Bonbids
Bonbids is a fundraising platform in which users can participate in fundraisers where if a user wins in a bidding game, a gift card is won.
I was assigned to work with a team to improve the bidding experience of Bonbids.
Objective
The objectives were:
• To create an engaging bidding process
• view and track results and have a fulfilling and enjoyable experience that will motivate them to participate again
First Phase – Research
Bonbids is a fundraising platform with heavy elements of gamification and “sense of urgency.” Although this was an essential piece of the puzzle, we needed to dig deeper to truly understand what motivated participants to play the game in the first place.
User Interviews
What we found was that it was not so much the game that users we're interested in but more:
• Understanding where their money was going
• The donors/participants main motivation came from not winning the game, but supporting a meaningful cause.
Specific quotes from users
User Pain Points
The overall bidding process is currently broken down into 3 overarching concepts:
• Bonbid
This is the main function in the bidding where you place a bid on an item or a “bonbid”
• Robowinner
This is when a user can set an automatic bidder to bid for them
• Free Try
a “free try” is basically a free bonbid, where a user can place a bid free of charge.
We drilled down what specifically donors were struggling with in the bidding process. What we found was:
Whats the cause?
During bidding, users frequently forgot who they were bidding for, and where specifically their money was going. We discovered another key issue of users leaving the page and not being able to easily return.
What does robowinner mean?
A survey we conducted indicated a large percentage of our users did not fully understand the terminology and it was frequently confused with something else. Some examples:
The bidding process
Arguably the most important was the bidding process. Users did not intuitively understand how to win the prize. There were also expressed concern in regards to the bonbids balance and how much was spent. The countdown was also of concern as it left users confused when a bid was placed, it was not clearly communicated that more time was added to the clock.
The feeling of losing
The client requested that we help alleviate the negative feeling of losing, and our interview/test participants were left rather underwhelmed when lost and had reserved feelings About it.
Competitive Analysis
We wanted to conduct analysis of multiple similar platforms and see if we could find any trends that could build on:
Journey Mapping/User Flows
With our interviews and competitive analysis in mind, we wanted to breakdown the user flow and journey map of the bonbids user.
We wanted to synthesize an ideal journey map and user flow
Second Phase – Design
My team and I then synthesized our research and white boarded and used the “crazy 8” method to sketch out our ideas on to paper:
Through our sketches, we wanted to keep in mind our objective: how users can easily find how many bonbids they have left to bid and what cause they are supporting through our bidding.
Moving forward to our more solidified wireframes:
From here it evolved into:
Here, key design decisions were made:
1. Individual Fundraiser Page
2. A balance summary
3. A quick instruction of the game
4. A sign of celebration when the donor is leading the game
5. A pop-up of result and future actions to alleviate the feeling of losing
In our final designs, we addressed a lot of the pain points for our users which include:
What is the cause?
We added an accordion menu to remind users what charity they are donating to and where their money is going
What does robowinner mean?
We changed the terminology from “robowinner” to “autobidder” as our user survey indicated that it made more sense:
The Bidding Process
We added a slew of improvements including:
• Accordion for balance tracking during bidding
• Big and prominent picture for the ease of multi-bidding
• Signifier of time change (+10s)
• Microinteraction to celebrate winning
The Bitter Feeling of Losing
• header indicates who won and amount raised… in initial user testing some were unclear about the result
• thank users, message reiterating connection to cause
• rebranded consolation prize as a added thank you for participating to eliminate the association with losing
Next Steps
Next steps include:
• To incorporate “Buy It Now”
• To clarify “One Cause Auction”
• To make simultaneous bidding on different gift cards easier
• Add badges/ achievement levels for repeat users