Porpoise Conservation Society is a non-government organization and a registered charity dedicated to the conservation of all species of porpoise and their habitats.

There is a growing need for continuing donations towards conservation of porpoises. However, by not having a mobile platform, Porpoise Conservation Society did not fulfill the needs of millennials, a key demographic that is willing to donate to non-profit organizations if catered to through their preferred devices.

From our research, we found out that 40% of the millennials are enrolled in a monthly donation program, spend 3.7 hours every day on their phone and are most responsive from digital reach, rather than from the physical world.

We tried to put ourselves in the shoes of millennials and map their journey.

1. As millennials spend most of their time on phones, they would typically stumble upon a video about porpoise endangerment.

2. Curious to find out more, they would search and browse through the website and read up about the organizations' work and ways in which they can support.

3. One of the interesting ways in which they could support is through a symbolic adoption feature. As they navigate through this feature, they are left frustrated with lack of relevant information and disappointing incentives.

5. They finally leave the site without making any donation.

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Millennials don’t want to read lots of information to get fully informed about an NGO.

In order to understand our user group and their journey through porpoise.org's website, 5 interviews were inducted and the findings were synthesized into 3 main themes based on the existing website experience.

Although initially users showed a lot of interest and excitement at the porpoise adoption feature, they were eventually left disappointed with lack of specific information and a boring token certificate.

We saw an opportunity with this feature and wanted to enhance the user experience by building emotional connections between the users and adoption incentives.

Based on our interviews and research findings, we created an archetypical persona that would help us navigate as we ideate a solution.

Tina is a graphic designer from Toronto who wants to contribute her money towards charity more frequently, but is often left frustrated with the lack of clarity and engaging content. She wants to know how her donations are used and wants to feel rewarded for her contributions.

We found our UI inspiration with content that has engaging visuals and simple functional features that can be implemented through our wireframe and prototypes.

The old website was overwhelming, dark, plain and unengaging. We wanted to implement colors that make users feel excited, inspired and curious towards the organization. This could be achieved by adding a clean font style and text that won’t intimidate the user.

Research and UI inspiration ideas helped us sketch out some potential design ideas. There were 4 key screens that were identified to improve upon the donation experience via method of ‘virtual adoption.’

SCREEN 1: ‘Adopt a Porpoise’ home screen to educate types of species.

SCREEN 2: ‘Porpoise profile’ screen to showcase quantitative data.

SCREEN 3: ‘Virtual Porpoise’ screen which acts as an incentive to donate.

SCREEN 4: ‘Payments’ screen to complete the process of donation.

Solution sketches were developed into Lo-Fi grayscale wireframes to understand the usability of the app. This was an important step as the app started to get its form and purpose clearly laid out.

The home screen gathers scannable information about the organization, it's mission and ways Tina can help. This is done through an intro video and short textual blurbs that lead towards 'Adopting a Porpoise'

The symbolic adoption process is facilitated by creating personal incentives for Tina. She gets a fun peek at the locked virtual porpoises and how she can donate and unlock them. As she browses through the different species, a sense of urgency is developed through statistics and she learns how her contributions will be used towards the cause.

Tina sees the virtual Vaquita that she just adopted, but the other species are still locked! This gives her a fun reason to adopt more species. She can see some amusing characteristics of the Vaquita and can share her adoption with her friends, thus creating more awareness.