Give Back is a community engagement and charitable giving web site design mockup I completed in the Spring of 2020 as part of the Austin Coding Academy's Product Design Academy. The design served as the capstone project for the course, and took the participants through the entire product design process. The full design can be viewed on the Adobe XD preview website. Please see my related blog post for the full Give Back Case Study.

After meeting with users of the current volunteering solution, the common feedback we received is that users generally need to rely on communication channels outside of the existing application to discover new volunteer opportunities. The majority of volunteering events team members participated in were either heard about through word of mouth, organized by their team/organization, or communicated out through other social groups. The primary innovation Give Back is looking to bring to the volunteering application space is recommendations based on user's volunteering priorities.

This ended up taking the form of three categories: Event Type, Causes, and Charities.

Event type focuses on the way team members prefer to engage with their community. Some people like engaging directly with the people they're benefiting, others like working behind the scenes, and others still enjoy raising funds or awareness for a cause. Allowing users to prioritize their event type makes sure that cyclists hear about upcoming charity bike rides, etc.

The Cause category allows users to make sure their volunteering efforts contribute to the issues most important to them. From breast cancer research to feeding the poor, allowing users to receive personalized recommendations based off of cause ensures that new volunteers without any prior connections to existing organizations can still meaningfully contribute to the issues they care about.

Finally, the Charity category is for team members who already care deeply about a specific charity. Whether they've had a good volunteering experience with them in the past, or just believe strongly in their mission, making sure users can stay connected with the charities they care about can be a strong motivator to continue volunteering.

The design mockup itself was created using Adobe XD. In addition to being a product design exercise, this project was also an opportunity to gain experience working with a design system. Give Back was based upon the Dell Design System, incorporating existing brand elements and components.