Volunteer Service Clout
A Doordash Case Study
Background
“I want to help out in my community.”
I’ve been dashing with Doordash for years and I know in the last couple of years, they started Project Dash, where they pick up and deliver food for places like homeless shelters in the area. As a dasher, I got paid for my time to deliver the food to them.
It’s great that Doordash is helping the community, but I also wanted to help out in my community. Come to find out, other dashers said they would do the same if given the opportunity. With that in mind, I wanted to come up with a way to piggyback or integrate Doordash’s platform into the app; Or, vice versa.
Volunteer Service Clout integrates into Doordash’s delivery platform and Project Dash. For the benefits of our communities, dashers will be able to help deliver groceries to homes
Problem
How might we integrate a volunteer program into the current dasher platform?
Integrate volunteer program into current dasher app.
Make it easy for a dasher to share their service and get their clout.
Solution
Dashers can opt-in to participate in Volunteer Service Clout, where they will receive delivery orders from food banks to homes in their current delivery area during non-peak times. They also build their own clout around volunteering via a ranking system and easy social sharing.
Role
UX|UI Designer
Visual Design
User Research
Timeline
Nov 2020 - Feb 2021
Research & Planning
After doing some foundational research, I found no one going the final mile of delivering groceries from a food bank to the families directly. With that in mind, there wasn’t any app to really do a competitive analysis with. From a product perspective, some immediate design constraints were apparent. I needed to stay in line with Doordash’s current design style and figure out where in the app to integrate the new program data.
I considered what had the lowest barrier to entry and highest visibility when starting this project.
I sort out ideas and create goals for this portion of the project.
Phase 1 focuses on the career dashers. Phase 2 could include part-time dashers or weekend warriors.
I needed to understand how data will flow to create the right visual queues for the service flow and social sharing design cards.
Checking product-market fit and to see if there was another service like this one out there. There isn't one.
Goals & Impact
Volunteer Service Clout is designed to accomplish 2 main goals. The first is to help families who are not mobile and need groceries from food banks, by having them delivered. The second is to enable dashers to volunteer in their community and earn their own charity clout.
Having a volunteer program for Doordash will continue to build on the community impact already established by Project Dash and take it a step further by directly helping families in those communities.
Design
The first phase of this project was to design the Doordash integration and thinking where I could add this. I first thought about adding it to the ratings tab, but there was already a lot of other data there. A dasher would have to scroll all the way to the bottom to interact with this new feature.
Since this program enables the dasher to choose whether or not they want to participate, creating its own section under account made more sense. This way, it is not hidden at the bottom of all the other data and has its own section.
I found the way the data is laid out in ratings was the easiest to comprehend and opted to design this layout the same way. I added a product hint for everyone to understand what this program is all about and added the navigation into the account tab.
You will see 2 titles on the screens and that’s because I AB tested which name resonated better with people on UIGiants.com. Through that, Volunteer Service Clout was chosen as the name of the program.
3 different design option wireframes that looks at designing a new layout or keeping it similar to other categories like ratings.
Hi-fidelity wireframes of the same 3 options from above.
Test & Iterate
Through user testing, I discovered the importance of using common terminology, and the placement of the volunteer program was split between account and earnings. Since 55% voted for it to be located under the earnings tab, I moved my original design from the accounts tab to the earnings tab. This solves the problem of integrating the volunteer program into the current platform.
Usability testing results from 11 people. There’s a heat map on the device itself, their comments through the screens, and the overall vote from the 3 options provided.
Here are the 2 variations of the designs I needed to confirm through user testing.
A hi-fidelity mock-up showing the app in use and in context with doordash.
Social Clout Design
In this day and age, social media is everything! So naturally, the next step was to design recognition cards that can easily be shared across social media.
I collaborated with a senior product designer who helped guide my design from just a logo in the background to using images instead. We also changed the overall cards to create a hierarchy and a dual sponsor type of logo. The idea was how this program was for charity or giving and to make the cards have that feeling to them.
The outcome of these hi-def explorations was all about the feeling. With details of their volunteer service hours, a beautiful image, and a simple way to spread the clout they’ve earned, the hope is to inspire others to do the same. This solves the problem of having an easy way to share their clout.
Top left-initial social share card design. Bottom left-Glass and Spin animation designs. Right-Giving an image that has a feeling of doing good with recognition card.
Always Learning
I started this project with the goal of broadening Project Dash’s reach to the communities. I wanted to be able to volunteer my time and in the process, inspire other dashers to opt-in to the Volunteer Service Clout program.
I initially designed the Volunteer Service Clout program under the accounts tab. When I conducted the usability testing, users showed they thought it would be under earnings. With that and other usability testing insights, I iterated the designs and changed the copy to match the user expectations. The latest design iteration to the right shows how I integrated the new volunteer program into the current platform.
Click on image above to experience the app for yourself.