UX Design Project

This is DOME,

A proposed digital, tangible, and spatial solution - establishing and maintaining a continual social and human connection between all participants of a donation, ensuring a personal and meaningful interaction.

Nominated

One of three projects nominated for IBM iX's feasibility category award in 2020.

Design Tools

Figma, Blender, Photoshop, Illustrator

Role

Starting in a team of four including myself, Alex Pribula, Christina Hatgis and Yunipaula Jeong, we carried out our extensive user research together until we split into two groups.

Christina and I continued to work together in the ideation, designing, testing and prototype phase. I was responsible for my role in ideating, user research, usability testing and lo-fi to hi-fi prototyping and creating an engaging video proposal of our project.

What is DOME?

Dome is a user experience concept aimed to redesign the donation experience for young adults within Australia, ensuring a continual connection between the donor and the receiver - allowing individuals to feel as if they’re continually apart of the donation process. Using emerging technologies, Dome helps connect users’ understandings, emotions, and motivations throughout the donation process.‍

How it works

When making a donation, users will be offered a Dome. It requires minimal set up, making it easily accessible to all.

Once a user's donation is received, Dome will alight. Its sensory touch technology allows users to interact with the light-up display.

A thank you message will then be received through the accompanying app, allowing users to keep track of all registered donations and who has received them.

The companion

Dome is accompanied by an app that lets you customise your experience to enrich connection. Users track current donations as they’re on their way to the receiver, view past donations made, locate participating donation centres, and customise the coloured display of Dome for each active donation.‍

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Making donation not a burden.

“What could IBM iX and The University of Sydney do to help empower citizens to make a productive impact in times of need from useful donations that don’t become a burden to our response teams”.

This was the brief we were asked, as due to the 2020 bushfire season, Australia faced blazes on an unprecedented scale. Many people donated goods to those who were affected by the fires, but often ended up causing more havoc then to help. With donations flooding into rural fire services, and no manpower to sort and distribute them, many had to be thrown away.
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Research Phase.

Our first step was to investigate and understand donors, organisations, and receivers’ unique needs, wants, emotions, and awareness in order to rethink how the charitable giving process can operate with the highest standard of efficiency and calibre. To do this, we utilised a variety of generative and mixed methodology research methods.
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Selecting our Participants

Selected from a wide range of ages between 15-67, unique demographics, differing socio-economic backgrounds different areas of Sydney to ensure the data presented varying perspectives.
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Utilising Generative Research

Generative research allowed us to gather a deeper understanding of who our participants are and how their experiences and emotions change their perspectives and understandings of charitable giving.
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Sensitising Activities and Booklet

Participants completed a booklet of activities one week before the group sessions. Activities were designed based on the centralised themes and ideas regarding donations. We aimed to draw quality data which included participant behaviours, attitudes, perspective, and emotion.

Context Mapping Activities

Collages and cognitive mapping allowed participants to express and communicate their thoughts and feeling visually, leading to detailed group discussions, a clear highlight of pain points, and a deeper insight into the emotional and physical journey of our users.‍

Mixed Methodology and
Going Online due to COVID.

Due to the COVID-19 lockdown, we utilised multiple generative research methods with a variety of mixed methodology to be completed online.‍

Online Ethnography

We conducted an online ethnography was an additional method we utilised to collect a plethora of raw observational data to supplement our generative data.

We examined four references online:
1. Facebook
2. Twitter
3. Instagram
4. The Red Cross‍

Questionnaires

We collected a total of 78 questionnaire responses – allowing us to gather a broader insight towards the current behaviours, attitudes, emotions, and perspectives towards the process of charitable giving. We included multiple choice questions, Likert scales, and short answer questions to receive a rich variety of data back from respondents.‍

Semi-Structured Interviews

We conducted a total of 10 interviews via Zoom. Questions were open-ended to gain qualitative insights into topics, including:
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1. experiences of volunteering and charity work
2. actions and motivations of donating
3. emotional and personal experiences of giving and receiving donations.‍

"It makes me feel empowered and satisfied that I am able to give to those in need"

"I feel like we should share what we can afford because it makes us feel as if we're putting something back into the community"

Analysing the Data

Once a range of data had been collected it was time to analyse our findings. This process allowed us to sort and interpret our findings using statement cards, which could then be summarised and communicated visually through the use of an engaging research visualisation diagram. Sorting and interpreting the data was conducted using the bottom up research method in order to maintain raw data and reveal multiple themes, patterns and trends that emerged from it, while also reducing any potential bias and incorrect interpretation.‍

Visually presenting our data findings

From this, five key higher dimensions were created:
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1. care facilitating charity
2. care is innate
3. care is a communal effort
4. care is a request
5. care is an intention.

The Ideation Phase

Continuing from initial research, Christina and I chose to focus on the ‘Care is a communal effort’ dimension as a lens to design our solution, specifically drawing interest towards three inner themes:‍

1. The Human Connection

To allow the donor to understand how they’re making a positive impact towards a cause or someone personally, ultimately establishing a human connection between the donor and the donation cause.‍

2. Empowerment to enact change

Empowering people to enact change they may continue to share their understandings and ideas, allowing them to form more personalised connections to causes they’re donating towards.‍

3. Personal connection

Improving the personal connection between the donor and the receiver, the donor may continue to form further connections with others and a greater understanding of why they are donating towards a specific cause, and how their contributions have made a difference.‍

Developing the Solution

Early Storyboarding and Decision Matrices

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Above are four concepts Christina and I came up with.

These four solutions were continually evaluated using a Harris Profile Decision Matrix in order to justify our design and decision making processes.‍

Where we went wrong

Reviewing all of our ideas failed once we evaluated them, as they did not meet the criteria established from our brief. We needed to develop a more versatile solution, with a key aim to ensure that majority of the criteria would be sufficiently met.‍

Improving on concepts

Reworking all four concepts paved the way for our concept of 'Dome', a more effective design solution that ticks off the criteria we set out to achieve. ‍

The New Concept of 'Dome' and Reasons For it

With our Dome concept, the new Harris Profile Matrix results majorly improved and became an obvious choice to develop into our prototyping stage.

'Dome' User Journey Map

The user journey map below created by Christina reveals key insights of our experience journey for users, displaying interaction points, pain points and moments that matter along with four selected personas.

Prototyping stage

To prototype our new concept, I used Blender to develop some ideas on a welcoming device that can sit easily on a desktop or table, and Figma for our companion app.‍

Blender'ing a product model

Blender gave me a great opportunity for modelling our product and creating fast ideas. Some images of earlier designs were lost, with funky shapes. I decided to elaborate on a more curved and smooth product to create a sense of wanting to touch and interact with the object, to create something look inviting.‍

Designing the companion

Creating a companion for Dome seemed like an obvious idea, due to the limited interactivity of the device and being more of a visual representation of the donation process, we decided on the idea of using the app as the key to unlocking Dome.‍

The UI spec sheet aided in developing a cohesive style -- the green matches the same glow that the device emits by default, and I used other soft, accessible colours to complement the rest of the experience.

Users can also customise the colour that Dome emits, especially handy if the LED light could use a different aesthetic against the colours of the users surroundings.‍

Click to see end product at the top!