Simplifying volunteer engagement with scalable tools
VolunTrack
Timeline
15 weeks
Role
Product Designer
Team
1 PM • 1 EM • 2 Designers • 5 Developers
Tools/Skills
Figma • Notion • UX Design • Engineering Collaboration • Client Management
Overview
What if we designed a central system to help nonprofits manage administrative work?
Solution
VolunTrack, making nonprofit management simpler for everyone.
Our team designed and developed a role-based platform that helps administrators automate events and tracking while giving members one unified place to stay connected and engaged.
Nonprofit Needs
Reduce manual work and increase communication
Across both organizations, administrators were spending valuable time managing information across disconnected tools, while volunteers and members struggled to stay informed.
Managing across platforms is difficult and inefficient
Administrators spend hours transferring information into spreadsheets. Managing volunteers across platforms is hard to maintain, especially for tracking, communicating, and supervising events.
Volunteering needs easy communication
Without clear communication, members relied on informal messaging. Volunteerss needed a centralized place to receive updates, connect to the organization, and sign up for activities.
But, the original platform didn't support expanded needs
VolunTrack was originally built to support a single workflow for one nonprofit. As more organizations found the need for a similar management platform, the original needed to be expanded to account for diverse needs.
Event creation was limited, with no support for recurrence, tasks, or approval. Registration relied on external communication for any last-minute changes or updates.
Volunteers had little insight about the work, few registration updates, and no place to connect with others or view event changes.
Updating the Old
Revamping limited features, with new extensions for expanding organizations.
Looking through old features, our team moved forward adapting current work to balance new flows for management, approvals, and volunteering.
Event Creation & Editing
The revamped event creation and editing reorganizes the event form to prioritize scheduling and tasks, adds recurrence , and builds task creation within events to support volunteer sign-ups.
Event Registration Approval
A new approval portal allows for easy reviewing of registrations and lets admins to manage participation.
Event Information & Registration
In the updated registration page, consolidated information reduces disconnection and key information is shown during registration. Together, these changes ease administrative supervision and volunteer registration.
Calendar Filtering
An updated calendar with time filters increases easy participation and reduces visual overload, helping volunteers plan their schedule and involvement effectively.
Testing It Out
New designs put to real use.
After developing new features and updating previous flows, we tested our prototype with task-based talk-alouds with each nonprofit.
Here's what we found…
Unclear visual styling decisions caused points of confusion
Multiple participants tried to click colored text expecting it to be a link. Our design system didn't clearly distinguish interactive parts from static text, so we standardized our links and buttons with hover and active states.
Visual feedback confirms users' progress
Some participants were unsure whether their event registration was successful without clear confirmation states. We went back to add confirmation messages and button states as a reflection of the user’s event status.
Examples of updated design changes based on user feedback.
Final Designs
One platform built to support complex workflows and clear communication.
The final designs bring together streamlined workflows, flexible configurations, and clearer messaging to support the distinct needs of administrators, volunteers, and members.
Administrators
Event Management, Shift Approvals, Customization
Administrators can create and edit task-based events on a recurring basis, track and manage volunteer sign-ups, and customize their volunteering site through one centralized portal.
Volunteers
Personalized Home, Centralized Information, Event Registration
Volunteers gain tailored access to their nonprofit's platform, complete with individual onboarding, organizational updates and progress, and easy access to event discovery and participation.
Continuing the Work
AARF and ZAMI NOBLA, now with VolunTrack 2.0.
VolunTrack 2.0 deployed our extensions to support both nonprofits within a single platform, with more to come. As new nonprofits depend on the program and necessitate new features, our work will provide the foundation for VolunTrack 3.0, with continued work to expand the platform's capabilities.
What I learned…
A solid core supports branches
Scalability doesn't rely on individuality and separate features, it works on solid foundations that can adapt to evolving needs without rehauls.
Discussion = development
Throughout our initial interviews and user testing sessions, consistent feedback with clients clarified our paths forward and helped us make valuable design changes to better the product for end users.
