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Volunteering in St. Louis

In this school project, our team generated 2 distinct design solutions that would facilitate the process of medical students finding volunteer opportunities in St. Louis.

School Project · Health Tech

Problem

St. Louis is an area bustling with opportunities for medical students to volunteer and utilize their skills to aid the community. However, students face challenges due to confusing databases like Keystone and limited time for research, making it hard to find the ideal program that matches their preferences, skills, and schedules.

Objectives

We were prompted with the question, how can medical students be better supported while finding volunteer work in the St. Louis community?

  • Identify pain points and challenges for busy medical students

  • Research & evaluate current systems for finding volunteer opportunities in St. Louis

  • Develop the feature to be seamlessly integrated into existing systems, minimize time demands on medical students, and enjoyable to use

Stakeholders

  • Local health & wellness volunteer programs and coordinators

  • Students from Washington University in St. Louis' medical school

My Role

For this project, we worked in a team of 4. We all contributed to the initial background research and concept development. One team member prototyped concept 1. Another member prototyped concept 2 and the third conducted the interviews. In each stage and concept idea, I made the storyboards and sketches.

Problem Statement

How might we help medical students have a more efficient experience of finding volunteer programs that properly align with their interests?

VISUAL FRAMEWORK OF CHALLENGES

Design Process

Initial Research Findings

  • Abundant volunteer opportunities for medical students in St. Louis

  • A diverse patient base in nearby communities offers exposure to a variety of health cases

  • Volunteer programs in the area differ, with some focused on specific health issues and others covering a broad range of services

User Interviews Debrief

Medical students

  • Medical students typically find one long confusing list of organizations

  • They prefer a list of specific available positions for better alignment with their interests

Volunteer Program Coordinators

  • Coordinators commonly use newsletters for outreach

  • Newsletters share information about upcoming opportunities and activities for medical students

  • This information is typically disseminated via email

Initial Synthesis

  • Organizations need more effective volunteer recruitment through newsletters

  • Students desire to join volunteer programs but face navigation challenges due to the existing unstructured opportunities list

Concept 1: Chrome Extension

Primary Research Findings

This Chrome extension feature streamlines volunteer opportunity research on databases like Google. It offers filtering options, categorizes programs with icons, and allows users to save programs of interest for future reference.

Our primary takeaway from further research was that lack of time is a big issue for students. Creating a whole new database to organize volunteer opportunities for students might sound appealing, but students are more comfortable using databases that they are already familiar with. Thus, the Chrome extension simplifies the search process by categorizing results with icons and highlighting matches with user preferences.

User Feedback

  • Positive feedback from medical students who found the extension helpful

  • User advice to add hover-over explanations for icons to simplify the user experience

  • Concerns about potential overload with both icons and highlights, leading to the addition of toggle buttons

  • In response, a 'heart' feature was added to allow users to save sites for later viewing

Areas of Opportunity

  • When researching, there is too much information to effectively organize by one person

  • Students struggle to assess if an organization suits their needs.

  • Icons and highlights are beneficial for visual learners in processing information

Design

STORYBOARD
HI-FIDELITY
HI-FIDELITY

HI-FI PROTOTYPE

Design Decisions

CONSIDERING ACCESSIBILITY

Concept 2: Informative Coffee Sleeves

Concept 2: Informative Coffee Sleeves

These coffee sleeves contain QR codes that direct students to different databases with information on opportunities in various fields of interest. Every week, three different organizations will be “featured” on the sleeve, but the QR code with the database will remain the same.

Primary Research Findings

The coffee sleeves contain QR codes that lead users to a virtual platform (the database “United Ways”). We learned from talking with medical students that the process of researching can be stressful and overwhelming. With this idea, students are able to gain exposure to a wide range of volunteer programs without any added effort on their part — they just keep getting their coffee.

User Feedback

  • User feedback emphasized the simplicity of integrating the idea into an existing system instead

  • This is seen as more efficient for students, requiring no changes to their lifestyle or schedule

Areas of Opportunity

  • Researching volunteer opportunities is overwhelming and challenging to organize

  • Medical students struggle to find time for this time-consuming process

  • The use of analog resources, like coffee sleeves, provides a fresh and interesting approach compared to the mundane online options

Design

STORYBOARD
HI-FIDELITY

Design Decisions

Interaction Design Studio
Washington University in St. Louis | Fall 2022
Professors Annemarie Spitz & Liz Kramer