Imiracle
Role:UX Researcher and UX/UI Designer
Duration: 2 monthes
Imiracle vision
The motivating goal behind this research project was simple: build trust. Its simplicity was and is deceptive, though - not long after we were tasked with building trust, we began to ask ourselves what is trust, anyway? How can we quantify it? What good is trust for?
These questions and more were answered in the purview of our research into the behaviors, feelings, and motivations of donors to nonprofits. Here we'll detail the methods used to answer these questions, the key findings we arrived at, and our recommendations, listed in order from highest priority to lowest, to best change the iMiracle website to promote and foster a feeling of trust between iMiracle and website users.
Problem:
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The non-profit is very new and only a few people can trust giving money to the org because of personal connections with the president.
It is hard to ask for money outside his circle, especially when it comes to large sums and larger corporations (like a hospital in Minnesota was approached once). I view the website as a
resume for the people investing (since we don’t have a brand or anything specifically, it is the website that will be the first introduction) - it should be able to tell the people what it is up to, why their donation would matter, and how they can gather that confidence. We want to get to a point where people would be willing to talk about investing and build these relations with iMiracle.
Proposal Gantt chart
Target audience
competitors analysis
We listed 10 direct and 10 indirect competitors, with their targets and tried to find out their positive and negative points.
we covered both the content and visual side of this analysis
Interview:
we conducted 6 interviews for the visual side test and 6 interviews for the content side
According to in-direct and direct competitor analysis, the visual design will be one of this project's essential and helpful parts.
Credibility influences a user’s interest in a website. Once users perceive the credibility of a website they will be more likely to use it.The aesthetics of a website can affect a user’s first impressions of credibility. Experiments have shown that users can judge a website’s credibility in as little as 3.42 seconds merely on the basis of its aesthetic appeal.(The Effect of Aesthetics on Web Credibility Farah Alsudani)
The goal is to understand the website's current design and to know what kinds of feelings it creates for the user so that we can improve the visual design and help build trust in it.
Type of research: preference explanation + close word choice + open word choice (home page)
Number of participants: n>=5 (knows Imiracle and does not know Imiracle)
Request platform: Email
platform:User zoom
Task 1 for the visual side:we asked users feedbacks for any visual aspects (open words)
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Task 2 for the visual side:
close word choice, we asked users
to select the right options for
each question.
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Task 3 for the visual side:
competetitors test
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Final key findings
Alignment with the cause: 10 out of 11 (91%) users mentioned that the most important characteristic of an organization that motivate them to donate is that the organization's cause needs to match their personal cause/value
Mission & Vision (80%)
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Content: 8 out of 9 participants claimed 'mission and vision' to be one of the most important items they look for first on a non-profit organization's website. It helps them understand where the ethics of the organizations lie and helps them judge whether they would like to help. One participant that donates several times a month to nonprofits mentioned that it's helpful to explain the mission through a narrative which details the struggles of somebody that the nonprofit is trying to help.
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Visual: 8 out of 11 users don't know the exact cause IMiracle is supporting, what iMiracle is doing exactly , exactly who is being helped, and why they need help. It lowers donation intention because they need to 1) know the cause supported by the organization match with their personal cause, 2) know where the money is going, and 3) see the urgency of giving money
About: 6 out of 9 (67%) participants mentioned knowledge of the people running the organization as an important piece of information which affects their decision to donate. They expressed the need to know all of the members, especially the board and CEO, in terms of the relation with the organization and their efforts to the cause. For instance, participants are interested in knowing about their past work history, why they care about the issue at hand, and what they are doing within the nonprofit. This information helps people understand the kind of people they would be trusting their money with and provides a form of engagement to further help build trust. This has a significant impact on their decision to donate.
Wall of Text: 4 out of 11 users find it taxing to read through large amounts of text (present on the website), and therefore don't want to finish reading the homepage.
Financial Transparency: 7 out of 9 (78%) participants claimed financial transparency to be an integral component to establishing trust and an important expectation from a non-profit website. They wanted to understand the state of utilization - How is their money being used? How much is their money helping? What funding is the organization getting? Such information is integral in helping participants see the extent of the organization's work and estimate the value they would get for their money. Not only that, it helps to build a sense of transparency and trust, allowing users to motivate the decision of donating directly.
Look and Feel: 7 out of 11 (64%) users think the website looks boring, empty, and not eye-catching. It lowers donation intention because 1) impairs confidence in the organization, they think the organization is small and inexperienced and therefore doesn't have resources to refine the website, and 2) don't want to finish reading the webpage.
Sudden Pop-up: 3 out of 11 users find the pop-up window on the iMiracle website annoying and make them want to instantly close the webpage
Photos/Media: 6 out of 11 (55%) users find the photos look unprofessional because of the low resolution, busy background, and lack of clear information (e.g., what are they doing in the photos and who are they doing it for). It lowers users' confidence in the organization.
Story of the organization: (4 out of 9, 44%) In line with the transparency on an organization's work and financial practices, 4 out of 9 participants mentioned information on the organization's timeline as one of the important expectations from the website. Participants mentioned facilitating a view of an organization's growth with time, a comparison of then vs now to be precise. This information is seen to help users see the growth of the organization and help them show the potential the organization has given the resources. This seems to affect their decision to trust and so donate.
Recommendations
Include a brief and effective Mission and Vision statement on the homepage, with clear examples of projects that you do fund and would fund.
Introduce the team, especially the board members.
Provide emotional and visual forms of engagement
Include statistics about what the organization has accomplished.
Increase credibility by citing external sources: news, testimonials, certificates, etc
Place the email subscription offer in the footer instead of as a pop-up
Ensure consistency in the quality of photos/media
Include the story of the organization in the ‘about’ section
Provide details on how the money is being used (financial transparency)
Interested in working together? I'd love to hear from you!
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