Project Overview
Pitch In is a mobile app that makes it easy to spread a little joy within your local community. Using Pitch In people can use their spare change to donate goods and services from local businesses to those in need within their community. Donated goods can be tracked by users to ensure that they are received and collected by those in need in their community. This way, users can trust that the Pitch In process is reliable and that local businesses are truly fulfilling their promises.
The goal of Pitch In is to provide those less fortunate with an alternative method for accessing goods and services they typically cannot afford. This can range from essential items for daily living or even something as basic as a free cup of coffee.
My Role
User Research
Usability Testing
User Journey Design
Wireframe Design
UI & UX Design
Branding
Discovery & Exploration
To kick-off the project it was essential to better understand our problem, users and product vision. This meant conducting a lot of online research and user research. To get started, I began reaching out to those to real users, interviewing those in need within my community as well as members of the general public, surveyed over 300 members of the general public to better under their giving habits and lastly, I began discussions with local charities such as Another World Belfast and Esther giving to better understand the work they do to help those less fortunate.
The insights from these exercises were distilled into several personas and empathy maps that could serve as points of guidance to refer back to when defining a set of key features. Once all my insights had been collated and reviewed, I set to work prioritising a set of initial features.
Features to be considered:
User onboarding
Adding money to pitch in accounts
Browsing and exploring local businesses
Donating goods/services from local businesses
A system for finding, redeeming and collecting donated items
The ability to monitor the progress of donations
Once the feature set had been defined and prioritised, I set to work creating a series of user journey maps and an information architecture map that allowed all stakeholders to better understand how the product features connected together and the necessary requirements for each feature to fulfil user objectives.
Design Process
Following the research and planning phases of the project, it was time to get stuck into the design ideation. This involved a mountain of sketches and multiple low-fidelity wireframe concepts. These initial wireframe concepts were later tested over video calls with friendly users to quickly validate and iterate upon my ideas before moving onto the high-fidelity stage.
Once the initial wireframe concepts had undergone testing, refinement, and validation, it was time to transition to high-fidelity designs. The outcome was a realistic and functional prototype that accurately represented the behaviour and functionality of the app once developed.
Following the completion of a high-fidelity prototype, it was time to kickstart a much more intensive user testing process. During this process, I organised a series of task-based usability testing sessions with friendly users. Based on the feedback received from these tests, additional iterations were made to enhance user journeys and ensure smooth completion of tasks. Thereby ensuring that users could easily achieve their objectives and navigate through the app effortlessly.
Outcome & Next Steps
Overall, I’m really pleased with how Pitch In developed over the course of the project. The end result was an application that offers a wonderful opportunity for people to bring joy to those their community while also supporting local businesses. The initial user feedback from testing was highly positive and confirms the value of the work to date, preparing us for a development-ready minimum viable product.
I've loved working on this side project and want to explore it more in the future. As for the next steps and the project's direction, I want to refine the business plan surrounding the platform to ensure that it can be effectively monetised. Additionally, it will need a business portal to help local businesses onboard and sell their goods and services. Both are challenges that will be exciting to tackle.