Diary Study
As part of a project with a global nonprofit focused on ending hunger and poverty, I explored donor behaviour on Giving Tuesday, one of the biggest donation days of the year for many organizations. The goal was to uncover the factors influencing donor decisions during this period and identify both the opportunities and challenges nonprofits face in optimizing the donation process.
Methodology
I conducted a diary study using dscout to gain a deeper understanding of the donor journey and decision-making process leading up to and during Giving Tuesday. Engaging donors to document their experiences over the American Thanksgiving period allowed me to capture real-time insights and gather comprehensive data on the opportunities and challenges they faced throughout their donation journey.
Participants were asked to record their thoughts, emotions, and actions from the Wednesday before Thanksgiving through Giving Tuesday, covering key shopping days like Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday.
This approach provided rich, firsthand insights directly from donors, enabling me to move beyond surface-level feedback and explore the nuances of their decision-making. By analyzing these real-time entries, I identified key moments of engagement, pain points, and potential opportunities for improving the donor experience.
Deliverables
From this study, I created a journey map that illustrated the various stages, touch points, and emotions donors experienced leading up to Giving Tuesday. This map provided a clear visual representation of the donor experience, highlighting both opportunities to boost donations and barriers that hindered giving.
In addition, I identified key mental models related to Giving Tuesday and developed recommendations for designing experiences that align with these models. To support this, I crafted wireframes as a blueprint for potential experiences, integrating insights from the journey map and catering to the identified mental models for optimized donor engagement.
Together, the journey map and wireframes offered a comprehensive understanding of the donor journey, with actionable recommendations to enhance engagement and increase contributions.