Volunteer Management System
94.7%
Avg Volunteer Tasks
Success Rate
Role
Design Lead
Client
Alzheimer's SD
Timeline
Spring 2025
Team
3 Designers, 1 PM, 5 Engineers
Problem
Alzheimer’s San Diego (ASD) Volunteers lacked a centralized system to log their service hours, submit case notes, or stay updated on organizational news. This made it difficult for administrators to track volunteer metrics and for volunteers to remain engaged and informed.
Currently, ASD admins manually email each volunteer with their volunteer session feedback, and volunteers handwrite their session logs at the ASD office.
Solution
I designed a comprehensive volunteer management platform. Key deliverables included:
A user-friendly form for volunteers to record their service details, hours, and notes
An administrative dashboard for tracking volunteer metrics and generating statistics
A homepage to centralize announcements and updates for all volunteers
Results
Implemented and shipped ASD volunteer management platform with enhancements that reached 94.7% success rate for key volunteer functions.
View Admin Feedback
90.0%
Success Rate
Logging Session
92.3%
Success Rate
Plan Future Session
100%
Success Rate
Background
Alzheimer’s San Diego is an nonprofit dedicated to supporting individuals and families affected by Alzheimer’s disease. It has provided caregiver support, community education, and clinical services throughout the San Diego area. ASD has a network of 200+ active volunteers.
Discovery
After the first kick off meeting with our client, I did a deep research on ASD’s mission and services. I found that there are two types of volunteers: ALZ ALly and ALZ Companion, each has their unique requirements and responsibilities. Since this is a 0 to 1 product, we started off with conducting competitive analysis of other products.
Competitive
Analysis
Admin's Pain Points
Met with ASD's volunteer admins to understand their struggles as admins.
01
Volunteers Don't Keep Up to Date with Logging Sessions
Volunteers struggle to keep up to date with logging sessions. They either forget or lose track.
02
Different Volunteer Roles
ASD has two types of volunteers, ASD Ally and ASD Companion, each has their unique requirements and responsibilities.
03
Inefficient System
Right now, admins have to manually email each volunteer feedback based on their report. This gets frustrating and unstructured.
04
Unpredicability
Admins don’t know when a volunteer is going to have a session, or when they plan to come into the office.
Volunteer Insights
Sent out 30 surveys to students who are volunteers at UCLA and conducted 3 user interviews to discover their pain points and shape new features.
01
Volunteers Don't Keep Up to Date with Logging Sessions
“Direct messaging with a volunteer admin” seems to be unnecessary (1/5 participants chose this feature)
02
Summary and Infographics
“Summary of total hours in portal” is a popular wanted feature (5/5 participants)
03
Autofill Based on Past Sessions
Additional feature: autofill the description of duties for logging hours under the same event (ex. you volunteer weekly at the food bank and log hours, for each food bank entry, allow autofill of the task you did if you volunteer and do the same tasks each time)
Translating Research Insights into Design Choices
Top 5 Admin-Facing Features
Translating Research Insights into Design Choices
Top 5 Volunteer-Facing Features
Design System
I ran through the features with our client and decided on branding guidelines, making sure the color combinations passed Accessibility Guidelines.
Design & Iterations: For Admins
Some of my inspiration came from Saas products like Asana and Confluence as well as Google Calendar and Notion, which had clean flows for managing tasks.
01
Publishing Announcements
While designing the announcement flow, I studied platforms like Piazza and Stack Overflow. Key takeaways included saving drafts, adding tags, and filtering—features that help admins manage posts. I replaced the modal with a full page to give users more space and time, similar to Notion’s property creation flow.
02
Validating Hours
In addition to validating hours from the home page, admins can access it from the volnteer activities page or each individual's profile. Admins have the ability to approve, add feedback, and send back a session.
Design & Iterations: For Volunteers
Some of my inspiration came from Saas products like Asana and Confluence as well as Google Calendar and Notion, which had clean flows for managing tasks.
01
Logging & Planning Hours
Standard fields like name, date, and time are included. ASD admins also wanted volunteers to report their daily activities. I chose V2 (side panel) over a modal because it feels less urgent and keeps users anchored in the current view. This allows them to reference their calendar and original page while logging hours, creating a more comfortable experience.
02
Volunteer Home Screen
I designed the volunteer home screen with widgets for announcements, stats, and hour logging. Inspired by dashboards, I prioritized planning and logging hours over showing past logs, which volunteers rarely revisit. After speaking with an admin, I added the ability to log future sessions—helping admins anticipate availability, similar to Google Calendar.
03
Viewing Feedback
Testing
3 Moderated user testing, 30 Unmoderated user testing. I asked the client for active volunteers to participate in a moderated usability testing where I asked them to think out loud, evaluate features, and complete specific tasks.
I also sent out an unmoderated usability test using the interactive Figma Prototype to student volunteers through a user testing platform Maze.
Key insights:
Viewing Admin Feedback
"I kept looking at the first table and missed the second table where it said view. Although there is a red dot but I still had to process it so it wasn't straightforward right away"
Revision
Adding "notifications" section on home page
Logging Hours
"Finding the log hour is confusing…I'm not sure where to find the button to log the hour… too many button choices"
Revision
Clarifying button content & utilizing primary & secondary button styles
Measuring Success
Based on the 30 unmoderated usability tests I conducted, I gathered success metrics.
View Admin Feedback
90.0%
Success Rate
Logging Session
92.3%
Success Rate
Plan Future Session
100%
Success Rate
Next Steps
Stay in touch with ASD. Gather more feedback as volunteers transition to using this product.
Reflection
01
Listen Carefully, Listen Deeply
Understanding what my client wants is crucial. Nothing is more important than actively listening to them and asking clarifying questions. Listen more, speak minimal.
02
Leading a Team
First time leading a team is intimidating. I'm so grateful for my fellow designers who spoke up everytime they had a different idea—always led to something intriguing. Lots to thanks to my PM who had my back, and the engineers.
03
Working with Engineers
After the first hand off to engineers, I checked-in regularly to ensure no flows were missing and we were aligned.
Healthcare, Management, Design
With a passion for healthcare and tech, I explored and emphasized the significance of their unique UI/UX challenges and responsibilities due to their direct impact on people’s well-being. Key factors that make them significant include:
🩺 High-Stakes Usability
Errors in interface design can lead to medical mistakes. Clear, intuitive design is essential to avoid confusion in critical tasks like medication tracking, patient monitoring, or scheduling.
📋 Data Density
Medical records, vital stats, and histories are complex. Good UI/UX simplifies information without losing accuracy—often using smart hierarchy, grouping, and visualization.
⏱️ Time Sensitivity
Clinicians often need to access or enter data quickly, sometimes under pressure. Efficient navigation, minimal clicks, and smart defaults are critical.
🧠 Trust & Empathy
Patients need to feel safe, understood, and supported. Friendly microcopy, calm color palettes, and empathetic tone help humanize digital experiences.
San Francisco, CA