Content
Milaap- Free Crowdfunding for India
Milaap is a popular crowdfunding app that allows individuals, nonprofits, and social enterprises to raise funds for various causes and projects. It serves as a platform where people can connect and support each other's endeavors by contributing financially to campaigns that resonate with their interests and values.
Challenge
With increasing numbers of users coming from Tier 2+, using their mobile device for using Milaap - our hypothesis is that the current web product may not provide the best experience. The idea is to create a mobile (android) app for Milaap for campaign organizers. The primary persona for the MVP is the campaign organizer from a Tier 2+ town, who uses his mobile phone and has already started a fundraiser on Milaap (via website). COs from Tier 1 cities and/or potential users wanting to start a fundraiser via the mobile app are all byproducts of the effort.
User Interview
Interviews can help to empathize with users as they provide an in-depth understanding of the users’ values, perceptions, and experiences. It helps to ask specific questions while remaining open to exploring your users’ points of view.
We conducted around 10 user interviews via calls and surveys. It helped us to gain deeper insights about what problems they face, what things they like about the product, what social media platform they use to spread the word and many other insights. It helped us to get a glimpse into the minds of the users and better understand how they interact with the product. We divided the interviews into two batches. With the list of prepared questionnaires, we interviewed the campaign managers and activation managers to understand their perspectives and help us comprehend the end-users in a better way.
The managers help the organizers to create the campaign and initiate the necessary steps to ensure the successful completion of a campaign.
Campaign Managers - Interviews
Journey
Campaign organizers - Interviews
Competative Analysis
It will help in providing strategic insights into the features, functions, flows, and feelings.By understanding these facets of competitors’ products, we can strategically design solutions with the goal of making a superior product and/or experience.
Plus points
Ability to thank the donor personally and a progress bar about how many such updates are left to be completed.
Pain Points
Sometimes, the user might not have that much time to thank everyone personally and just want to send a common message to all the supporters. Even some of the supporters wouldn't like to share their details and want to donate anonymously. Seeing a progress bar for this feature may also result in frustration and feeling guilty about not thanking all the supporters.
Plus points
Providing tips to users about how to write a compelling story, which social media platform will help to raise more funds will make the user journey smooth. Rather than reading the blogs or seeing the videos it would be good for the user to glance through quick tips provided by the platform. Usually users want to complete all the tasks in a quick way and these tips can help them do that..
Frustrations
1. Identifying the network and building a roadmap to increase the outreach
2. Non-tech-savvy users need help in sharing the campaign and withdrawing money
3. Hesitant about sharing the campaign and asking for money (Mainly tier 3 city residents)
4. Doesn’t know how to write the engaging content
5. Less education about the crowdfunding process results in difficulty in trusting a company
6. Limited awareness related to the process and how it works
7. Less knowledge related to different social media platforms and what types of content can be posted
8. Insecurity about others raising money quickly
9. Not able to thank the supporter individually
10. Less educated people might also face difficulties in the language used by the platform
User Persona and Empathy Maps
Personas are hypothetical users whose goals and characteristics represent the needs of a larger group of users. User Personas include behavior patterns, goals, skills, attitudes, and background information, as well as the environment in which a persona operates. We add context-specific details to understand the persona not only when they use the digital products but also the surrounding around them. By understanding the motivations and frustrations of target users, it’s possible to design a product that will satisfy users’ needs. We also created an empathy map to understand every user kind who has a different way of approach. Empathizing helps us recognize the users and gain a perspective similar to theirs. These users are very much like how the real users act in the real world. This allows us to prioritize feature requests.We have created three different persons and each of them comes from different backgrounds and are dealing with the same issue of raising money.
We have understood their way of living and how they will think, feel, say and do while they perform certain actions relevant to our need of understanding them. These are put down together by an empathy map.Once we understand the users and their needs, we will stand mapping the user flows.
Information Architecture
Results
The updated Milaap app boasts a sleek, organized interface, enhancing user navigation and accessibility. Our improvements have streamlined the content creation process, slashing time requirements by 31%. Additionally, the incorporation of reporting and customization features has fostered greater user engagement, resulting in a notable 26% surge in customer satisfaction. By prioritizing visual storytelling in fundraising campaigns, leveraging compelling visuals, videos, and narratives, we've effectively heightened user involvement and empathy, fostering increased support for causes.
Moreover, we've prioritized a seamless onboarding experience, ensuring new users can swiftly register and engage with the app. By minimizing required fields and providing clear guidance, we've optimized the onboarding process for ease and efficiency. These enhancements align with key UX metrics, including task completion time, user satisfaction, and engagement levels, demonstrating our commitment to delivering an intuitive and gratifying experience for Milaap users.
Overview
Role
6 Months
Mobile App
Web Application
BA
Product Manager
Product Owner
Figma
Miro
UX Research
Product and UI /UX
Platform
Teams
Duration
Tools
User Scenarios
User scenarios help in knowing the goal of the user and how our app would help them reach their goal. It includes all the information that we need for the user to reach his or her goal.
User Scenario 1
Statement: A person who is less tech-savvy wants to raise funds for a medical emergency but doesn't know how to share it on social media
Actions required
1. Create a fundraiser
2. Share it among the network
3. Withdraw funds
How can we help?
1. We can help them by giving examples and tips on how to write a compelling story.
2. Giving them hope that they will be able to raise the funds.
3.We can give assistance on which platform to use and what kind of content to post
4. We can use known icons and text to help them understand better and make it easy to take action
5. We can provide the statistics about how many people have donated today to increase the motivation
6. We can assist them step by step on how to share a post by locking other features
7. We can provide them readymade examples to share directly on social media
8. We can help them to track the progress and motivate them to raise funds.
9.We can use some of the gamification techniques to keep them motivated.
10. We can send them reminders if they are not sharing the campaign regularly
11.For the updates on the campaign, we can have editable templates that can be modified by the campaign organizer
Use Cases for Campaign Organiser
Use case methodology analysis helps to identify, clarify and organize app requirements. These are a set of possible sequences of interactions between app and users in a particular environment and related to a particular goal.
Log in
1. I want to login via social media accounts
2. I want to login via mobile number and receive OTP so that I don't have to remember the password
3.I should be able to reset my password
Active Campaigns
1. I should be able to see the campaign created from the web URL
2. I should be able to add more photos/videos to that campaign
3.I should be able to edit the campaign
Sharing the campaign
1. I should be able to share it via different social media
2. I should be able to quickly view tips on how to share
3. I should get different editable templates for different social media to make my work easy and quick
4.I should be able to track how many shares I have done till now
5. I should be able to see the reminders about sharing it on social media
6. I should be able to know which platform to use to increase the engagement
7. I should be able to know what kind of content works on which platform. For example, on WhatsApp people would like to see the message rather than video,and maybe on Facebook people would like to see more videos rather than stories/text
8. I should be able to contact the customer service support for any guidance about increasing the outreach
Tracking the progress
1. I should be able to track how much funds were raised today
2. I should be able to see the graphs related to it, for example how much daily am I able to raise the funds and how frequently I have shared the campaign
3. I should be able to track how many days and how much amount is left to reach the goal
4. I should be able to see some of the statistics related to how many people have donated today, how many campaigns were successful to believe that even I will be able to reach the goal.
Supporters
1. I should be able to see the supporters list and how much they have donated
2. I should be able to thank the supporters
3. I should be able to send updates for different purposes
4. I should get reminders on when is the good time to thank the supporters and when should I update them
5. I should be able to see the examples, editable templates for the updates
6. I should be able to see the messages sent by the supporters.
Notifications
1. I should get notified while someone makes a donation
2. I should get notified at the end of the day about how much money raised and how much money left to be raised
3. I should get notified about how many days are left to reach the goal
4. I should be notified about how many times I have shared the campaign in a day15. I should be notified in case I don't use the app for few days
5. I should be notified in case I don't share the campaign or in case of lessengagement of the app
6. I should be notified about the received matching funds
User Profile
1. I should be able to edit the profile details
2. I should be able to add the bank details
3. I should be able to change the setting for the notifications
4. I should be able to see the contact details of the campaign manager
5. I should be able to logout from the app
Help and Support
1. I should be able to see the guidelines on different scenarios like how to share the campaign, how to raise money successfully, etc.
2. I should be able to see some of the frequently asked questions
3. I should be able to contact the support team
4. I should be able to read some of the success stories to keep me motivated
Gamification Solutions
A gamification strategy of matching funds is necessary to motivate consistent participation and long term engagement of the users.
1. As users share more about the campaign through different social media platforms, share posters, post updates etc, they collect points to unlock new levels of matching funds. The percentage and validity of matching will depend upon the progress of the campaign. They can share their level status with their network to help them reach their goal faster.
2. We can introduce the concept of daily points to ensure regular tracking of acampaign
3. We can also assign points for regular updates and documentations so that a user does not wait till the withdrawal stage to upload all the necessary documents and ID proofs that are mandatory.
4. We can provide them virtual badges based on no. of shares or achievement for the day. For example, if they share the campaign with 50 people on WhatsApp, they will get the badge . With these badges they can extend the matching fund period by a certain time frame.
User Scenario 2
Statement: A tech-savvy person who has already created the campaign but needs guidance about the content to share.
Actions required
1. Share it among the network
2.Track the progress
3. Thank the supporters
4.Withdraw funds
How can we help?
1. Motivate them by showing the number of shares done till now
2.Providing with editable templates to use for different social media
3. Helping them with different examples that were used before and were able to reach the target
4. Incentives given on more sharing of the campaign will motivate them to share the campaign regularly
5. We can provide them with pre-made buttons (Same as on Linkedin) to quickly thank the donors
Based on the analysis we have listed down some of the motivations and frustrations user can have while interacting with the product
Motivations
1. The customer support system is helpful to solve doubts and guide to share the campaign successfully
2.A matching fund is provided which keeps the user motivated to spread the word and raise the money
3. Able to track the progress of the campaign and see who has supported, also able to send the updates and thank the supporters
4. Helps the user to identify and explore the network for sharing
5. Posters are given to quickly share them without spending much time
User Challenges and User Goals
Understanding user goals and challenges and using this to influence design is essential.It involves incorporating the information users need for performing their tasks and how they want to feel as they undertake them. We have listed down some of the user challenges and goal and how can we provide a solution for the same
Curious about how research translates into design.
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