Background

Cascaid is a passion project of mine with a strong social purpose of helping support those most vulnerable during the largest humanitarian crisis since World War II. 

Cascaid is a crowdfunding mobile app that connects refugee camp entrepreneurs (RCEs) with capital and mentorship

To help improve the lives of refugees by empowering refugee camp entrepreneurs (RCEs) to be financially independent and self-reliant. By fostering connections between RCEs as well as donors/mentors, Cascaid aims to reduce the isolation often felt by refugees and to raise awareness of their plight of living in encampments. 

As a result of Cascaid's dual use case, there are two sides to the platform: a 'donor' and a 'creator' side both of which are featured below.

Design ProblemS

Creators (RCEs): Many refugees yearn to start their own businesses, but lack the capital and/or know-how to make it a reality.

Potential Donors: Lack of opportunities to provide non-monetary support and limited transparency reduce people’s willingness to support refugee causes.

Research

Prior to the concept creation and design of the platform, significant background research, surveys and interviews were conducted in order to properly understand the issue at hand, the needs of refugees living in encampments and the potential role of technology in providing aid and support to those most vulnerable.

As part of this, I interviewed humanitarian lawyers, refugees/asylum seekers as well as donors to various charities. Through this research, I uncovered the existence of Refugee Camp Entrepreneurs (RCEs) and people's willingness to donate/mentor in order to foster long-term support and engagement.

Birth of 'Cascaid'

Next began the ideation and brainstorming of potential solutions to the problems identified. This included developing the platform's information architecture and designing the final product through sketches, wireframes and prototypes.

The main design challenge that I encountered was designing a tech solution that would appeal to diverse users from very different cultures, living under contrasting situations and environments with varying levels of tech understanding and often intermittent access to digital devices.

In the end I chose a card-based layout for a few reasons: I wanted to simplify the design as much as possible to encourage clear call-to-actions (donate or mentor) and allow ease of use for both donors and RCEs given the varying degrees of tech experience of Cascaid's key users. Mobile was the main focus given the prevalence of, and access to, smartphones in refugee camps and developed nations. 

User Testing

Throughout the development process, wireframes and prototypes were presented to potential users (both refugee entrepreneurs as well as donors) to provide feedback to help iterate the design. I adopted both the 'think aloud' method as well as direct user observation to help unlock insights. The key findings were: 

• Users wanted direct messaging integrated within the app to communicate with mentors/RCEs directly

• Clearer translation button

• The milestones progress bar needed to be clearer and convey detailed information in more user-friendly way

• Users wanted a filter function on the homepage to help them quickly view projects that they were more interested in supporting

HOMEPAGE

The donor side homepage is targeted at potential project backers and mentors to browse various refugee camp entrepreneurs (RCEs) projects.

The "card stack" display allows the potential donors to easily view details of available projects to back. Specifically, a brief description of the project, where the RCE is based, a snapshot of how much funding a particular project has raised and what milestones have been achieved to date (i.e. how far along and successful the project is).

PROJECT PAGE

The project page allows donors to view more detailed information for each RCE's project. 

On this page, donors can find out more information on the creators and their project, view the message thread of communication between mentors/donors and RCEs and what each milestone of the project is. The potential donor can either choose to donate money to support the project and/or offer to provide mentorship to the creators if their experience and skills meet the RCE's requirements.

DONATE PAGE

The interface to donate and mentor projects is purposely designed to be easy to navigate and simple to use.