This design challenge hosted by Adobe consisted of a 3-day sprint to name and design an app that turns personal values into actions that have a measurable benefit using technology to make supporting causes more than just a transactional experience. Our idea connected users with survivors of human trafficking on a more personalized level.

Prompt:

Name and design an app that turns personal values into actions that have a measurable benefit using technology to make supporting causes more than just a transactional experience

  1. Create the values-identifying/values-matching part.
  2. Identify the primary action(s) the app takes.
  3. Identify the recipient(s).
  4. Identify how the user will be rewarded for using the app.

Result:

We finished as a top 10 finalist out of the 80+ teams that participated and virtually presented our project to a panel of judges.

Design Challenge Brief


Anti-Human Trafficking Organizations Struggle to Provide Resources During COVID-19

Researchers and anti-trafficking advocacy groups, non-governmental organizations from 102 countries, including the United States, are now struggling to provide trafficking survivors with essential services and support during the coronavirus pandemic.

“Only 24 percent of anti-trafficking organizations said they would be able to remain fully operational without extra funding in the next 12 months.”

Our idea: empower users to learn, advocate, and engage with human trafficking survivors through personalized care packages.

Our app, Restore, aims to aid and amplify human trafficking survivors’ voices by providing educational resources, encouraging advocacy, and making a tangible impact through the gifting of personalized care packages with essential items and services that human trafficking survivors badly need.

    • Driven by their values and compassion for others
    • Generous with their time and money towards causes that they feel will positively impact the world but feel disconnected when those moments of giving feel more transactional
    • Want to feel an authentic personal investment with continual engagement and measure their impact in meaningful ways
    • Have a long-term outlook of the world and don’t get caught up with material possessions
    • Technologically competent and view items like smartphones and computers as tools rather than status symbols or fashion statements
    • Have a keen sense of ethical conduct and can expertly discern what is authentic and what is phony
    • Strong advocates of anti-human trafficking and want to find ways to help victims in need of meals, water, shelter, medical care, hygiene, and financial support

    The Challenge — 3-day sprint to build an app in Adobe XD

    My Contribution

    • Researching and uncovering our design challenge topic
    • Defining audience, scope, primary actions for the user
    • Informational Architecture
    • Visual Design
    • Interaction Design

    Constraints & Roadblocks

    • 3 day timeline
    • Full time jobs
    • COVID-19

    Day One —

    Getting familiar

    We began the design challenge by familiarizing ourselves with the prompt, defining the scope, and identifying what values and issues were important to us.

    With human trafficking being a worldwide issue that all three of us were passionate about, we discovered that anti-human trafficking organizations struggled to provide essential services during COVID-19.

    Matching common values for users and survivors

    Connecting common values with users and survivors

    Identifying who benefits, how they benefit, and primary actions for the user.

    Making sense of the app's purpose for all parties

    Day Two —

    Identifying how the user will be rewarded

    Statistically, 3/4ths of charitable financial supporters are more likely to give a second time with branded organizations, so we took that approach to create a narrative-led gifting experience rooted in compassion and trust. We wanted the app to benefit our users, survivors, and the future state of trafficking worldwide.

    We categorized care packages into four essential categories: 

    • Medical Care
    • Aftercare
    • Justice/Policy Making
    • Childcare

    Ideating the four essential categories for the care packages

    Brainstorming four essential categories for care packages

    With these categories, our app could impact the past, present, and future of human trafficking. We chose to give each category a specific partnership with existing organizations dedicated to building the compassion, trust, and credibility that we assumed our users needed to use the app continually. 

    Four essential care packages realized

    Educating the user

    Another important aspect was to educate and encourage the user to advocate for anti-human trafficking awareness. A section of our app would provide free resources and media to do just that.

    Visual design ideation

    Now that we had our foundation, we spent the second half focused on building the prototype through Adobe XD. We needed to create a visually distinct design that would emotionally resonate with our users if we wanted them to keep coming back. Evoking emotion with a calm color palette and personable typography, we created a persona and narrative for each care package category.

    Color Palette Inspiration

    Primary actions for the user

    Our user flow and critical path for the user

    Day 3 —

    Lo-fi prototype

    Lo-fidelity frames


    Final Presentation

    Our final prototype featured streamlined navigation that guided the user to learn more through recent uplifting stories and gifting care packages to a category that resonated with them. We submitted our work and were pleasantly surprised to find out that we were chosen as a finalist to present our work to a panel of judges. Ultimately, we didn’t win but were humbled and proud of the work we had done in such a short time.

    The finalists

    Announcing the finalists

    Hi-fi prototype

    Key Frames

    For the future, we'd love to develop three features:

    1. A more thorough breakdown of each user’s impact is based on the care boxes they’ve gifted, such as showing the # of women we've fed.
    2. Set up letter writing opportunities with each box to engage further giving and real love for one another. 
    3. Lastly, Restore desires to research these women’s needs with the help and feedback of real survivors to gain input and more insight into their needs to improve the care packages.

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