Project title: Easy Donation
About: The project is about designing an on-line donation management system to enable every person/household to donate anything easily. As many charity organisations are making a big effort to collect donations. It is quite costly and inefficient for charity organisations to do on-door envelope distribution and collection. While many people have unwanted things at their homes, they couldn’t donate due to time limitations. The basic idea is to help people to select preferred charity organisations and send the donation information on line to inform charity organisations. Also to help charity organisations to provide better management of their resources and only make necessary door to door collections.
Project deliverable: The project deliverables for this project is a web application showing the donation management system, and a report to describe the stages and process of this project.
Originality: This project will enable me to design a site where people can choose their preferred organisations and send donations to them; similar to a “compare the market” website. This will not only help the people who use the site but also the charity organisations as it will cut down on door to door collections and make smaller organisations more noticeable.
Timetable:
Research (29/09/16 – 20/10/16) – This will involve researching similar donation/charitable sites, making note of the similarities and differences in the design and navigation. This will help me structure my own web application and improve on the flaws and also incorporate design ideas from other sites. This is one of the most important stages of the project as it will help spark ideas and create an initial proposal.
Wireframes / Initial Design (20/10/16 – 10/11/16) – I will be designing low fidelity wireframes (paper based or some online tool) for the initial design of the web application. I will also be brainstorming ideas on how the structure should be laid out through the research I have done. This will help me design a suitable prototype after getting feedback.
Prototyping (10/11/16 – 08/12/16) – When I finish these I can then design some high fidelity wireframes in Photoshop or some similar program. This will lead to the design of the final layout which I can implement into the web application, however this may change due to resources or testing. Prototyping is important as designs are going to change over time and new ideas will arise so it’s best not to jump straight into development.
Development (15/12/16 – ) – The development is the largest and longest stage, as this is the implementation of the design which can change due to resources and/or response from the testing of the initial design. The development stage may start earlier or later depending on how the project evolves, within this, I will be using a Laravel framework to help build my web application in PHP – therefore I will need some time to learn and practice using this framework.
Testing (After development) – Testing is the last stage and will be done once the implementation has finished, this is perhaps the most important stage as this will ensure that the site meets the needs of the parties using it. I will be performing some; functionality testing to verify the flow of the system and there are no dead pages. Some usability testing to test the navigation, interface and compatibility testing, and finally performance testing. I may do some security testing also as there may be payment transactions through this application however this will be through a secure channel such as PayPal.
Contents
Database Design (Class Diagram)
Interface and Compatibility Testing
This report will justify the ideas behind this project and the need for such a web application; furthermore it will explain the aims and objectives how this project was constructed as a whole.
Many people donate to charity, and many of them make regular donations whether its money, clothes or other items. Also, many charity organisations provide a door to door collection service for donations however this is something businesses are trying to reduce as it is not environmentally friendly. Charities issue bags to houses in certain areas near to them, then they have to make door to door collections in that area and sometimes there is nothing to collect; therefore a website that tells charities where there are available pickups is ideal.
This project has an interdisciplinary approach, exploring areas in human computer interaction and web development, and therefore relevant to a number of areas within computer science and multimedia.
The main areas in this report are;
Design & Human Computer Interaction – In order to develop an intuitive GUI, I will need to establish the requirements of the target audience and create an interface that is effective and simple.
Programming and Software Architecture – A number of programming concepts will be required in order for the application to work efficiently. Furthermore, software architecture, such as, the model view controller will be needed for the structure of the application.
Database – This project will require a carefully designed database, allowing data to be stored safely.
Web Development – Basic front end and back end web technologies will be used, such as, HTML/CSS, JavaScript, PHP and MYSQL. PHP Framework ‘Laravel’ will also be used.
Testing – A very important stage in this project and in any software development project. This will be done to ensure the application is working and find any issues that need to be fixed.
The overall aim of this project is to build an application that helps charities (large or small) to gain more donations, and to reduce door to door collections.
To achieve this aim it will involve completing the objective of designing and developing a web application.
Before any design ideas can be created, it is important to understand the type of user that will be using the application, and what the application has to do in order to satisfy their needs.
In this type of development, the purpose of the application or features designed will completely change in this project. This is especially true while taking an evolutionary acquisition approach, in using the iterative model; this will hopefully result in a much better design.
The intended users of this application will be charities and people who want to donate. Charities will want to manage/accept donations, while users will just want to be able to donate and keep a track of their donations. This website will also be useful for smaller charitable organisations that want to make a name for themselves.
A questionnaire was conducted in order to get a better understanding of the target users. This was sent out to the general public (via: Reddit) and got many responses. Furthermore, I went around with a questionnaire aiming it at charity shops to see how there door to door collections work and if this process is suitable, the results were collected and shown in the pie charts below.
Figure 1: Do you donate to charity?
Figure 2: Would you be interested in a web app that allows you to choose a charity to donate to?
Figure 3: If smaller charities are made available on the web app, would you be more inclined to donate to them?
These are the three main questions that will provide a general idea of how easy it is for people who donate, and also whether a web application is suitable.
The first question asked if people donate to charities, as times and trends change this result can differ. As shown by the results still 75% of people who took this questionnaire said that they still donate to charities so a web application can still be useful. The second question asked if a web application is needed to choose a charity from and nearly 90% said that an application such would be a very useful tool, this shows that a web app is needed so people can easily find the charities they want to donate to. The third question asked was to see if a web application would benefit smaller charities against the more popular ones when it comes to donating, and over 90% of people said they would be more inclined to donate to smaller charities if they were available on a web application.
Secondary research involved, looking at similar web applications that are already on the internet. For this project, this would involve, charity sites and any kind of application where the user is able to donate.
Figure 4: Home page of British Heart Foundation.
This website has a consistent red colour scheme, a maximum of around three colours is used to draw the user’s attention; too many colours can do the opposite effect. When booking a free collection, it is a very simple process of filling in your personal details and then collection dates and times, the user also does not have to be a member in order to donate – this is a good idea because many users don’t want to make an account for just a one-time donation.
Figure 5: Donation page of British Heart Foundation
The donation process is easy, and the website provides you with easy visual links to how much the user wants to donate.
Figure 6 & 7: American Heart Foundation – Home & Donation process.
The American Heart Foundation only allows the user to donate money, from the homepage it does not look spectacular, but when the user goes through the donation process, it is designed intelligently with buttons and minimal text. As shown from figure 4, the items the user has to select are chosen from an icon instead of standard text button.
Figure 8: Next Gen Climate homepage.
This websites design is very elegant, as it stripped all the information (text) and populated the site with images that link to different parts of the site; the only text used is on the navigation bar for quick access. It can be quite tedious for new users to navigate on the website as it is ‘in-your-face’. The downsides to this website is that you have to be a member before accessing most features, this will not be implemented into the web application however some of the design features will be taken into account.
Figure 9: JustGiving homepage.
The JustGiving website is a very similar application to the one that is to be built, as it has a search base for all charities to donate to.
The donation process is very simple and the type of style that I will be implementing into my web application.
Once on the chosen charity, there is a link to their social platform and an option to make a fundraise also. This project should have a donation process similar to this and may implement a place to leave a message.
Figure 10: Just Giving search page.
Figure 11: Just Giving search page – charity page.
Figure 12: Just Giving donation page.
Figure 11 and 12 show how to donate to a charity on the website, it is a very simple process with a clean interface, which is something that should be taken into account when building the application.
Personas are a good way to be able to design to the type of user and to understand/communicate with how my application will be useful to these types of users. Below is an example of a persona.
| Name | Kevin Jericho |
| Age | 32 |
| Description | Kevin has recently moved out of his parents’ house in Leicester after finding a well-paid job in Birmingham City Centre. Kevin is now living in an apartment alone. |
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