HomeBase App

SacHacks: HomeBase App

SacHacks Hackathon Winner: Best Entertaining Hack

Timeline: February 18th-21st, 2021

Roles: UX Researcher, UX Designer

Tools: Figma, Miro, Google Forms

Background: HomeBase is a platform that fosters community by connecting people to resources and services. Community members support each other through the exchange of donations, services, and volunteering.

Outcomes: HomeBase was awarded Best Entertaining Hack at SacHacks 2021. Link to Figma Prototype here.

Inspiration

We found inspiration from seeing how community members stepped up during the COVID pandemic to donate face masks and PPE to frontline healthcare workers. This renewed awareness of collective giving is the inspiration behind our community-based charitable app called HomeBase.

Our team envisioned a product that helps bring awareness to the current and future generation of working adults to easily discover local charitable and volunteer opportunities from their mobile devices. HomeBase provides the platform as a user-friendly mobile app, allowing supporters to search for a number of causes, be able to register as a volunteer at local events, and donate funds or resources to the charity of their choice. HomeBase allows supporters to stay engaged with the community by using individual or group messaging within the app. The platform also includes interactive maps to locate events and local organizations by using keyword and search filters.

Process

Our team was comprised of 2 designers and 1 researcher and we collaborated remotely for this virtual hackathon. Our team used Miro for the initial concept and brainstorming. We were particularly interested in serving our community, so our team defined the problem objective through UX methodology.

“How might we make essential resources available for communities that are under-represented?”

We were able to conduct a quick survey during the research phase, then aggregated the results to create design artifacts such as user flows and wireframes in Figma. By prototyping the initial wireframes on Figma, we were able to test our product’s functionality and features with real users.

Through user testing, we were able to validate the user flow for HomeBase. With limited time remaining, our design team resolved functionality issues and ideated the high-fidelity prototypes.

HomeBase Figma Prototype

HomeBase Prototype Demo