completed the task without assistance

Task 5

Recommendations

Participant Quote

Task Completion Rate

“I see my events, but I can’t tell which ones I’ve already attended. It’s all jumbled together.” – P1

Separate past and upcoming events into clearer distinct sections in the volunteer history.

01

Consider adding a visual element, like a progress bar or graph, to summarize volunteer activity.

02

100% :5/6 participants completed the task without assistance

Task 6

Task Completion Rate

Participant Quote

“I see my events, but I can’t tell which ones I’ve already attended. It’s all jumbled together.” – P1

Recommendations

Make the “Edit Profile” option a prominent button on the Profile tab (e.g., a filled “Edit” button).

01

Add a warm confirmation message after saving changes (e.g., “Profile updated successfully with emoji!”).

02

100% :6/6 participants completed the task without assistance

SUS Analysis

Survey Questions

Legend

Participant Responses

SUS Analysis Insights

An average SUS score of 87.1 indicates high usability.

While the task analysis revealed some areas for improvement, these issues were minor in the context of the prototype’s overall usability.

This high score suggests that the app prototype has a strong foundation for further development.

Learnings

Simplicity enhances adoption: A clean, intuitive interface, as validated by high SUS score, is crucial for encouraging user adoption.

02

Iterative Testing Refines Usability: Test, test, test! Iterate, iterate, iterate!

01

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