Day of Service

On Sunday, May 7th, 53 CHI attendees spent the day together to volunteer their time and skills to help nine non-profits in Colorado. Half the volunteers were students. A total of eight companies and 28 schools were represented around the world.

A survey of volunteers found high satisfaction rates with their experiences. Most people cited the opportunity to network and make new friends as the best part of the experience followed closely by the opportunity to learn about a new non-profit and use their skills to help others in need. They also appreciated the opportunity to do a fun and creative activity that they wouldn’t normally get to do. Students liked having an opportunity to work on a real-world problem and said the event got them excited about being part of the CHI and UX community. Finally, several volunteers said they learned a new skill or method and their participation made them feel more confident about their own research or design skills.

“It helped me network with researchers that were interested in my same area. I am now starting new adventures with them! It also helped me understand the needs of NGOs that work with people with disabilities much better. This has become critical for my research. I also really enjoyed hacking away with everyone. It was amazing to be able to collaborate with researchers and NGOs that care about the same things I do. Thank you very much! This has been one of the best afternoons. This is my first time I attend CHI and it really made me feel also part of the CHI community.” - Volunteer

The impact on the non-profits was huge! These organizations are fueled by volunteers and they do not have the HCI skills necessary to move their charities to the next level. After just one day, all of the non-profits stated they were walking away with a solution or plan to implement (see below). They stated they understood their own technology and users better, as well as the UX or product development process better.

“We were able to make our website accessible for all of our populations. The volunteers did a wonderful job helping to add special features to the website that we were hoping to have but would never known how to do on our own. I can't thank CHI4GOOD enough for their help and expertise! ” - Adaptive Adventures

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Here is a brief description of what was accomplished for each non-profit:

Adaptive Adventures

Several changes were made to their Wordpress website to make it more usable and accessible. Usability enhancement included making the site more interactive, embedding the event calendar & email sign-up widget on the site, moving to a flat menu structure, enabling users to register for events & make donations, & connecting the site to a CRM to track donor information. They conducted accessibility testing on the site & made several areas of the site accessible including navigation, footer, links, search form, contrast of text, and layout of the site.

Animal Help Now

Volunteers also conducted a stakeholder interview, a volunteer interview, and a heuristic evaluation. They provided a proposal of changes to make to the site, including a new IA and mock ups.

Bicycle Colorado

The team brainstormed ideas around a solution that can help commuters plan their day based on public transportation or bike use. They created a user profile, storyboards, & a research proposal for Bicycle CO to conduct focus groups later on.

Boulder Outreach for Homeless Overflow

The team focused on communicating BOHO’s mission in a way that would attract a more diverse base of individual donors & make it easy for those donors to provide financial support. They identified new materials that can be integrated into BOHO’s web site including, data visualisation, a page on BOHO’s mission with quotes, donation buttons on all pages, and sponsorship & donation page(s).

Center for ReSource Conservation

The team identified the cause of data quality errors in the Center for ReSource Conservation’s dashboard on water use, brainstormed several solutions, and created an html mock up of the solution to share with the developer to implement.

Colorado Hands and Voices

The team identified two solutions to solve the problem of multiple people entering data into different systems & creating manual work to marry it all for reporting. Colorado Hands & Voices will test both solutions with their volunteers to determine which one to implement.

Foothills United Way

The team identified a way for the FUW to streamline all data collection from team members and team leaders in the community, collecting the data in one place. FUW will use this information to better document their annual Day of Caring event.

Out Boulder County

The team overhauled the Out Boulder County web presence & delivered a new information architecture (via card sort) & content strategy to be used in a redevelopment of the Out Boulder website & mobile content. They developed a new color palette, using bright & joyful colors & have incorporated those colors into a homepage that can stand alone as the website’s menu.

Volunteers for Outdoor Colorado

The team developed a plan & wireframe for the redevelopment of the VOC mobile app. They overhauled the existing badge program to be more intuitive & more of a tracking-based platform that allows users to track their eco-friendly progress over time.

Important Date:

Volunteer Day: Sunday, 7 May 2017, 9:00am-5:00pm

Chairs: Jill Woelfer, Google, Kathy Baxter, Salesforce, Liz Gerber, Northwestern University.

Location: Conference Center

Celebration: Volunteer work will be highlighted at the following day’s conference opening plenary. Partner organizations will be invited to join the opening plenary.

List of engaged non-profit partners:

Sign up for the Day of Service and select your project on the CHI conference registration form.

Message from the Day of Service Chairs

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world.

– Margaret Mead (1901 – 1978)

For decades, the CHI community has helped to transform the experiences people can have with new technologies. From understanding users’ needs, to exploring the impact of new technologies, to building those empowering technologies, the CHI community takes action every day to bring about change. More recently, the CHI community has begun to recognize with the CHI “Social Impact Award” individuals who apply HCI research to pressing social needs.

We believe it is time to harness the power of the CHI conference gathering for pressing social needs. We believe this can be done in multiple ways in multiple venues to highlight and inspire “chi4good.”

On May 7, 2017, CHI host its second annual “Day of Service” at the Denver Convention Center to enable CHI attendees to leverage their skills to make an impact. We have partnered with a dozen non-profit organizations that support the arts, cultural heritage, education, environmental science, social justice and more. The volunteer work that people can expect to do will range from helping critique a website, to brainstorming new ideas for an app, to setting up a database.

Up to 100 CHI attendees will have the chance to participate with many diverse local organizations.

Don’t miss out on this exciting CHI event and your chance to make a difference in our community!

Jill Woelfer, Google

Kathy Baxter, Salesforce

Liz Gerber, Northwestern University