Caring Hands volunteer app
Connecting willing volunteers with seniors and people with disabilities who need help with everyday physical tasks, so both communities benefit.
2 months
Wireframing, Prototyping
Social impact
A bridge between those who need and those who give
Not everyone can afford to hire help for tasks like shovelling snow or mowing the lawn. At the same time, there are people in the community who are genuinely willing to lend a hand to seniors and those with disabilities.
Caring Hands acts as a bridge between these two groups, connecting them so both sides benefit from the exchange.
Seniors and people with disabilities struggle with physical chores like snow shovelling and lawn mowing, and not all of them can afford paid services.
Connect willing volunteers with those who need assistance, on a platform that feels safe and benefits both sides of the community.
The app had to build trust between strangers, which asked for exceptional care in every design decision.
Understanding both sides
This project meant understanding two very different groups at once, those who need help and those willing to give it. I interviewed both to capture their distinct needs and concerns.
Designing for two distinct users
Unlike most projects, Caring Hands meant designing for two fundamentally different people at once, each with needs that both had to be served equally well.
- Get help with tasks she can't do safely alone
- Keep her independence and dignity
- Feel safe about who comes to her home
- Can't afford to hire paid services
- Physically unable to shovel snow or mow the lawn
- Hard to trust a stranger at her door
Adelaide lives independently, but a mobility impairment makes physical chores like snow shovelling and lawn mowing impossible on her own. Paid help is out of reach on her budget, and safety matters deeply: she needs to trust anyone who comes to help.
- Find a safe, trusted way to volunteer
- Help neighbours with physical tasks
- Build connection and log his impact
- Doesn't know how to find people who need help
- Wants assurance the platform is safe
- Limited time between study and work
Hans is a student and part-time worker who believes in giving back. He has the time and willingness to help with tasks like snow shovelling, but until now had no easy, trusted way to find seniors and people with disabilities nearby who need a hand.
Two journeys, one platform
Mapping both journeys side by side revealed the moments where the experience had to work for both people at once, especially around trust, matching, and task confirmation.
How might we help someone who can't do a task herself ask for help, and trust the stranger who answers?
- Sees the snow pile up
- Can't shovel it safely
- Looks for a way to get help
- Downloads the app
- Registers as someone needing help
- Confirms her eligibility
- Chooses the task: snow shovelling
- Describes what she needs
- Submits the request
- A volunteer accepts
- Reviews their badge and rating
- Decides whether to trust them
- Volunteer finishes the task
- Confirms it's done
- Leaves a rating
How might we turn a volunteer's goodwill into real help before friction wears it down?
- Wants to help locally
- Doesn't know where to start
- Searches for a way in
- Registers as a volunteer
- Completes verification
- Sets his area
- Browses requests
- Struggles to see what's close
- Scrolls a long list
- Accepts a nearby request
- Sees who he's helping
- Travels to the address
- Completes the task
- Marks it done
- Logs his volunteer hours
Learning from the landscape
I audited both direct and indirect competitors to find their strengths and weaknesses, looking for the gap in the market that Caring Hands could fill.
No existing platform specifically connects community volunteers with seniors and disabled individuals for everyday physical tasks.
Competitors lacked robust trust features: no verification, reviews, or safety mechanisms for vulnerable users.
No competitor offered hyper-local matching by proximity for time-sensitive tasks like snow shovelling.
From sketch to screen
Starting on paper let me explore the dual user flow quickly: how a single, unified interface could serve both Adelaide and Hans.
In Figma, I built digital wireframes focused on the task request flow, volunteer matching, and the trust-building touchpoints throughout the experience.
Testing with real users
I ran two rounds of usability studies with participants from both groups before finalising the design. Testing both sides was essential to make sure the platform worked for everyone.
Participants weren't sure how to specify exactly what help they needed. The request felt open-ended and unclear.
I redesigned the task creation flow with clear category selection (snow shovelling, lawn mowing) and guided description prompts, so requests are specific and easy to act on.
Volunteers struggled to find tasks near them quickly, scrolling a long list with no sense of distance.
I added a map view and proximity-based filtering, surfacing nearby requests first so volunteers can act on time-sensitive tasks like snow shovelling right away.
Both groups wanted more visible reassurance before agreeing to meet a stranger at someone's home.
I added volunteer verification badges, ratings, and a confirmation step before any task is accepted, making trust visible at every stage.
The finished product
After two rounds of testing and iteration, the final high-fidelity screens were designed, with particular attention to accessibility, legibility, and trust throughout the experience.
Try the interactive prototype
Click through the full Figma prototype to experience both the volunteer and the help-seeker flows end to end.
Open in Figma ↗Designed for everyone, especially those who need it most
Because a core user group has physical disabilities, accessibility wasn't optional, it was the foundation of every design decision.
High-contrast colours and fonts throughout, so text is easy to read for users with visual impairments or low vision.
Clear, simple language across every screen, designed for users with cognitive disabilities or limited digital literacy.
Buttons and gestures are easy to activate with minimal effort, for users with limited dexterity or motor impairments.
What I learned
Caring Hands was the most emotionally significant project of the set. Designing for vulnerable users asks for a different kind of empathy, one that goes beyond usability into genuine care for human dignity and safety.
Designing for two opposing user groups at once is one of the hardest UX challenges. Every feature had to serve both Adelaide and Hans without compromising either experience.
Trust is not a feature, it's a feeling built through dozens of small decisions. Verification, ratings, confirmations, and clear language all stack together to create it.
Add real-time task tracking, explore voice-first interactions for users with motor impairments, and test with a broader age range of participants.