"It is not what you get, it is what you make of it."
- My beloved father who always inspired me
OVERVIEW
TIMELINE
2017-18 (6 months)
ROLE
Lead researcher & designer
TEAM
- Sarika Joglekar
(Master's Thesis Project)
- Mike Begley (Thesis guide)
RESEARCH METHODS
Interviewing, contextual inquiry, affinity mapping, user journey, risk assumption matrix, social experiment.
AWARD
Zariya (an Urdu word, meaning a way, an alternative, medium, or something which helps us do what we are trying to do or achieve) is a platform created to enable transparency between donors and nonprofits by means of community engagement via social media. It facilitates communication between the stakeholders by helping:
1. Existing donors: Stay connected to the causes they have donated to.
2. Potential donors: To explore nonprofits they want to donate to.
3. Nonprofits: For managing transparent communication effectively with donors efficiently while saving time and resources.
4. Beneficiaries: Being able to seek benefits of an improved sponsorship system.
Get a quick glance at the entire process through video here
THE PROBLEM
In social development activities throughout the world, communication between the stakeholders plays a very crucial role. However, it appears that without a proper feedback loop, this communication in the sponsorship system does not function as smoothly as it needs to. The lack of transparency often results in sponsors being either dissatisfied or demotivated.
How might we motivate more people to engage and donate to social causes? How can we make the organizations utilize the web in a simple yet effective manner?
"I believe that if we establish an open, transparent feedback loop through an interactive system, then it will build trust in existing donors and motivate them to influence more people to donate, thus sponsorship support will increase by at least a few percent within a year because the lack of transparency and ineffective communication are major deterrents for people who want to help these organizations."
RESEARCH
The literature review focused on finding out what are the existing communication problems and how transparency is currently addressed by different organizations.
90% donors
Who donated believed it was important to understand the impact their contributions made
52% donors
Did not know exactly how their money was spent
I learned is that there is certainly room for increased transparency, not just in terms of money, but also in terms of impact, which by effect can lead to more people being motivated.
CONTEXTUAL INQUIRY & USER INTERVIEWS
In order to understand more about this problem space, I interviewed 12 donors, actively involved in either education sponsorship or donation of some kind, and 3 nonprofits working in children and women rehabilitation, computer literacy, and cycling for a cause.
AFFINITY MAPPING
My focus shifted to the donor experience and I further delved deep into analyzing the interviews conducted. The affinity mapping exercise offered a complete picture in the early research process and gave insights into donor motivations, challenges, and expectations.
My biggest takeaway was that it was not about a specific donor task flow but about the entire donation experience which includes receiving updates, such as stories related to the donation made, that actually created a positive impact.
"I started it in good faith, just hoping they would just do a good job. Giving periodic updates will build my trust. Yes, because you are sharing information that is needed and you are building good relations." - Hemant, Donor interviewed
THESE WERE SOME MAJOR LEARNINGS AT THIS STAGE OF THE RESEARCH
Donor
Transparency
Transparency in communication: was expected by the donors in order to build trust.
Donor
Receiving updates
This was one of the foremost
demands including transaction receipts, photographs, invitations to events, etc.
Donor
Peer influence
Involvement in social causes and finding Information about organizations were highly motivated by peer interaction.
Nonprofit
Unavailability of infrastructure
The organizations have computers, laptops, and mobiles if needed for communication purposes, though they mostly work with old, donated systems.
Nonprofit
Challenges in management and collection of data
A lot of data is required to be gathered by organizations to keep a record of beneficiaries, accounts, sponsors. However, there is no efficient way of managing this data at the moment.
Nonprofit
Ineffective feedback system
The feedback system is not so effective, has a lot of dependency on paperwork, mostly relies on emails, and has flaws in terms of updating and data entry.
CURRENT DONOR JOURNEY
I mapped out the current donor journey to determine what are key concerns and how these can be addressed.
BRAINSTORMING SOLUTIONS
The question I was trying to answer at this stage was ‘What is great about getting feedback?’ and ‘How can donors utilize the capabilities of this new platform?’ At the end of this exploration, I decided to create a social media platform.
WHY A SOCIAL MEDIA PLATFORM?
I noticed through interviews that users primarily came to know of nonprofits and were motivated to donate because of peers.
I wanted to leverage this aspect of influence by focussing on community engagement. This became the focal point around which the entire interaction was eventually built.
One interesting research by Georgetown University 'Digital Persuasion: How Social Media Motivates
Action and Drives Support for Causes.' conducted in this space reinforced this design direction.
WIREFRAMING
Feedback received for wireframe versions
-
Not addressing the problem of improving donor retention.
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The goals of the persona were not met directly.
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The feedback loop was missing
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Showing incremental feedback.
BRANDING AND AESTHETIC EXPLORATION
This was an exercise we conducted in class to interpret each other’s project and collectively vote on images that we feel best represent the concept and desired aesthetic.
BRINGING THE CONCEPT TO LIFE
Zariya is a platform for people interested in social causes and who wish to engage in rich valuable interactions among themselves and also with nonprofits. Check out the prototype here
USER TESTING & FEEDBACK
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Users felt connected with the message of transparency and accountability and knowing how the money is being spent.
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Users preferred that they were explained what Zariya is and what it does earlier on the home page.
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Navigation was intuitive and labels correctly indicated intent.
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A suggestion of campaigns to donate to, on the donor profile help the user to explore campaigns they might be interested in.
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Users appreciated that payment options like PayPal are provided as it helps build trust with the donor.
THE SOCIAL EXPERIMENT
In order to further understand if donor behavior can truly be transformed, I conducted a small experiment. I wanted to find out if receiving regular updates and seeing the impact on someone's life can create a lasting interest. I have used the Hook Model for defining the scope of this experiment.
Watch my TEDx talk about this experiment here
“Being able to see the number of people you’ve impacted go up as I spend more time on the website, is a really cool feature!” - Joanna K, User testing participant
TRIGGER
To test if an event creates an emotional *trigger* to participate.
I hosted an event where people were invited to come and paint postcards for the nonprofit 'Snehalaya' that I was working with.
I created some recall value through posters, flyers, sending emails, and generating curiosity
ACTION
To test people's willingness to involve in the activity and
*take action* (By sharing their experiences with others)
I conducted this event at several locations and encouraged people to share messages with the Snehalaya community, who would receive these postcards.
REWARD
To test if participants get happy by knowing about their impact
*reward* - (By showing them the impact of their contribution)
I sent these postcards to the organization and requested them to share them among their community and share the photos with me.
INVESTMENT
To understand if users are willing to involve in / donate again in the future *investment* - (By sending out a survey)
The most important part of this exercise was validating the hypothesis that 'getting feedback and knowing the impact you achieved sparks interest'. I sent a survey and asked questions on a scale of 1-5 about their motivation for participation, interest in the organization, interest in participating in the event, and willingness to involve friends and family.
I had divided the participants into two groups:
5/9 responded who received photos
GROUP 1:
The ones who received a survey questionnaire
along with a complete update quoting the response of
the nonprofit and photos/videos of recipients. Thus offering visual proof of impact.
2/9 responded
positively who did not receive photos
GROUP 2:
The ones who were sent a questionnaire without any photos. They were only informed of the delivered postcard.
“Yes, I will definitely invite my friends! It's not about telling them what I am doing. It's about telling them what the problem is and why it's important. Telling stories is a powerful way to influence."
- Sarah A, participant at the event
Although this is a small number of participants, it demonstrates the fact that getting visual proof of impact motivates people to respond emotionally and increases their motivation and interest in future participation. It also encourages people to invite others to join.
HIGHLIGHT REEL OF ENTIRE PROJECT
REFLECTIONS
History is made by persons, who take an initiative and ignite the minds of other people towards a cause. In modern times, technology has brought people so close to each other and so connected, that it has become far too easy to ignite the minds of others, to start making contributions towards achieving a change, and also to judge the impact of their contributions have created. Technology has made this zariya available to each one of us — a way to a better world and a promising future.
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I started this project with the challenge of working on a very complex idea, tackling the issue of transparency between nonprofits and donors. It was very overwhelming at first, as so much has been done. Using social media as a solution meant that it wasn't a very innovative solution. However, it became all the more interesting to prove why sometimes a brand new solution is not the answer but it lies in how you make an existing idea better.
Over the course of this thesis, I have learned a lot; it was an amalgamation of all that I studied at the university. I got the opportunity to channel my interest in social innovation by way of this project. With this attempt at trying to solve the problem of transparency and utilize the capabilities of technology for good, I am taking a first step towards using my knowledge for the welfare of society.
