De Warmste Week

Since 2012, we have been the digital partner of De Warmste Week (DWW). Year over year, the event has grown and our digital platform with it so in 2018 we decided to completely rethink and develop the by then outdated platform. The platform of De Warmste Week consists of 3 major parts:

The Content Site (De Warmste Week)
This is the publicly accessible website. Everything that happens around DWW is posted on this site, users can see which charities participate in DWW and which actions are being organised.

The Service Site (mijn warmste week)
As soon as a user plays an active role for DWW (administrator of a good cause, organizer of actions, volunteers) they receive access to “my warmest week” via the VRT profile. This is the user's transactional dashboard where can follow up on everything related to their role. The platform allows the users to take on different roles at the same time.

The CMS
The very extensive and custom developed CMS is used by a wide variety of users. From the core team and editors of the VRT (discovering interesting stories, general management) to the external people of the ‘Koning Boudewij Stichting’ and ‘Steunpount Vrijwilligerswerk’ (screening charities, managing and transferring income) to the DJs of DWW who use the tool behind the turntables. (consult who has requested which record, for what reason and for what amount).

Provided services:

• UX Research
  • Workshops & interviews
  • Ideation sessions
  • User story mapping
  • Information architecture
• UX Design
  • Userflows
  • Wireframes
  • Clickable Prototypes
• UI Design
• Custom development (PHP Laravel)
  

Challenges

The large number of different users and their often very diverse tasks made this huge project a very complex one. Some functionalities e.g. (“Vraag een plaat aan”) was accessed mainly on mobile (+70%), while the management of campaigns or charities was almost exclusively done on desktop. An additional challenge was the fact that the platform had to be very accessible and suitable for a very diverse and often digitally underdeveloped target audience. Anyone who organized a campaign for DWW had to be able to register it on the platform and also transfer the income via the platform afterwards. In addition, all parts of the website had to meet the strict standards of the AnySurfer label.

Approach

During our first interviews and workshops we identified and categorised all our different target users

For each type of user, we created a story map in which all functionalities were listed per user. As DWW starts before summer and ends on Christmas eve, the event has different phases. So during this exercise we also looked at the release date for each of these functionalities. In the example below you will find the story map for the charities. This lists all the tasks that the charities must be able to perform on the platform throughout the different phases of the project.

Next we created the wireframes. We started with the most commonly used device for that particular functionality. For most parts, the starting point was mobile, but for certain administrative tasks (charity management, payments) we chose to start from desktop.

The visual style was defined by designing the key pages and components (design system). Additional pages and components were designed in the development sprints.

At the same time, the project was also technically defined. The technical architecture was established together with the regular hosting partner of the VRT (Cloudar). Technical requirements were written (Confluence) and validated. Based on the technical and architectural decisions, all technical requirements were described (Confluence) and elaborated in user stories (JIRA).

Result

Despite the almost impossible planning, we managed to meet every deadline and built a well-functioning, user-friendly and high-performance platform. Nearly 3000 charities more than 13,000 actions and thousands of record requests were registered on the platform and payments for more than 7 million Euros initiated and processed on our platform. And all this without significant problems.

The feedback from the various users was very positive. The improvements compared to the previous platform were immense and all the different users could perform their tasks a lot faster and efficiently.

The first year of De Warmste Week using our new platform was the most successful edition to date.