Lead UX Designer
Researcher
How might we enable local communities to organize and help each other in times of crisis?
The team conducted 42 user interviews of students, locals and non-locals. We reached out to nine organizations, icluding CEMA (Chatham Emergency Management Agency) and the Savannah Animal Shelter, to hear from workers and volunteers operating during hurricane crisis.
People support each other emotionally during crisis. They found themselves most stressed when alone and communities support each other when going through the same trauma.
Donations are crucial for a successful relief program. People want to help others in need but don't know where to donate or what to donate.
Those who were prepared for a natural disaster had resources to spare, vs. those who were not had a higher chance to become ill.
We laid out our interviewees on a mindset matrix. We found that are users are on a spectrum of apathetic, distressed, people person, and individualist when in crisis. We realized that we were designing with extreme cases in mind and the majority of our target users fell in the middle.
Connect utilizes Google's existing platforms to match people to others in their community based on needs and resources. The goal is for communities to share resources and support each other through in person interactions.
Raise provides diverse channels for donations. Users can raise funds by watching ads, playing games, or by making a monetary donation.
Raises awareness by sharing and viewing crisis stories in your community.
A set of features living in Google search that allow users to donate either time or money to verified relief programs, post pictures and videos of what's happening around your community, and raise awareness of natural disasters occurring around the world.
Organizations set monetary goals and relief programs that can be found in Google search. Google facilitates the donation process by allowing users to watch ads that will turn into monetary donations or by directly donating money.
Stories allows users in crisis to document the events around them and alerts others of the natural disaster. Users not experiencing the crisis are given a first person perspective of what is going on.
Explore gives users a platform to discover what is going on around the world.
