A mutual aid hub
solAIDarity - Mutual Aid App
Project background
I served as the UX Design Lead for a team that participated in a week-long design sprint organized by UW Women in Informatics.
Mutual aid fosters grassroots relationships where people give and receive aid. However, disorganization and limited accessibility make it difficult for providers and requesters to connect with one another.
Purpose
The goal was to create a solution that focuses on raising awareness and use of mutual aid and allows people to both provide and request aid easily and efficiently from one place.
Research
We performed secondary research through analysis of existing mutual aid networks, news articles, and other resources to understand our problem space.
We identified two primary platforms that are typically leveraged for mutual aid:
Wide reach
Gain visibility
Community engagement
Instant sharing
Lack of structure
Limited discoverability
Overwhelming information
Inefficient system
User Interviews
Going into user interviews, we hypothesized that our solution would have two distinct types of target users:
Those who could provide aid
Those who could request aid.
We interviewed two subject matter experts with experience providing aid on mutual aid platforms and one person who had leveraged mutual aid during COVID.
User Profiles
Based on our user interviews, I created two general user profiles to help us better empathize with our main user groups and prioritize goals according to their needs.
Ideation
After analyzing user input, we brainstormed solutions through storyboarding and wireframing.
I then created a design system for our interface.
