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Middle aged father of college student

This user was a father in his mid fifties whose kids moved out years ago. Until recently, he had held onto all of his kids’ toys from when they were in kindergarten. He mentioned that they held on to the toys for sentimental reasons, but that they were cluttering and taking up a lot of space in the upstairs floor of his house. About a month ago,  after talking to his kids, he decided to give away the toys so that others could enjoy the toys that his kids had. The only option he found for giving away his toys was to give it to a maid that cleaned the house every three weeks. He mentioned that since he was giving away a bulk of things and was a working professional, he did not have time to go through and catalog everything he wanted to give away. Instead he trash bagged a bunch of the toys and gave them to the maid, feeling that since she was interested in free things she would be willing to go through it.

Working mother of five

PLACEHOLDER

Children's day care

PLACEHOLDER

Goals

Targeted Content Delivery

Both the short-term and long-term user expressed concern for the difficulty to find things they were interested in. The most important factor to both of the aforementioned user classes in deciding upon a service opportunity was that the type of activity aligning with their interests. For our short-term user who did not care for doing community service, this was paramount for him to be even slightly excited about helping others. For the long-term user, given the nature of his commitment to the activity, being passionate for the work was a priority as well. Users should be able to identify their interests with the intent that the opportunities they are presented with are ones that they find exciting and worthwhile.

Easy to view database of opportunities

The long-term user remarked that a system in place like that used for the externship program at MIT would be useful to get more information on community service. In the particular example he gave of volunteering at a hospital, since each hospital puts its volunteers in different capacities with different time commitments, it becomes hard to keep track of the opportunities that work well with one’s requirements. This example generalizes to any number of community service events in different fields, where the interested party is looking for a subset of details about the event often not listed elsewhere.

Standardized Event Listings

The service should offer a way for organizations to register events for interested volunteers to view. Considerations for differentiating events include: the category of the event (eg. environmental, homeless, food, education, etc.), time (what period of the day), repeatability (one time event or recurring), and the type of activity. Olga the Organizer raised the issue that often times volunteers are unaware of the types of commitments they are making, which sours their attitude towards the event. Creating well defined events should help the organizations target the volunteers they are interested in and avoid having these problems arise.

Facilitation of Collaboration

This user has six children, some of which are now well into adulthood. Her children acquire most toys as gifts from relatives or as hand-me-downs from her friends. She didn’t go out of her way to acquire many toys herself because the toys took up a lot of space in her home and she didn’t want her children to be spoiled. If possible, she would keep toys outside in an attempt to conserve space in her home. The user found it unfortunate that many donation centers, like Goodwill, would not take in some used toys because of liabilities issues (eg. stuffed animals being a risk for bed bugs).

Children's day care

PLACEHOLDER

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Goals

Bulk Donations

Gabe expressed an interest in being able to give lots of toys away at once, without having to sort through them himself. As he was the one giving away stuff for free, he felt the onus for cataloging wasn’t on him.

Anonymity in Exchanges

Gabe did not feel comfortable with people he did not know coming to his house for numerous reasons, including security. He was more comfortable with a shipping system where he got reimbursed for shipping costs or having a way to orchestrate a meetup in a place midway between the two parties involvedVolunteering as a group, especially with friends, makes the service much more enjoyable. This was especially emphasized by the sort-term user and supported by the long-term user upon questioning. The sort-term user expressed an interest in being able to notify friends of which events he was interested in. Additionally, preference would be given to a service opportunity that satisfies the larger group over individual desires if catering to the group would bring in more collaborators.