The seed stage start-up, Geenees, originated with a mobile app to present their nonprofit marketplace to donors. This platform connects donors with nonprofits and families in need, enabling direct giving and community impact.
In-order to understand the scope of this project I started with a few base interviews with the company.
Budget is low. Access to donors is limited. Testing is constrained to 2 families. Success depends on strategic prioritization.
The user-base consisted of three categories of users: Donors, Families, and Nonprofits. We conducted 20 surveys and 5 user interviews with the Geenees donor pool to understand their needs and behaviors.
Nonprofit accounts were migrating to their own backend CMS systems. Families represent 42% of the user base, donors less than 10%, with a conversion rate of 2.8%.
"It was a bit difficult to make that donation, it was a bit clumsy."
We analyzed six critical user flows: Onboarding, Community, Organization, Wishlists, Settings, and Cart. The core issue emerged immediately: the key user need "I want to donate" was buried under many layers. Information hierarchy didn't align with user mental models.
On paper we redesigned and re-organized the user flows before mapping out iterations thoroughly. Major changes included creating a dashboard focused on wishlists, restructuring app navigation, and separating the Nonprofits experience.
Version 1 reduced the size of the carousel but did not remove it, as requested by stakeholders. We simplified the dashboard design to allow filtering for wishlists at the forefront and introduced the ability to favourite wishes for later.
With further iterations we established the favourites page within the dashboard. A new flow for nonprofits allowed users to click and select their preferred organizations. Many items previously on the community pageâMy Profile, Tax Receipts, Granted Wishesâwere recategorized under settings for better structure.
I introduced notifications to encourage users to return and donate again. Unfortunately, notifications weren't a priority for MVP, but a great addition to plan for future releases.
Once the layout and flows were approved and stress-tested for all possibilities, we began working on mid to hi-fidelity prototypes, iterating through styling and component implementations.
A significant UI implementation was the ability to add multiple quantities to a single wish, enabling bulk gifting and flexible donor engagement.
And with that the final prototype was ready to be handed over for development. The design focused on two key principles: repetition of key phrases to drive brand message and flexibility and efficiency as the core design focus.
This was an amazing project that I had the opportunity to be a part of. I believe this new version of the app will lead to an increase in conversion rates for Geenees and improved user retention through better information architecture and visual clarity.
If I had the opportunity to continue post-development, I would track analytics to see how the new design is performing against the 2.8% conversion baseline and understand user behavior patterns.
This project had strong collaborative aspects with stakeholders. Given the opportunity, I would conduct more rigorous usability testing with a larger donor pool to validate assumptions.