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Process
1
Research & Personas
Synthesizing research across three very different user types
- Synthesized interview notes from the founding team's prior research to identify trends across volunteers, nonprofits, and corporate clients.
- Created four personas: a volunteer (wants to contribute but can't find the right match), a nonprofit director (overwhelmed, needs reliable skilled help), a marketing director (wants authentic employee impact stories), and an HR manager (needs to track and report volunteer activity at scale).
- Applied an emotional design lens — visceral (celebration animations), behavioral (easy opportunity discovery), reflective (sense of meaning through the platform) — to frame design priorities beyond pure functionality.
2
Information Architecture
Designing three distinct portals that still talk to each other
- Mapped user flows for all three groups, then built a unified workflow diagram showing how they connect — volunteer applies, nonprofit reviews, corporate tracks impact.
- Designed separate IA for each portal: volunteer profile/matching, nonprofit opportunity management, corporate employee engagement dashboard.
- Created low-fidelity wireframes to validate navigation structure before investing in high-fidelity.
3
Prototyping
High-fidelity design system built for a multi-portal product
- Built a full design system in Figma: Raleway/Quicksand typography, brand color palette, component library, status indicators, and category tags.
- Iterated through two versions of the design guide before landing on the production spec.
- Built prototypes for all three portals — each with distinct navigation structures tailored to their workflows while maintaining visual consistency across the product.
4
Volunteer Portal
Making opportunity discovery feel personal, not like a job board
- Dashboard: personalized recommendations, active applications, impact tracking, and movement discovery.
- Opportunities List: filterable by interest area, posting type, and MeaningfulMatch AI recommendations.
- Opportunity Details: organization context, impact goals, skills match, and a clear apply flow.
5
Nonprofit Portal
Giving nonprofits real control over recruiting and tracking
- Dashboard: open opportunities, active connections, and long-term goal tracking.
- Opportunities List: post/edit opportunities, view applicant counts and progress.
- Applicants Manager: review profiles, check skills, schedule meetings — all in one place.
6
Corporate Portal
Turning employee volunteering into measurable impact
- Dashboard: employee leaderboard, impact metrics, nonprofit connections, and news feed.
- Employees view: skills, impact areas, and generate individual impact reports.
- Impact Dashboard: monthly engagement charts, top impact areas, and personal development goal tracking.
7
Usability Testing
26 participants across all three user groups, real scripts, real findings
- Recruited 11 volunteers, 10 nonprofits, and 5 company representatives for structured usability sessions.
- SUS scores: Volunteers 8.7/10 · Nonprofits 8.4/10 · Companies 8.1/10.
- Key findings: volunteers struggled to surface opportunities that matched their specific interests; nonprofits wanted accountability tracking and contribution history; companies prioritized employee engagement and retention visibility.
- Wrote separate testing scripts for each user group with tailored task scenarios and think-aloud protocols.
8
Implementation
QA and close collaboration through to beta release
- Worked closely with engineers during implementation — providing detailed design documentation and addressing technical questions in real time.
- Conducted QA testing to catch inconsistencies before release.
- Platform shipped within the 4-month timeline, aligned with a major nonprofit conference.
Outcomes
- Launched within the 4-month timeline, timed to coincide with a major nonprofit conference.
- 250 volunteer accounts, 170 nonprofits, and 5 corporate clients onboarded within the first 10 months.
- 200+ opportunities posted with a 25% completion rate.
- Positive feedback from all three user groups across post-launch sessions.
What I Learned
- Designing for three interdependent user types requires constant awareness of how decisions in one portal affect the others — the flows only work if all three sides work together.
- Early usability testing revealed discovery friction that wouldn't have been obvious from the IA alone. SUS scores improved significantly after refining the filtering and recommendation systems.