Learn and Earn

Software built for the Sunday Friends nonprofit empowering low-income families in San Jose to achieve economic mobility.

ROLE
Lead Designer
TIMELINE
Aug 2021 - Aug 2022
TEAM
Cal Blueprint
2 Project Managers
7 Developers
SKILLS
Visual Design
Interaction Design
Design Systems
User Research
Frontend Eng
TOOLS
Figma
React
Typescript
Firebase

Project Overview

Sunday Friends is a non-profit based in San Jose, California dedicated to breaking the generational cycle of poverty by fostering positive development in children while educating parents to support their children's life success.

Over the course of two semesters, my engineering team at Cal Blueprint developed 2 apps, one mobile and one on web. As the lead designer from start to finish, I worked closely with the non-profit to evaluate the core needs of their organization and propose a feasible technical solution to be built out in less than a year. The mobile app will be used by families (children and parents), while the web app will be used by Sunday Friends admins.

I designed both apps from zero to one, along with a full-scale design system and design documentation to help ensure that the product can be sustained by the non-profit long term.

With a mission to help the community achieve economic mobility...

The Learn & Earn Program involves low-income families in educational events + lessons, and rewards redeemable points for their active participation.

First, families attend educational events and lessons
Through engaging in these programs, families accumulate points
They can use these points to redeem for household necessities

Sunday Friends is looking to expand their offerings to help families to reach their goals faster.

However, their current system is unsustainable & hinders productive, genuine engagement.

Why is this a problem?

ACTIVE PARTICIPATION 🏃

For families, it is harder to stay motivated & actively engaged without an accessible way to track their progress

LACK OF OWNERSHIP 📈

Feeling a lack of ownership over their points & progress is discouraging

INEFFICIENT MANAGEMENT 💻

Manually keeping track of point earnings and expirations through spreadsheet formulas is highly time-consuming

To address these needs, we built a family-friendly mobile app that acts as a connecting interface between Sunday Friends and their community members. We also built a web admin portal that streamlines the process of tracking transactions, automates point expirations, and helps admin manage their users and families.

Introducing Sunday Friends' product ecosystem

Set up the entire family

Parents can sign up their families for the Learn & Earn program directly from the mobile app

Previous solution:

Parents would have to go in-person to sign their families up

Track granular & bulk transactions

After an event, Sunday Friends’ admins can upload single or bulk transactions to a database, and track each member & family’s point balances

Previous solution:

Admin kept track of transactions manually using Google Sheets

Breaking down Sunday Friends' Unique Model

Each month, Sunday Friends hosts weekly events teaching financial literary and provides community service opportunities for family members to participate in. Each event attended will reward a point value based on level of engagement, allowing families to climb priority tiers. Tier 1 grants access to basic necessities such as toiletries & household essentials, Tier 2 enables the shopping of children toys and Mother's/Father's Day gifts, and Tier 3 grants frontline access for all the offerings in previous tiers. At the end of the month, points will expire, encouraging consistent participation in community events.

Who are the people involved?

This project is not available yet, but it will be soon!

Overview

How we structured our project.