The majority of volunteers quit in their first two months
What contributes to that churn and what can a volunteer organization do to keep them returning?
OVERVIEW
DETAILS
Company
Time
Tools
SFSPCA
4 Months
Team
• Figma
• Miro
• Photoshop
Solo UI/UX researcher and designer
My Responsibilities
• Create end-to-end solution to problem
• Conduct research to find potential causes and pain points
• Ideate and create working prototype
• Conduct usability-testing and iterate
• Present findings
CONTEXT
80%
of new volunteers
stop showing up
-Volunteer Coordinator
I started volunteering at the SFSPCA and was talking to the volunteer coordinator at a Christmas party about some of the difficulties they’ve had retaining volunteers. Surprisingly, 80% of new volunteers stop showing up after two months. However, volunteers who stayed longer than six months tended to stay for years. This mostly involved younger volunteers.
PROBLEMS
The volunteer coordinator welcomed me to investigate the matter and see if they can do anything to improve retention.
The problems are:
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Discover what pain points volunteers are having.
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Investigate why volunteers no longer feel connected to the animal shelter.
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What support could they offer new volunteers?
SOLUTIONS
I wanted to primarily suggest solutions that could be implemented without much work, but one solution that would require more work would be the bulk of my case study.
Get volunteers comfortable reaching out to mentors
While there is a system for mentors or "Buddies," it is not utilized by beginner volunteers. Get new volunteers used to reaching out to mentors by involving mentors into training.
Create a resource app
There is an overwhelming amount of information for volunteers to keep track of. By having everything available in a mobile app that they can search through, it'll cut down on information overload.
Show the impact volunteers have
Acknowledge positive results from their volunteering by notifying them when dogs they helped get adopted. Facebook posts are easiest to implement. This reinforces that their efforts have an impact.
Make guides for new volunteers
The first shift is always hardest for beginners because they must remember and apply their training. Creating an online guide helps give them a set of protocols they can follow, should they not remember what to do.
DELIVERABLES
I am to present my findings and suggestions to the volunteer coordinator and demo how the app prototype would work. They would then show it to their supervisors and see if they should pursue making the app or any other changes.
DISCOVERING THE PROBLEMS
INTERVIEWING THE VOLUNTEER COORDINATOR
I began by interviewing the Volunteer Coordinator to learn about their difficulties and what they’ve tried. Due to COVID, they had to stop using volunteers for over a year, which decimated their volunteer pool when they reopened volunteering.
Since the SFSPCA is the largest animal shelter in San Francisco, outreach has never been an issue and orientations are usually full.
But because so many volunteers have stopped coming, they must constantly onboard new volunteers.
New volunteers getting trained
COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
Retaining volunteers is a common problem that any organization relying on volunteers encounters. I researched what worked for other non-profits and these were the common recommendations to keep volunteers engaged and returning.
Keys to Retaining Volunteers
Empower your volunteers by properly training them.
Provide resources to support them if they need help.
Show appreciation to your volunteers and acknowledge how valuable they are.
USER RESEARCH
I then posted a screener on the SFSPCA Dog Volunteer Facebook group and had over 20 people sign up to be interviewed. I conducted five user research interviews, primarily targeting volunteers with less than 6 months of experience. I selected men and women of various ages since our volunteers span from 20 to 80+.
However, a problem with this was that my subjects were active volunteers instead of those who stopped volunteering. Ideally, I would've interviewed people who stopped volunteering but they were difficult to find.
Interviews were about 30 min and covered these topics:
Discovery
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How did they find out about volunteering at the SFSPCA?
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How long have they been volunteering?
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What was their comfort level with dogs beforehand?
Training
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What was their training like?
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Was the class a good size?
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Did they have enough time handling dogs?
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Are there topics they wished were included in the training?
First Shifts
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Did they feel properly trained for their first shifts?
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Were there any surprises and if so, how did they deal with it?
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What could've made their first day easier?
Impressions
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What is your general impression of volunteering?
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Any pain points when it comes to volunteering?
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What do you think of the SFSPCA community?
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What might cause you to stop volunteering?
Volunteer experience level is represented by the color of their aprons. Tan aprons are beginners, blue aprons are intermediate, and red aprons are advanced.
DEFINING THE PROBLEM
SYNTHESIS
From the user interviews, I used Affinity Maps and Empathy Maps to organize common issues and feelings.
There were common themes that came up with interview subjects involving pain points:
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Everyone got physically lost on their first shift. This is due to the campus being incredibly confusing.
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Many thought having a mentor would've helped but didn't want to ask because they wanted to do it themselves.
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They felt overwhelmed by having to remember all the protocols and felt behind on changes to policy.
Each color corresponds to a different subject
Empathy map showing what volunteers experience
PERSONAS
From these maps, I focused more on a younger persona because my thought was they were more likely to stop volunteering, so we should work harder to retain them. This ended up being a mistake I'll get into later.
HOW MIGHT WE
Using these interviews and research, I made How Might We questions to summarize the three most important issues to address these problems:
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How might we better train volunteers to be more comfortable handling dogs?
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How might we better prepare them for their first shift?
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How might we show the impact of their work?
SOLUTIONS
From these questions, I arrived at these solutions:
1. Incorporate the Buddy System into training. There is a mentorship program but it's underutilized. Involving Buddies in training makes volunteers more comfortable in reaching out for support.
Resources for new volunteers
2. Alert volunteers when a dog they saw gets adopted. When they get alerts that a dog they interacted with has found a home, it acknowledges and appreciates a volunteer's work.
There is a chart, but it gets wiped every month and you might not remember names. The easiest implementation for now would be to create a Facebook post with the dog and their new owner. They sometimes do this already and people love seeing them, but making this standard will help morale.
A monthly chart showing adopted dogs
3. Create a mobile resource app. Volunteers feel overwhelmed or not up-to-date on changes from all the information presented to them so having an app would empower them to find information when needed. This is what I’ll continue building on as a spec project.
Workstations showing some of the information volunteers need to know
IDEATE SOLUTION
MINIMUM VIABLE PRODUCT (MVP)
I wanted to concentrate on having a Walkthrough Guide as my MVP and the user to have access to the most important information a volunteer would need, especially if they’re new. This would include maps, videos, door codes, and a way to call the volunteer hotline.
ARCHITECTURE
I used a sitemap, user flows, and task flows to identify what key features to include and how to organize sections.
With the constant flow of volunteers, the volunteer protocols are very linear. This was helpful since that made creating a user flow easier.
The initial sitemap. There were changes after usability testing.
This task flow shows the tasks that a dog volunteer has to go through during a shift.
PROTOTYPE
SKETCHING
I made my sketches with these things in mind:
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Bottom bar navigation for features that would be most needed. It evolved from just a button to call the volunteer hotline to include other important features like videos and maps. Sections that might be needed urgently.
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Accessible to use with one hand. If you’re carrying a leash, you might not have two hands-free
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No account is needed for now. For the MVP, this is primarily a resource app and I didn't want to lose people by having them create an account. In the future, accounts might be incorporated when there is a reason for it.
The Walkthrough Guide evolved from having one big scrolling page to a multi-page guide, similar to an onboarding flow, because it would be easier to separate into sections.
The bottom bar evolved from one button to contact the Volunteer Hotline to include other vital buttons.
MID-FIDELITY WIREFRAMING
Guides evolved from my sketches. Searchability was a key issue that needed to be addressed and my sketches didn't address that properly. I then tried an accordion menu which solved the issue by arranging all the information into sections.
Using accordion menus made things more organized but brought problems. More later.
HIGH-FIDELITY PROTOTYPES & DESIGN SYSTEM
Originally, the mid-fi used more colors to match their website which uses bands of different colors. In practice, for an app, it was distracting to constantly see different colors for different sections if the user navigated sections quickly.
Also, following their website, they had pictures of dogs everywhere. I found this to also be distracting, so I removed those images in favor of simple icons everywhere.
The SFSPCA home page
v1 - Mid-Fi Mockup
After working on the Mid-Fi v1 mockup, I started to refine the look to have fewer distractions with a color scheme inspired by the logo to make it consistent with their brand.
HIGH-FIDELITY PROTOTYPES - V2
v2
The hi-fi prototypes evolved from v2 to v3 to create a more defined hierarchy. The text was easier to read with more contrast, color was used to highlight links, and it was visually more apparent that the buttons were buttons.
v3
TESTING & ITERATION
USER STUDIES
I conducted four moderated usability tests by walking around the shelter seeking newer volunteers in tan aprons. Tests took 20-30min. Everyone was very receptive to helping.
TASKS
With our MVP and goals in mind, I had the following tasks for users. Some tasks had multiple routes they could take, so I was curious what felt more intuitive:
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It's your first day. You took the training a month ago. You're not sure what the protocol is. How do you get through your shift? (Guides)
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Try to locate where you are and how to get to the kitchen and Catherine's Playground. (Maps or Guides)
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You're having trouble leashing a dog. How would you find information to help? (Videos or Guides)
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You're returning from the playground to the kennel with a dog. Another volunteer with a dog is in front of you so you can't return the same way. How would you return the dog to its kennel? (Maps + Door Codes)
After they were done with the tasks, I had them freely use the app to get their impressions and see if there were any sections or features that they thought could be useful.
RESULTS
Users were able to complete most of the tasks, but some took a lot of seeking to find answers.
This lead to me rethinking how to organize some sections that caused confusion.
Here are more findings from the usability tests:
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Elderly users who were not tech-savvy had trouble navigating the accordion menus and identifying buttons. They also had issues reading smaller text.
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Bottom bar navigation was overlooked. Important pages were not spotted immediately, which was the intention of having them on the bottom bar.
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There were some sections that users thought were not as useful, and a few suggestions on what they did want included, like a FAQ and Fecal Chart.
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People preferred seeing photos of resources as opposed to rewritten text due to familiarity.
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Once users understood how the app worked, they really liked it and wished it was around when they first started.
SOLUTIONS
Here are suggestions to issues that came up:
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Redo the accordion menu with bigger, labeled buttons.
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Test if + and - signs make more sense for accordion.
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Take videos off the bottom bar because users didn’t think it was as important and overlooked.
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Navigation updates (logo should take to home screen) and bigger text for legibility.
ITERATE
One of the biggest changes was realizing that accessibility was a crucial issue to consider due to the number of elderly volunteers. They make great volunteers because they’re less likely to move away and more likely to be around long-term so I needed to make the app accessible to them.
This caused me to rethink my primary persona. My original persona was younger because they were more likely to stop volunteering. However, if the organization and navigation were clear and easy to use, the app would benefit younger users while being more accessible to elderly users.
Changing primary persona to focus on an elderly volunteer
For assets that already exist around campus, people preferred the familiar look. So instead of text, I swapped it with photos.
The last major change is the initial look of the Guides section. The collapse and expand buttons are bigger, more visible, and labeled. I made the first entry initially expanded to show how it works.
RETEST & RESULTS
I retested using another four subjects, making sure at least two were elderly.
Some of the key findings:
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While non-techy savvy users could figure out how the accordion menu worked, it wasn't intuitive and they didn’t realize to scroll down to see the other sections.
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Moving Videos off the bottom bar made it easier for users to find them as a button. Users associated the bottom bar with navigation instead of a specific page. Maps were difficult to find also because they didn’t look on the bottom bar initially, despite it being persistent
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There was confusion about what section the user was in, and users wanted an easier way to find more important pages.
Suggestions:
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Start with all sections in Guides collapsed.
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Move Maps off the bottom bar and onto the home screen.
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Add Saved to the bottom bar, with important pages saved by default. This allows for customization.
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Add a way for people to Save/Unsave pages.
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Use breadcrumbs instead of subheaders.
Before - v3
v2 with subheader, expanded accordion,
Maps in lower bar, no Saves
After - v4
v3 with (left) Maps moved to homepage, Saved in bottom bar, Saved Icons on buttons to show saved sections,
(right) Breadcrumbs, Saved button in top-right, and collapsed accordion
FUTURE CHANGES
Thinking ahead and after presenting my findings to the volunteer coordinator, there is plenty that could be done to make it more useful for staff and volunteers.
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Apply better functionality by linking the Calendar so it can be digitally edited and synced with the user's calendar. Integrate a way to sign-up for classes from the Calendar and get reminders of shifts and events.
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Become a hub for links. There are four different logins (signing in, changing your shift, signing up for classes, and checking out dogs) so that users can use the app as a hub instead of going to 4 different pages.
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Push notifications when a dog they visited gets adopted. This reminds volunteers of their contributions to helping. Push notifications would also work as reminders for their shift also.