I led a design research project to investigate the viability of using contactless smart phone wallet payment technology to be able to make a donation and collect Gift Aid at the same time.

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I carried out guerrilla and desk research into how organisations such as charity shops, museums, art galleries, horticulture and cultural centres engage their donors with Gift Aid at their sales desk, front door or ticket office.

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I led a number of workshops for stakeholders and subject matter experts. I interviewed and shadowed Barnardo’s staff to understand how they process donations and submit Gift Aid claims. From these activities I created a process map for Barnardo’s Gift Aid process across different income streams. I had regular meetings with HMRC to make sure whatever we built was within their regulations.

 

I ran some user persona workshops with Barnardo's finance staff to baseline who we perceived our donors to be, using empathy mapping. I interviewed donors with a view to assessing how they perceived contactless payment technology and developed a set of 6 personas from this, leading to some clear mapping of specific target groups to engage with. 

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I built a user journey map to define touch-points, activities, goals and barriers for both charities and donors. I also made a service blueprint to specify infrastructure requirements.

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I worked with a tech team to start developing simple prototypes and also worked closely with a product manager to develop the strategy.

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I finished the discovery phase with a report and feedback session to all major stakeholders, outlining the research techniques and activities, evidence gathered, artefacts created and the strategy developed.

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Tasks included:

• Leading Inception, Discovery and Alpha phases of a project looking into tech possibilities of collecting donations and processing Gift Aid at the same time.

• Understanding current market trends, guerrilla competitor research.

• Process-mapping current Gift Aid journeys within the organisation.

• Journey mapping how a new journey would fit with the existing ones.

• Developing a service blueprint.

• Interviewing stakeholders, SMEs and charity donor groups.

• Developing user personas.

• Leading several workshops to focus priorities and define further activities.

• Interviewing donors that engage with technology.

• Measuring Tech possibilities against tax requirements.

• Designing initial user journeys for a prototype.
   

Intended outcomes:

• Strategy for developing a new and frictionless tech solution for charities.

• Raising public awareness of what Gift Aid is, and how it can benefit charities.

• Recent research commissioned by HMRC shows that charities are missing out on over £5.6 million in Gift Aid every year.