Comments on: Designing for donations

By: Fight hunger together

Fight hunger together — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 05:18:47 +0000

Found your page and really liked it thanks for sharing!

By: indie_preneur

indie_preneur — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 23:31:55 +0000

Nice walkthrough of how a charity, or charitable organization, can go about redoing their donations process to entice people to give more AND make it easier to do so. I love the idea of adding a ‘I can only afford’ option — yes it’s less than optimal, but I’m 100% sure all would rather get some than none.

My wife and I donated to http://www.worldvision.org for our Wedding gifts, and as I can recall their donation process was pretty useful in terms of letting us know what we were paying for with our donations.

Nice info and good topic!

By: John (Human3rror)

John (Human3rror) — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 14:28:35 +0000

love this. thanks for the great examples!

By: Jim Munro

Jim Munro — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 19:06:41 +0000

Good suggestions to not only make it easier to give, but to make it obvious what you’re contributing towards.

Definitely playing on pride and generosity here is a good thing, and yet still effective.

Thanks for the ideas!

By: Jaan & Andreas

Jaan & Andreas — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 14:23:04 +0000

@ PS Thank you, good points! The illustrations do not include some of the final elements (like the submit button). We chose to instead focus on illustrating how the goal of making more people give, and give more, can be reached by re imagining something like the donation screen.

If screen #4 was a final deliverable it would indeed have all the relevant elements on it, including the header, footer and all those other bits. And in this case, also a progress indicator of the type e-commerce sites often use to good effect (“view order – shipping address – payment details – review/place order”).

In the actual exercise screens that followed #4 these were put in place, and the whole final suggested experience was very nice, tidy and without any reasons for doubt. Clarity always wins.

For the next step-by-step post we’ll make sure to note what the illustrations deliberately omit. Thanks for high-lighting it!

By: Greg Wolkins

Greg Wolkins — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 14:03:33 +0000

Not only is this a nice case study, it could serve to demonstrate to management the thought process that should go into every design decision.

By: Louis

Louis — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 01:00:17 +0000

Jaan & Andreas,

Excellent article. This is a very good example of how usability/UI/UX should be analyzed, regardless of the industry being discussed.

Very good read, thanks.

By: robbydesigns

robbydesigns — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 21:35:29 +0000

Nice article with some great points made, I don’t offer gratis design but I am sure these tips will help with a design I am in talks about for a relatively well known charity.
Thank you.

By: PS

PS — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 18:36:26 +0000

Nice article, but the button in iterations 3 and 4 throws me. It casts doubt in my mind about what the button is going to do and increases the chance of me not clicking it at all. Here are some questions this form might raise:

1. “If I press this button, am I agreeing to donate $20? What happens next?”
2. “If I press this button, is it going to add $20 first and THEN submit the form?!”
3. “This $10 link, does it take me to another page? It’s a link after all.”
4. “Perhaps the button just adds $20 to what’s already in the field?”

Also, think of the user that actually only wants to donate $20. They might click the button (which raises the amount to $40) and then think ‘oh, hang on, there are some more fields I need to fill in, and there’s a submit button!”. In that case, the user is going to be peeved they’ve just donated $40 instead of $20 and the level of trust is lost.

I don’t think we’ve come to a conclusion here without seeing the bigger picture. Perhaps a submit button further down would stop the first three questions, but every time you raise doubt in the users mind, you’re running the risk of no donation at all, surely?

By: Jaan & Andreas

Jaan & Andreas — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 16:58:09 +0000

Thank you Nicole, we’re glad you found the post useful and hope some of our ideas will come in handy in your next charity related project.

By: Nicole Foster

Nicole Foster — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 15:46:59 +0000

Thanks for the great article! I have had a few opportunities to design for charity/donating websites, but the biggest challenge is make the user feel sympathetic and to make them donate. This article did a good job of explaining the donating part (:

By: Paul Gordon

Paul Gordon — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 14:24:11 +0000

Great article! I might try this tactic the next time I want a pay rise….