Quest

Helping young people gain
employability skills through volunteering

Design research & co-creation

Opportunity

Groop, a community management organisation came to us with an idea, they wanted to make an accreditation tool where young people could gain employability skills through volunteering. Groop set out to get funding for the project, therefore we needed to produce a proof of concept and prototype to put in front of stakeholders.

Outcome

Within 2 months we were able to realise an idea into a fully functioning prototype for Groop to get more investment for the product. It’s been a huge success with many volunteers already completing their bronze, silver and gold accreditation with certifications to take to employers.

The value this (app) will have added to the process is unmeasurable - and starting from scratch with the test users was also very interesting... the test users weren't even presented with an initial concept, they were heavily involved in creating that too!

Community Manager for Funding organisation

Reworking the initial idea

As one of the first steps, Groop gave us a rough idea of what they wanted within the app, we took a step back and refined these flows to put more of an emphasis on the awards (bronze, silver, gold) and how the user could easily achieve this through a set of well-defined steps.

user flow diagrams — User Journeys & Flows for the app

wireframes for quest app — User flows of competitors

Focus groups to shape the product

We held three focus groups with volunteers and the team at Groop. These comprised of running through initial ideas all the way through to testing a live beta product, as well as interim sessions to review branding and visual direction.

feedback from users — User Research Feedback

Gamifying an educational tool

It was clear that this was an educational tool, rather than a fun game.

Gamification was the perfect tool to bring the app to life, using bright colours throughout really gave it a fun, playful feel – one where peers felt like they enjoyed using the app.

person on phone in car looking at quest app

Badges and Achievements

The client presented the volunteers with an idea of what type of badges were required for the awards and we received sketches back from the volunteers.

Using this as inspiration, we worked with the visual design team to create a series of badges for each learning outcome within the accreditation.