RESEARCH & SYNTHESIS
food bank sg
Brief: Identify opportunities in an NGO and provide solutions by revamping their website with a responsive layout.
Duration: 2 weeks
Team: 3 members
My role: Interview guide, Media audit, Heuristic Analysis
Background
Food Bank SG is a platform that bridges the gap between food surplus and food insecurity. They collect non-perishable food donations and distribute it to the needy via charities and community clubs. The users of the website are current food donors, beneficiaries, volunteers, people interested to become one of the above and just curious people.
Process
From our media audit (secondary research), it seemed like Food Bank SG did not have a problem raising awareness or getting more volunteers. They have a very active Facebook page, 2000+ volunteers, the majority of them inactive, and no time or resources to follow-up with everyone. We decided to zoom in on the volunteers.
Why do so many volunteers lose steam?
The volunteer base of Food Bank SG looks like:
But we found that the majority were assigned warehouse duties. And that was where the most time was spent. We didn't get access to Food Bank volunteers but we made do with 5 people with any volunteering experience and 1 who has never volunteered.
The goal was to find out more about the behaviour of volunteers. What makes volunteers want to volunteer? What can make a non-volunteer want to volunteer? What are the pain points and delights associated with volunteering? Some of the questions were:
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Tell us all about the last time you volunteered. How did you know about it? Did you go alone/with friends?
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What made you want to volunteer? How often do you volunteer?
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Tell us about a really memorable good volunteering experience. What aspects made it memorable?
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If you were to go back to the same event, what would you change?
We were able to form the basis of our strategy to redesign the Food Bank SG website, as shown below:
WHY?
WHY?
WHY?
They lose interest in volunteering
They feel it isn't worth their time
They don't enjoy the tasks assigned
It doesn't align with their areas of interest
How might we make it easier for volunteers to participate in activities that align with their interests, so they are more engaged and create more impact for FoodBank SG?
USABILITY TESTING
Process
We recruited 5 participants to observe them performing a typical volunteer-based task and a donor-based task while thinking aloud, using the current and redesigned websites. 3 were presented with the mobile interface and 2 with the desktop interface. They were asked to rate the websites from 1 (lowest) to 5 (highest) based on ease of use and enjoyability. The test tasks were:
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Assuming you are an already-registered volunteer with Food Bank SG, could you try to see what’s on your schedule for today?
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...show how you would go about making a personal food donation?
We asked them if there was anything they liked about using this site or if there was anything that could be improved. To remove any familiarity bias, the order of presentation of current and redesigned layouts was randomised.
A snippet of the rainbow spreadsheet to log our test observations:
Metrics
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Users are able to complete all tasks faster in the redesigned website.
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Enjoyability rating is higher when using the redesigned website.
Results
The enjoyability rating was higher for both mobile and desktop layouts, The time taken...try not to faint!
The entire case study is in my Medium page.
RESEARCH & SYNTHESIS
mytransport sg
Brief: Identify problems with an existing app and provide a solution using a high-fidelity prototype
Duration: 2 weeks
Team: 3 members
My role: Interview guide, User interviews, App store review, Competitor Analysis, Heuristic Analysis, Personas and Customer Journey Maps
Background
MyTransport SG, an app owned by the Land Transport Authority (LTA) of Singapore, markets itself as a transport companion. It has bad ratings on both the Android and iOS app stores, despite being owned by a credible source of traffic-related information. It has information related to all modes of transport, about disruptions, and even live traffic camera views.
Process
After a quick heuristic analysis, we had some burning questions. We identified the user groups that'd provide us the answers and drafted an interview guide with the following goals:
Interview goals
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Current MyTransport SG users - What is it that keeps them using it despite the low ratings?
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Ex-users of MyTransport SG - What were the major letdowns? What service do they use now? How does it alleviate the frustrations?
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Non-users of MyTransport SG - Had they seen it when looking for transport apps? Why did they not consider it? What do they generally look for in a transport app?
Prominent excerpts from our interviews:
Current User
I installed it as I thought there was some government ownership. It feels more secure.
Ex-User
When I walk into a clothes store, I don’t want to look through all the 70 options. I want the shop assistant to understand what I want and present 4 options
Non-user
The interface is neither pretty nor very easy.
What is the competition doing better? Are there any gaps in what the competition is providing? We compared MyTransport SG with the existing competition in the market - SG Buses, Google Maps & CityMapper. We scored each app from 1 (lowest) to 5 (highest) for its usability, available features, user interface, and current app store rating. Something like this:
The problem
The current users use other apps for journey planning and only use MyTransportSG for the traffic news and accurate bus timings. They don’t care or aren’t aware of the other features. They use other apps for info on navigation despite LTA being the prime source of all transport-related information.
MyTransport users needed a way to plan their journeys only accessing relevant information, and not wasting time digesting the colossal amount of raw data presented to them.
We created 3 personas to represent typical users of a navigation app in Singapore. We could then go through the steps they would take to achieve their goals:
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Rambu Tan - a 19yo poly student who takes public transportation to school daily.
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Mani Pulator - a 35yo dad who drops his kids to school daily in his car and drives to client meetings.
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Eileen Dover - a 52yo grandmother who is temporarily handicapped and uses either public/private transportation.
Here is a sample customer journey map for one of our personas.
If you're interested in the other aspects, the entire case study is in my Medium page.