FOR NGOS...

Constraints in financial, staffing, and network exposures

NGOs are often constrained by financial and staffing resources and thus rely heavily on volunteers to operate if not 100%. The essentiality of NGOs has only increased since the pandemic. However, simultaneously, the pandemic has severely threatened the survival of many NGOs. Evidently, the need for volunteers is only increasing.

RESEARCH

I talked to 30+ volunteers and NGOs and created the fact-based user cases to better capture their needs

At first, the problem I set out to serve is to reduce the gap of volunteer expectations and reality by providing a volunteering review platform where transparent information is shared. However, after talking to both volunteers and NGOs, I realized that the original statement is one-sided leaning towards solving volunteer's needs rather than addressing the systemic challenge considering all stakeholders.

Even when looking at volunteer's side, I further realized that more information does not necessarily help addressing the overwhelming and lonely feelings international volunteers go through.

Rather, a community with peer-to-peer support better suits the need for both volunteers and NGOs.

In order to synthesize the insights gained from both side of the end users, I created journey maps to visualize pain points, opportunities, and touch points to better define the product vision and identify an iterative design approach to run sprints.  

Volunteer Journey Map

NGO Journey Map

IMMERSION

Piloted an expedition to understand the end-to-end user experience and trial services Explorate provides

December 2021, I had a conversation with a mentor and was inspired to further develop Explorate community and gain better understanding through curating real life experience.  Fast forward to September 2022, after 9 months of hard work, we completed the expedition with a group of 6 Northwestern students volunteering on marine conservation projects at LAST.

Recruitment

Interest Form

Interviews and applications to select participants

Pre-trip Workshops: Addressing the Lack of Community and Transparent Information

NGO workshop

Understanding the context

Why workshop

Goal-setting frameworks

Bonfire

Team-building

Expedition: Fostering Authentic Community Connection Across Stakeholders

Beyond logistical considerations, I spearheaded an initiative to amplify our impact by advocating for more opportunities for expedition members to authentically connect with the local community. To instill a sense of community, we orchestrated a daily ritual where each team member reflected on the personal meaning of community and led team-bonding activities.

Sea Turtle Monitoring

Community Member Meeting

Mangrove Reforestation

Post-expedition Reflection: Transforming Insights into Tangible Growth Strategies

Upon our return, I facilitated a dynamic discussion on key takeaways and actionable items, ensuring that the insights gained during our exploration translated into tangible strategies for ongoing personal and collective growth with like-minded individuals.
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TESTING

Insights - community meeting with the locals is the highlight. More community-building before the expedition could help ease anxiety.

After the expedition, feedback were gathered through voiceform and followup one-on-one interviews for details.

I planned the experience with the goal of creating an impact-driven experience for people who are passionate about the social impact space.

The feedback we received made me realize that community-building amongst the volunteers as well as between the volunteers and local community members are just as rewarding, if not more.

EXPEDITION OUTCOME

The community left a dent for the participants

Collectively we gathered over 1,200 mangrove seeds, planted 607 of those seeds, cleaned up beaches, and created a mural that will be showcased at the cabins for other members to see. But more importantly, the community we formed with each other and the locals continue to inspire actions in the future.

On Explorate's end, we were able to compare and contrast journey maps using data gathered through surveys and interviews to identify pain points and user motivations previously missed.

Visualize stakeholder relationships
based on observations

PROTOTYPING AT SCALE

Converted user research and expedition takeaways into low-fi and mid-fi prototypes

Wireframing

Based on our research, I hypothesized that community-driven approach would be key in engaging perspective volunteers with impact-driven organizations without getting overwhelmed along the journey. Together with my co-founder, I created design requirements for the digital platform and prototyped the potential features.

Upon gathering user feedback and validating our assumptions, I collaborated with a UI designer to craft the high-fidelity prototype for Explorate's community-building platform. The high-fi prototype integrated visual aesthetics with interactive elements, resulting in a polished user interface for development.
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For Volunteers...

pre-vetted impact-driven programs MADE accessible

Prospective volunteers can easily identify credible programs in one place and filter based on their needs. This helps alleviate the pain of spending dozens of hours searching on the internet to identify credible programs in other countries.

For NGOs...

Volunteer Coordination Streamlined

NGOs encounter difficulties in identifying reliable volunteers outside of their existing network. Volunteer recruitment often takes a lot of time, which is taking away the time they could spent engaging with the operation and field work.

REFLECTION

What would I have done differently? 

• Prototype > Perfection. The prototype was designed with a few basic features in mind. It can be challenging to avoid getting stuck in perfecting the development on the back-end for developers and designers and not leaving enough time for community to interact with the product and get quick feedback.
• Foster more connections between prospective volunteers and NGOs. Our team has focused more on connecting with young people and NGOs separately. There wasn't enough interactions fostered between the two parties yet. I am actively working on fostering such connections before the website is ready to avoid siloed communications.

• Consistent communications. Because the expedition happened in September, there is a summer in between where everyone had internships and travel commitments. For almost two months, there were not much communications made other than logistic planning. It wasn't until August where we started hosting the AMA sessions and planned for individual research shareouts. Introducing those at the beginning of the summer could be less stress inducing.
• Extend the expedition duration. We decided on one week since this is our piloting program. For future expeditions, I think both the local community and the expedition members would benefit from a longer interaction time to get used to each other.
• Fostering more connection opportunities with the locals. The community member meeting, started out as a tentative concept, turns out to be one of the highlights of the expedition. The expedition members were really inspired to hear what the community has done locally for environmental initiatives and plan to bring the engagement into the Chicago area. For the future, I will focus on creating spaces for connections and community-building for individuals to inspire each other with ideas and practices.

What's next?

The existing design is currently getting finalized in the development phase. The next step is to perform feature testing with users through moderated interviews to determine the approaches to connect community through the website. We plan on continuing building our presence through on-campus engagements and social media to identify loyal customer base to test and iterate the product with.