Case study
Voluntee
Help them, help yourself: a platform that turns the will to help into real action, with no bureaucracy and no distrust.
- The product
- Voluntee is a platform — app and web — that connects people with volunteering opportunities. It centralizes an offer that's scattered today, cuts the bureaucracy (you upload your documents once) and adds the missing layer: transparency and recognition of impact.
- My role
- A team product-design project. I took part in the full cycle: research (desk research, netnography, benchmarking, SWOT, survey and interviews), synthesis (user personas, empathy maps and customer journeys), defining the value proposition and UX/UI design, through to the high-fidelity prototype and the visual system.
- Audience
- People who want to help but don't know where to start — from the 24-year-old beginner who arrives via social media to the 50-year-old experienced volunteer who demands clarity. On the other side, the NGOs and organizations that want to recruit and coordinate volunteers with ease.
- The challenge
- The barrier isn't motivation — it's trust and simplicity. We had to cut the bureaucracy, clarify what volunteering actually is (66% think it's paid) and convey security about how legitimate each organization is.
- Scope
- An academic postgraduate team project, with no real database of organizations; the challenge was to design a credible, transparent and inclusive experience — from the beginner to the 65+ segment — grounded in primary research.
The conflict
There are plenty of people willing to help, but the experience of getting started is a wall: paperwork, long waits, unclear tasks and information scattered across dated websites and informal groups. On top of that comes distrust — “are they taking advantage of the volunteer? is the organization legitimate?” — and a foundational confusion: many people aren't even clear on what volunteering involves. The research verdict was blunt: users don't lack motivation, they lack trust and simplicity.
The process — Double Diamond
We worked with the Design Council's Double Diamond model (Discover, Define, Develop, Deliver) to make sure we were solving the right problem before ideating solutions. In Discover we combined desk research, netnography, a benchmark of seven platforms, a SWOT matrix, a survey and interviews. In Define we synthesized two user personas — Marina, a beginner who arrives via social media, and Carlos, an expert demanding about information — with their empathy maps and customer journeys.
Key findings
Research painted a mostly first-time user who arrives on a friend's recommendation and looks for flexibility (helping out on a one-off, monthly or yearly basis). The biggest barrier is unclear information: over half would take part more if it were transparent and organized. And an expectation to correct: two in three believe volunteering can be paid — a sign the onboarding has to educate before it asks.
Positioning
Benchmarking against players like hacesfalta.org, Worldpackers or Moviliza-T revealed apps that are barely functional, with no filters tuned to a volunteer's real needs and no sign-up based on their profile. Voluntee positions itself exactly there: clarity, transparency and less bureaucracy, with its own visual system — gold-green and lavender, Space Grotesk and Futura type — that's fresh and contemporary, breaking from the typical NGO aesthetic without losing professionalism.
The proposal
Voluntee centralizes the offer and orders it with advanced filters (experience level, type of organization, duration, social impact and format). It attacks bureaucracy with a profile where you upload your documents just once, and builds trust with verification badges, reviews from other volunteers and an onboarding that clarifies what volunteering is — and isn't. It closes the loop with recognition of impact: certificates, accumulated hours and a summary of your footprint for your CV.
Voluntee
From intention to impact
Sixteen screens cover the Voluntee experience: initial education, access, opportunity discovery, filters, tracking, conversation and profile management.
