Dress For Success
Dress For Success
Embedded Files
Fall 2025 - Spring 2026
Project Leads
Team Members
Sophie Hao
Team Members
Jazzmin Abarentos, Anna Abello, Sonia Batheja, Bach Ha Lan Vu, Joanna Liu, Beverly Zheng
Context
Context
Dress for Success is a nonprofit organization that empowers women to achieve economic independence by providing professional attire, career development tools, and a supportive network.
How might we optimize volunteering tracking at Dress for Success PGH while focusing on sustainability, efficiency, and impact?
How might we optimize volunteering tracking at Dress for Success PGH while focusing on sustainability, efficiency, and impact?
Solution Overview
Solution Overview
A streamlined volunteer database system that tracks key metrics and trends, facilitates easier volunteer logging, and connects volunteer efforts with their impact through an appreciation template and automated contact sheet.
Secondary Research
Expert Interview
Expert Interview
For our secondary research, we conducted literature reviews and an expert interview with DFS Pittsburgh’s volunteer manager, Bridget McCoy.
Competitive Analysis
Competitive Analysis
Our primary research involved interviews with 2 DFS Pittsburgh staff members and 4 CMU student leaders. Following each interview, we conducted a think-aloud with the original data spreadsheet.
Primary Research
Interviews with Executive Board and Leaders
Interviews with Executive Board and Leaders
Our primary research involved interviews with 2 DFS Pittsburgh staff members and 4 CMU student leaders. Following each interview, we conducted a think-aloud with the original data spreadsheet.
Modeling
Modeling
We synthesized our primary research and expert interviews to identify patterns and key insights through affinity diagramming.
Key Insights
We had 4 main insights we took away from our research that guided us through the rest of the project.
Ideate
Ideate
Using the insights, we began to iterate on design solutions to streamline the database.
Through the Crazy 8 ideation method, we rapidly proposed solutions across a diverse spectrum of degrees of feasibility and complexity.
After reviewing the concepts as a team, we graphed the proposed solutions on an Impact Matrix, visually mapping out the time/effort constraints in relation to the impact of the potential solutions.
Then, we refined the most feasible and high-impact ideas according to their strength of connection to the main insights/issues we had previously identified.
Build
Build
We set to completely restructure the original DFS Excel document through 12+ iterations of low-fidelity prototypes in Figma, aligning the most high-impact dashboards and likely-used metrics for efficiency and intuitive placement.
We additionally drafted email templates for volunteer appreciation. Based on our research, using the organization’s metrics for volunteer gratitude would aid retainment and the organization’s goal of member sustainability.
Testing + Feedback
Testing + Feedback
Using the low-fidelity prototypes, we tested the architecture of items and intuitive nature through interviews with 5 organization committee members and Bridget McCoy, the Operations and Volunteer Manager of Dress for Success.
Using the synthesized feedback, we selected the most efficient dashboard design and built it further.
Solution Walkthrough
Dashboard with KPIs that tracks trends in volunteer engagement and behavior
Dashboard with KPIs that tracks trends in volunteer engagement and behavior
Navigation guide for increased team adoption and hand-off
Navigation guide for increased team adoption and hand-off
Streamlined process with tags/categorization for each volunteer and auto-population into different months
Streamlined process with tags/categorization for each volunteer and auto-population into different months
Contact sheet to recognize individual volunteer efforts and an appreciation template for emails
Contact sheet to recognize individual volunteer efforts and an appreciation template for emails
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