Creative Fields // User research, Wire framing, Prototyping, User testing and task scenarios
Client // CHIMP

Project details

Customer and internal feedback indicated the charity search on CHIMP.net was in much need of improvement. The results lacked relevancy and the logic of results shown and did not match up to expected behaviour of other search engines. Some donors were not able to find the charities they were looking for and consequently could not complete their donation. The main problems identified were poor results returned when searching for known charity or group names and confusion in information displayed for similarly named giving groups or charities.

 

Design problem

How might donors find the charities or groups they are looking for more accurately and easily so they can take action on the right charity and reduce related support calls?

 

I reviewed the customer feedback from support call logs and survey responses and worked with our customer support team to identify common search issues they were encountering. I conducted a UX audit with the existing system and provided a report of best practice recommendations for the search engine functionality such as fuzzy searching and partial string matching. There were many usability issues uncovered in the UX audit where interaction patterns for filtering and sorting deviated from conventions.

 

These were addressed in new visuals for search results, which included a card format that surfaced key information so that donors can easily verify a charity or group among similar names. Different states for blank entry, first time searching and error states were also designed so that anyone search would not be met with an empty page with no feedback. Categories of suggestions for initial entry on the page were designed to incorporate light discovery and browsing. I develop test questions and clickable prototypes built in Justinmind for user testing. Search engine updates have recently been incorporated into the product, and the first page of results are now much more relevant and performant.