Crafting a seamless donation app experience

OVERVIEW

Adding a donation feature to the PayPal app

When the PayPal mobile teams began planning a consumer app overhaul, an opportunity to opened up to add an in-app donation feature. This feature brought awareness to the PayPal Giving Fund, PayPal‘s suite of donation tools, and appealed to charities considering joining the PPGF.

Old PayPal app experience

CHALLENGE

It will need to seamlessly integrate with the overall app

The primary app tasks include checking your balance and account activity, sending money, and paying off a credit bill. How might a donate feature fit in with these tasks? And why would someone use an app to donate instead of a charity‘s website?

APPROACH

Getting into research

Creating PayPal‘s first native donation experience meant that we had the opportunity to improve upon the current mobile web flow. To do this, I had to uncover the needs and pain points of mobile donors.

What participants said

I recruited individuals who had made a digital donation in the last six months for the in-depth interviews. In each session, I asked the participant to walk me through their last donation experience and tell me about what their ideal donation app could do.

Select quotes from participants

Benchmarking

I reviewed the strengths/weaknesses of competing donation tools.

Competitior analysis

Organizing the insights

After conducting the interviews, comparing competitive products, and reviewing industry insights, I compiled the findings into these themes:

And used the qualitative data gathered from the interviews to create two user personas:

Identifying and prioritizing features

Confident with the research findings, we needed to identify and prioritize what features would make it into the MVP of native PayPal Donate. My product manager and I took a deeper dive into the insights derived from the research.

Building wireframes

With our personas and features established, I created an information architecture and screen wireframes, leveraging components from the current app design for consistency. Once approved by the Product and Engineering teams, we began to conduct usability tests with the low fidelity mockups.

OUTCOME

Final designs

We released the MVP of the native Donate feature three months after the launch of the PayPal app redesign. The focus of the MVP experience:
• Easy charity discovery
• Funds transparency
• Quick donation flow

A sticky search bar at the top for users who know what they are looking for