Case study
Match4Action
Rethinking how people discover volunteering opportunities around their interests, skills and goals.
Match4Action is a platform connecting people with volunteering opportunities. I joined the team during the Stanford Rebuild sprint, initially as a researcher, and took ownership of UX design when the project needed a dedicated designer.
The existing platform had significant usability issues, so we explored a new experience built around a simple idea: rather than showing everyone the same catalogue of opportunities, could we help people discover opportunities that felt relevant to who they were and what they wanted to develop?
Role
Sole UX Designer & Researcher
What I worked on
User research · Product definition · Information architecture · User flows · Wireframing · UI design · Prototyping · Usability testing
Platform
Responsive web / mobile
01 / Research
What I needed to understand first
Understanding what makes a volunteering opportunity feel relevant
Before designing anything, I wanted to understand what actually motivates people to volunteer, what gets in the way, and what they hope to get from the experience.
I combined surveys and interviews to look for patterns in people’s motivations, frustrations and expectations.
The survey received 143 responses, which gave me a broader view of how people think about volunteering and what they value when deciding whether an opportunity feels worth their time.
What stood out
48% saw volunteering as a way to find more purpose in life.
The most common motivations were learning new skills, networking, and finding purpose.
87% said meaningful relationships played an important role in defining their sense of purpose and well-being.
79% said giving back to society played an important role.
The pattern was clear: people were not looking for just any volunteering opportunity. They were looking for something that felt relevant to their interests, goals, and reasons for volunteering.
02 / Audit
The existing experience was getting in the way
Match4Action already had a platform for discovering volunteering opportunities, but a cognitive walkthrough revealed recurring usability, navigation and consistency issues. Rather than patching individual screens, the team decided to rethink the experience from the ground up.
Below are just some of the issues discovered during the website audit and how they affect the user experience:
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03 / Design
Key design decisions
Making opportunities feel personally relevant
Research showed that people approached volunteering with different motivations, from learning new skills and meeting people to finding purpose and contributing to society.
Instead of presenting everyone with the same catalogue of opportunities, I designed the experience around a more personalised model. Users could explore opportunities connected to their interests, experience, strengths and skills.
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Not everyone wants to take a test
The guided test could help users discover opportunities they may not have considered, but I didn’t want it to become a barrier for people who already knew what they were looking for.
I therefore designed two main paths: a guided flow that used the test to recommend relevant opportunities, and a free-browse flow for users who preferred to explore independently.
Early exploration of the guided and free-browse flows.
Mapping the guided test journey from landing page through to matching.
Extending the experience beyond finding an opportunity
The research suggested that volunteering was often tied to broader goals such as skill development, career exploration and meaningful relationships.
That led us to explore mentorship and learning resources alongside volunteering opportunities, giving users additional ways to learn about an area of interest and connect with people who had relevant experience.
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Explore the prototype
The high-fidelity prototype was used for the final round of usability testing.
Testing continues below
04 / Testing
Did the new experience work?
I tested the final prototype with 3 participants, asking them to:
- / find a volunteering opportunity
- / apply to an opportunity
- / save an opportunity to their favourites
100% task completion
All three participants successfully completed the assigned tasks: finding an opportunity, applying, and saving an opportunity to favourites.
What testing still revealed
Users initially missed a secondary CTA because it sat below the visible area.
After adjusting the design, the issue no longer appeared.
All tasks were completed within 2 minutes.
The test was small, so I wouldn’t treat these results as proof that every usability issue had been solved. But it gave us confidence that the core flows were understandable and highlighted one concrete interaction issue that could be corrected before implementation.
05 / Reflection
Looking back
I originally joined Match4Action as a researcher and stepped into the UX design role when the project needed someone to take ownership of the experience.
Looking back, I would be more deliberate about separating the core product hypothesis from everything that grew around it. Match4Action evolved from improving volunteer discovery into a broader experience involving personalised recommendations, mentorship and learning resources.
If I approached it today, I would validate the central bet first: does guided personalisation actually help people find opportunities that feel more relevant than a well-designed browse and search experience? I would define success around relevance, completion, saves/applications and return behaviour, and let that evidence determine which parts of the broader concept deserved to be built next.
The biggest thing I would change is not the amount of research or collaboration, but the order in which we tried to solve things: prove the smallest important idea first, then earn the complexity.