by
Michele Miller, Director, Content Strategy
World Usability Day (WUD) happens every November across the globe, with professionals who research, design, and evaluate user experiences joining together for the opportunity to learn from one another. Designing for Social Impact is the focus of this year’s event, which takes place on Thursday, November 10th, 2011. Not on your calendar? If you’re reading this article then perhaps it should be.
This very topic is currently hanging in the ether at Empathy Lab. Every decision we already make has deliberate consequences and intentional outcomes to spark change in how people behave, communicate and do things in general. We are architecting human behaviors online. And this is at the heart of where design and usability partner up to go to the dance.
But in discussing the collection or donation of funds online, something changes when we’re no longer talking about the final outcome being a personal purchase. And even more challenging, the product is neither tangible nor for the user at all. So we basically want someone to be okay with giving money and getting nothing in return. Right. Okay, how does that happen?
Enter Patrick Marsceill. Patrick is a Philadelphia native, vintage motorcycle enthusiast and Senior Information Architect at Empathy Lab. His prowess as a user experience designer, developer and digital strategist were paramount in defining and designing new user experiences for the American Red Cross. And more importantly, in getting the Red Cross the results they need to thrive as one of the world’s largest non-profit organizations and most recognized brands.
Patrick will be speaking on the topic of designing for donors during the Delaware Valley’s 2011 WUD event. His presentation will include a live usability test and demonstration of the new mobile donations flow for the American Red Cross.
I pried him away from his computer, iPad, sketch pad, white-board, etc. to spend a bit of time discussing his experience working with the Red Cross in an impromptu Q&A.
What resonated most with you when absorbing and understanding the challenges of the American Red Cross?
What initially attracted me to working on this project was the brand. According to some research that I came across, the Red Cross is the second most recognized brand in the world. I haven’t done a lot of non-profit work in the past, but let me tell you that the digital landscape there is pretty bleak. For the most part you have these big organizations that don’t have any coherent online strategy, they tend to piece elements together as their needs evolve. This usually leads to a very fragmented, sometimes contradictory result. What resonated most with me about working with the Red Cross was the fact that they weren’t trying to be the best non-profit online. That’s like trying to be the tallest midget at the circus. The Red Cross was going after a much higher mark. They wanted their world class brand to have a digital experience to match.
How did you know Empathy Lab could help?
I knew we were e-commerce industry leaders; I’ve been involved with a number of successful projects at Empathy Lab… so I knew we were covered in that department. The team that we have working on the Red Cross is the best I’ve ever worked with. Hands down. When I look around from my desk every day, I am constantly amazed at what we have been able to accomplish so far… and we’re just getting started.
One of our early design tasks was to make a sterile transactional experience seem personal and human. We spent about a week white-boarding. Everyone was involved – Tech, Design, IA, PMs, AMs, Content Strategy. It was awesome and truly collaborative and our outcome was far beyond anything that I could have imagined for this client.
What is different about working with a non-profit?
I had no idea of the amount of scrutiny that every dollar is subject to when its goes through the donation process. The Red Cross has to be accountable for EVERYTHING, and provide the data to back it up. This posed a new challenge to our team, to have one more level of transparency to design for. What I found really cool about their donation model is that they let people decide how their donation dollars are spent, and have the accounting to prove it. That’s great.
What e-commerce tactics did you use when designing the new Red Cross experience?
You name it: from A/B testing, personalization, geo-location, user generated content, to automated checkout processes, Empathy Lab is taking a holistic approach in terms of e-commerce tools and tactics. One of the biggest tasks was creating one digital solution that allows the entire organization to create and serve localized and personalized content. We had to integrate content from over 600 local chapter sites and make sure that the specific content gets served to the right user based on location and behavior.
What makes the Red Cross different from a traditional e-commerce store?
At the highest level, both are providing a platform for people buying goods or services to satisfy a need. This is what a traditional e-commerce site does… But when you look a little deeper you start to see that there are a lot of differences.
Donors have a completely different set of behaviors and motivations than, let’s say, someone shopping for shoes. So we had to think about what donors were REALLY buying, and that is a really personal thing. One woman might say that she’s buying a tribute gift in memory of her Mom, where as another guy might be contributing to his local community, and someone else to the Japan Disaster Relief. This fundamental difference affected how we merchandized, prioritized, and humanized the donation process online.
How did the IA and visual design address donor needs and expectations?
From a set of donor personas we developed an over-arching five point strategy. The first point was to provide transparency about how donations were being used, and all of the different ways to contribute. We found that not everyone was comfortable donating online, and providing other ways to give was really important. The second point in our strategy was to elicit action from storytelling. This helps the donation process seem more human, and drives engagement through the donors’ empathy toward the cause they are potentially contributing to. Next, our strategy laid out a plan to show how every donation was impactful. We created an interactive information graphic that represents every dollar donation in its real world value. For example, if I donate twenty dollars, the graphic might show five water bottles, a blanket, and two comfort kits. This gives the donor something tangible to associate with their online donation. We also made sure that this impact and advocacy can easily be shared. Digitally, that lends itself nicely to tying in social networking integrations. Finally, the donor needed to be in control of their donation. Providing the ability to give to a certain designation, or through a branded corporate partner experience was key in empowering the user to give to a cause that was important to them.
Are any charitable organizations currently doing it right?
I think the sites that do it well have some basic things in common, but I have yet to see any sites that tie these all together…
1. There is a clear strategy behind how they are asking users to engage.
º Sparked is a platform that makes it easy to pair up people with certain skills to non-profits in need of those skills. People can accept specific tasks relating to their field of expertise and help out a non-profit organization at the same time.
2. Someone made it easy for the donor to give (time, money, skills, or whatever)
º Causes.com has a really nice streamlined donation funnel that is deeply integrated into Facebook making giving and sharing advocacy really easy.
3. There is a story to be told
º The World Food Programme does an excellent job story telling through infographics, articles, interviews, etc… This creates a level of empathy that other purely transactional sites lack.
I am hoping to tie these three big ideas into the new Red Cross experience across a number of different digital channels.
Describe the new Red Cross experience in five words…
Give and Get Hope Here
How can this experience be leveraged and expanded across multiple Red Cross initiatives?
We’re working on a few ways right now. First off, we’ve completely changed how the Red Cross provides their education and training. We’ve designed a robust system that lets you search, sign up for, purchase, and launch a class (if it is an online course). Secondly, we are designing a customized framework CMS that the Red Cross can use to create and serve personalized content. The higher level goal is to have a complete ecosystem of channels that can all be used to help the Red Cross stay engaged digitally, without fragmenting the different initiatives.
How has this experience changed you personally?
In the beginning I really didn’t know what to expect. Large non-profits tend to have this reputation as being big monolithic organizations with tons of bureaucracy. I expected this project to be boring, safe, and a hard one to be creative with. I couldn’t have been more wrong. The Red Cross completely shattered my perceptions of what working with an organization like this was like. They pushed us to do some of our most creative work to date. I think the fact that they are a non-profit works in their favor because they have a little more room to experiment and test things out online than traditional clients might game for.
And finally, for the record, do you own leather pants?
*Editor’s note:
Patrick was unavailable for comment on the final interview question before deadline.