Product Sense: Teaching Kids to Donate
The best way to develop product sense is to ideate solutions in real-time. Every time you have a bad user experience, you should be thinking to yourself, if I was on the team, what would I do?
I find a good test is when I feel so overwhelmed I want to reply to a ‘do not reply’ email from a company telling them what they should do.
That happened to me recently with the International Rescue Committee (IRC), which made me think that this is a GREAT example of a possible prompt. It would likely be for Meta but maybe other companies.
Possible Prompt wordings:
Design a donation app for kids.
Design a solution to help parents teach kids to donate.
How would you increase donations for X.
Imagine you worked for the IRC or another non-profit, how would you increase donations.
My problem: We are trying to teach my nieces to give back.
Current Solution: We talk with the girls about why I donate rather than just send them a package for Christmas. (They get gifts at other times.) Then when I call them on Christmas day, they pick an organization they (and their mother and I) like and trust and I give their gift in the form of a donation.
The Problem(s):
We have them pick a specific cause because we want to make it real for them.
But my donation is too small to dictate exactly where the funds go.
If I want to re-enforce their chosen donation, I have to make my own certificate and forward it to them to reinforce their choice was donated to.
The Users:
8 to 13-year-old children who get almost everything they want and certainly everything they need but is not totally and completely spoiled. Think middle-class American kids. They still know mom has to wait to replace broken appliances but they don’t want for anything major and most things minor. They don’t think much about giving back, they might fall into one of the following categories.
Passionate about giving back, know where they want to give back.
When you ask, they realize they feel bad for others but aren’t sure where to start. Too many choices.
Highly-stressed, they don’t want to think about starving children because it makes them sad/stressed
The Parent who grew up in a church community but isn’t very religious but still wants to teach her children to give back. She wants to make sure they think about what they are doing and why.
The Close Relative feels guilty about disparities and adding a box under the tree just to have something to open. This relative feels giving back is crucial to becoming a proper adult citizen.
The non-profit needs any donations, but they are focused on this year’s goals. They want to hook the people with money today. They are not thinking too much about building their next donors’ healthy habits.
Let’s prioritize the middle child, they want to give back but they are overwhelmed by the choice. Right now, what happens is we (her mom and I)
Guide her to a website or 2
Wait while she reads a bit
Answer questions she has about what she reads
Refuse to pick for her
Help her decide from 2 or 3 top choices
She closes computer and forgets
I donate to the IRC knowing it will not go to where my niece picked but to a good cause generally
My niece forgets about the donation
It feels like a drop in the bucket
I will try again next year
If I want more engagement, I have to custom-build a physical or online experience to engage the child.
Goal Help kids better understand the importance of giving back.
Pain Points
Note: In this case, the pain points are for the kid, donor and parent, a bit of a mix. This is something I would try to avoid in an interview, but I might consider it if it helps the case; just need to be careful.
Knowing where to give
Getting completely depressed when thinking about it
Forgetting until next year
Feeling guilt days later
Not connecting with those in need
I believe focusing on connecting with those in need will help reinforce the giving goal and mitigate many of the other pain points. Right now, non-profits know how to reinforce the giving with me, the donor, to the point I have to unsubscribe from every piece of contact info I gave them. In fact, they could improve their interactions with me, bu that is for another article. (See you can constantly improve your product sense so very easily. Even answering this prompt has helped me come up with another).
Solutions
Monthly Updates on Problem of Choice
Interactive Stats Every Quarter
Social Media Posts to Share
Talk to a Kid Benefitting from Donation
Now let me walk you through my solutions
Monthly Imagine that after I give the donation to the IRC, rather than designate the donation to a specific cause, I sign my nieces up for a monthly update (age-appropriate) on the cause they selected. This reinforces their choice and teaches them more about what is going on and how even a small donation helps. Even better, it sends mom an email with the content to reinforce the topic at dinner or in the car. This keeps the organization top of mind for all family members.
Quarterly This solution accepts that monthly might be too much, but we all like interactive data visualizations. What if once a quarter, there was a data visualization on the disaster area they selected? Teaching them what is going on and how donations have had an impact. Provide different visualizations each quarter. Maybe thinking, people level, country, region, etc. The visualization would depend on the topic. But imagine girls education. You could show how many books bought or a day-in-the-life and time spent.
AI Chat Imagine being able to have a chat with someone roughly their age about the situation. Learn about what it is like to live through the emergency or problem. Think girls education. We could create an GenAI solution based on interviews with kids on the ground in various conflicts or areas of keed. Imagine a 13-year-old being able to ask an avatar of a kid in, say, Afghanistan: What is a typical school day like for you? What do you wear to school? How often do you use a computer, etc. We would include quarterly prompts to engage maybe with a new story or interaction.
I would prioritize the third solution. I think monthly might be too noisy to start. And not every kid likes interactive charts, but having a conversation with an avatar is likely close to games they enjoy and can help them create a connection to another culture and to better understand where the money goes without it feeling as if they are being talked down to.
These are not ground-breaking ideas, but it is a nice product sense exercise that shows you how to take 5 to 15 minutes and think about a solution when you are frustrated by the solution in front of you.
BONUS
Metrics
# kids having 1+ min long conversations with AI Avatar
# minutes spent chatting
# shares
$ in donations from families interacting
In the first 3 to 6 months, my main metric would be active users with minutes spent chatting the strong supporting metric. It would take at least 6 to 12 months to see if this would have an impact on donations. My immediate goal is to help kids understand, if they interact and learn at least 1 fact, that is a proxy for understanding. If donations increase, that is probably a stronger indicator but it will take time.
I hope this has inspired you.
