Virtual Vinnies

Vinnies aims to improve their process for accepting and selling donated clothes to attract higher-quality donations, boost interest, and increase sales. As part of their mission to foster a compassionate society, Vinnies charity shops play a key role by selling affordable, pre-loved items that benefit local communities and reduce waste.

Scope: Project Type: Tools: Role:

2.5 week Design Sprint Conceptual Project Figma, Figjam, Google slide Research, Interviews, Synthesis, Ideation, Design Strategy, Research, User Interviews, Prototyping

UI/UX Design, Prototyping, User Testing,

Final Presentation

Understanding The Problem

The rising trend of fast fashion has negatively impacted the environment. Australia is notoriously bad for textile landfill in particular with Australians discarding 6 tonnes of textiles and clothes every 10 minutes (Source: Ragtrader). Because of the fast turn over of trends in the fast fashion space, Vinnies is seeing an increase in consumer donations that are “expired” or “out of trend”.

The Goals

  • Understand the current way Vinnies accepts and sells donated items.

  • Understand how people donate items, when, to whom, and the reasons why so that Vinnies can better serve the community.

  • Look for opportunities to attract desirable donations and increase sales for Vinnies.

What is the Value for Vinnies?

Objective

To help people know what to donate and what condition it should be in to improve the quality of donations, and in turn increase sales for Vinnies to further support the community.

Key Results :

  • Less dumping of unusable items to Vinnies 

  • Higher quality of donations

  • More frequent donations

  • Higher revenue from sales to go toward Vinnies’ core missions

  • Enhanced brand image and trust for Vinnies

Design Process

our approach began with comprehensive research:

  • 46 donors and consumers and 10 charity volunteers/employees interviews

  • survey with 67 responses

  • 3 competitor reviews

  • Market research

Getting out into the field

The best way to gain deeper insights was for us to go out on the field to interview people who donate or buy from charity, and talk to volunteers that work in charity shops.

From conducting interviews, we gained deeper insights into what people are donating, why they choose to donate and how they donate. In doing so we could identify potential pain points and gaps where we could make the experience of donating less confusing.

We interviewed 46 donors and consumers and 10 charity volunteers/employees which helped us develop a rounded overview of the problem space. We also conducted a survey with 67 responses received.

From these we then created insights and Affinity mapping.

But what are the users doing?

We pulled three key insights out that we gained from the above research

  • People drop off physical donations to places in close proximity and when it is most convenient for them to do so.

  • People donate to get rid of unwanted items and give back to the community. (The overwhelming majority said they donate to get rid of unwanted items (65.7%) and because they ‘like to give back to the community’ (62.7%).)

  • Volunteers often receive donations that could not be sold in store. (People don’t know what they can and can’t donate.)

“It’s important to donate things with integrity.”
–Quote from survey

“I think it’s a great thing for the community especially for those in need who can’t afford a lot”
–Quote from survey

Problem Statement

People need to know what items can be accepted as donation so that they can help those in need.

Brainstorming Potential Solutions

Using a modified version of the ‘Crazy 8’s’ UX method for rapid ideation I time blocked the team to sketch sets of 4 sketches in 4 minutes then created below ‘how might we’ statements.

How might we…

Show The Good Samaritan what items can be donated?

How might we…

Help The Good Samaritan donate more?

How might we…

Show The Good Samaritan where their donations can be accepted?

How might we…

Let The Good Samaritan know what condition their donated items need to be in?

We took a ‘cut and paste’ approach, digitally cutting our sketches up and fitting them within a linear flow

We each developed up our own ideal flow from our previous ideation, then came back as a team to discuss each of our individual flows, and which features we should prioritise based on our persona needs.

Following this discussion, myself and the other two designers focused on refining up our ideal flows into one single flow and crafting the UX writing for each screen, ensuring a smooth experience moving through the MVP.

As a team, all came up with very similar concepts… which implied that our research was thorough and we were all on the same page about solving for our persona.

First Prototype

Instead of following a simple “let’s vote on the best solutions” and work from there, I encouraged my team to try something new. We laid out the ideas from our initial ideation sketches into a rough task flow, and moved them around until we had one that worked, and used that as our initial task flow.

Although the solution wasn’t immediately perfect, it gave us a good starting point for our usability testing .

We re-sketched the concept with a couple of small adjustments and developed the first iteration of our prototype. We focused on three key stages:

  • Entering the user’s postcode / location

  • Taking a picture of what was to be donated and determining if it was acceptable for donation via AI scanning technology or a user rating system

  • Booking a pick-up of the donated items or the user dropping them off

valuable insights from user testing: To rate or not to rate.

Even though our initial prototype was basic, user testing provided valuable insights that we used to improve the mid-fidelity prototype in Figma.

  • Rate one to donate one was an idea where we believed user could get more involved with the community by helping to also rate others items as acceptable or not. Through user testing we found that this was leading to confusion.

Due to the comments we had received during user testing, we decided it was best to be removed from our MVP. 

  • Would you give this to a friend? 

    Because we cut out the ‘rate one to donate one’ feature we decided to keep the feature where the user rates their own clothes as a measure of accepting items as it was more user focussed. The decision was made that ‘would you give this to a friend?’ was too confusing as a prompt for the first question with no other context, so this was changed to “Quality Check” with questions such as ‘does this item have holes or stains’ instead. 

Less Was Too Much: Prototype 2 and the Great Removal.

We encountered a challenge with our prototype after user testing, so we removed the whole rating others’ donations, and switched to a self rating system.

as we were working through our Mid-Fi we got to a sticky point. We started to question ‘do we really need an add photo feature?’.

We needed to go back and look at our persona, and also our problem statement to answer this crucial question. We had fallen too far from our original design purpose.

The solution we were developing was too complex for the task that our persona wanted to perform; finding out what they can and can’t donate so they can help those in need.

The decision was made to cut the middle out, keeping the start and end of our flow. This effectively simplified the prototype and once again brought us in line with our research and problem statement.

The Solution

1

User wants to make a positive impact in the local community and the environment.

We start with onboarding that highlights Vinnies core mission in relation to the application. This gives The user peace of mind to continue, as highlighted in our research “will often research a charity before committing”.

2

User sometimes struggle with finding drop-off locations and knowing what to donate

For this flow we explored the solution for user donating based on their location. We prioritised this flow because our research demonstrated that people value being able to donate when it’s in close proximity.

3

User always tries to be mindful of what they give

Our research showed that different locations allow different items so we followed the accepted location with what that specific location could and couldn’t accept.

4

User wants to donate in a variety of ways

Part 1

Once The user has viewed what their local vinnies accept and doesn’t accept they are prompted to donate via pick up or drop off. If user chooses to book a pick up they’re prompted to enter their pick up details. If they choose to drop off they are shown the best route to the store.

For this flow we explored the solution being in relation to the user donating based on their location. We prioritised this flow because, as mentioned previously, our research demonstrated that people value being able to donate when it’s in close proximity.

5

User wants to donate in a variety of ways

Part 2

Lastly, user lands on a page that allows them to also leave a monetary tip as they want to be able to donate in a variety of ways. We used ux writing to make some fun copy that tied back to The user’s commitment to the environment “You’ve stopped us filling the tip, why not also leave a tip”.

Outcome

The app met user goals by streamlining the donation process, attracting better quality donations, and increasing revenue for Vinnies to help those in need. We provided clear information about what items are accepted and where to drop them off, while also helping users be mindful of their donations. This led to higher-quality donations and improved Vinnies’ brand image.

Takeaways

  • Improved donation quality will save Vinnies money and time spent sorting unusable items, freeing up staff time and budget for Vinnies to prioritise their core mission of aiding those in need

  • Creating a clear user archetype helped guide our design decisions and ensured that we were designing with our target user in mind.

  • Creating a fast low-fi prototype allowed us to test our solution with potential users and iterate quickly. While creating a very simple hi-fi prototype validated the ease of use for our users, where they could access information quickly and understand what can and can’t be donated easily.

Next Steps for Virtual Vinnies

As this project focused on developing up an MVP and it was a short sprint we had to be strategic about the screens we were developing up further. However, from our ideation there was a next step we felt like could still be useful for users.

This would involve creating a screen, such as the below, for users to select the type of items they would like to donate and are provided with a list of locations that can accept those items, as our research found some locations wouldn’t accept certain items such as electronics.

The benefit for this feature would be so that users have an option of donating things that they have, with the goal of reducing landfill

My Personal Takeaways From This Project

The most demanding phase of the project was when we faced a critical decision point of removing a large feature from our MVP. As a team, we had invested considerable time and effort into the prototype, making it challenging to consider letting go of certain features. However, this provided an opportunity for me to facilitate a difficult conversation among team members which was a moment of growth for me.

This experience made me appreciate the importance of staying focused on the users' goals to guide our decision-making process.