Personal Tasks:

• Researched social media campaigns and badging systems

• Designed hi-fidelity figma prototypes

• Tested prototypes on users and synthesized their feedback

• Constructed story to pitch concept to Feeding America

Skills:

• UI/UX

• User testing

• Hypothesizing

• Service design

The Prompt

Feeding America, a non-profit with the mission to end hunger in the US, tasked us with boosting donations to and awareness of their cause. Through a methodical and iterative approach, we identified an opportunity to act on human behavior to build a community of solidarity towards Feeding America.

HYPOTHESES

Before beginning our core research and testing, we formulated some hypotheses to guide us. We found some interesting observations from analyzing human behavior and influences. Firstly, people are most likely to donate to a cause they trust in order to know ‘where the money is going’. Secondly, social incentives are a huge influence on people’s willingness to be altruistic. We thus hypothesized that Feeding America can boost donations through prioritizing transparency, and people can be encouraged to spread awareness through improving their social image.

RESEARCH

We then delved into secondary research. We looked up social-cause campaigns on different social-networking platforms (eg. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram) and assessed the drivers for their success. We then researched different rewarding systems on these platforms. From this we gauged the willingness of a user to do a desired action based on the satisfaction of being rewarded. This led us on to the path of badging systems, like Reddit’s awards for popular posts.

PROTOTYPES

Guided by our hypotheses and inspired by our research, we generated Figma prototypes of an app solution and tested it on users. We iterated through several cycles of feedback and design in order to generate a more streamlined app experience.

Field of Wheat is a social media-agnostic badging system that rewards donors with a wheat badge for their usernames and handles, through which they can express their solidarity to Feeding America’s cause and spread word to their network.

GRAB ATTENTION

Field of Wheat grabs the user’s attention by blowing up on their feed. Curious about all the wheat icons on their friends’ handles, they click the icon to learn more.

DEFINE MISSION

The user is redirected to the Field of Wheat browser page, where they learn of the campaign’s call to action. The user is also informed of the badging system tiers, where monthly and one-time donors are offered orange and gold badges respectively.

GAIN TRUST

Users can learn more about the problem through real-life stories of the food-insecure. Users are also assured of ‘where the money goes’ and ‘how much’ of their money goes to the people they serve.

IMPLEMENT ACTION

Users are guided through a simple and seamless process of completing their donation. Finally, they can implement their new wheat badge on their desired social media.