Our nonprofit partners were facing significant usability challenges with our donations and conversion management feature, resulting in low adoption rates. Organizations with limited tech resources had been providing feedback that the interface was confusing and difficult to navigate, creating a barrier to using a critical product capability. Recognizing the importance of serving this user segment effectively, I initiated a focused research effort to understand the root causes and identify solutions.
I conducted interviews with 8 nonprofit partners over a two-week period, using 30-minute exploratory sessions to uncover pain points and gather qualitative insights into their workflows and needs. I complemented these interviews with heuristic evaluations using Nielsen's usability principles to systematically identify interface issues. After synthesizing the findings into clear themes, I created a comprehensive presentation deck to communicate the research insights and actionable recommendations to the product team.
The product team implemented my recommendations and redesigned the donation flow based on the research findings. This led to a 40% increase in feature adoption among nonprofit partners over the following quarter. The impact of the work extended beyond the immediate product improvements—the VP of Product shared the findings with the leadership team, demonstrating the value of user-centered design research in addressing partner needs and driving measurable business outcomes.