Dāna
Year
2022
Client
PERSONAL PROJECT
Category
DONATION PLATFORM | UI/UX
Product Duration
3 - 4 Weeks
Giving in India is fragmented and opaque. Donors struggle to trust where their money is going. There’s no single place to discover causes, track impact, volunteer time, or run a fundraiser, so each requires a different platform, a different login, and a different level of trust.
Three core problems emerged from research:
Trust: Users can’t verify whether donations reach the intended recipients or make a real impact.
Fragmentation: Donating, volunteering, and fundraising are scattered across separate tools, making the process complicated and hard to access.
Disconnection: People feel removed from the causes they support and unsure how to get meaningfully involved beyond a one-time payment.
Dāna unifies three user roles: donor, volunteer, and fundraiser, into a single experience rather than separate apps. The reasoning: the same person who donates today might want to volunteer next month. Keeping them in one ecosystem increases sustained engagement over time.
Personalisation from the start: onboarding asks what the user is looking for: making a donation, volunteering, fundraising, exploring causes, or connecting with others. The app then curates content to their intent rather than serving a generic feed. Users who see relevant causes immediately are more likely to act.
Verified organisations only: every institution on Dāna is verified, with real-time updates after donations so users see the actual impact of their contribution. This directly addresses the trust problem that informal giving channels can’t solve.
Donation Pocket: a wallet that allows users to pre-load funds and give in smaller amounts over time. Supports UPI, card, and pay-in-person options, including anonymity for those who prefer it.
The logo: the concentric circle motif represents endless ripples from a single act of goodness. Every donation, no matter how small, creates expanding impact.
The information architecture covers five sections: Home (urgent needs, featured campaigns), Profile (donation wallet, history, impact dashboard), Discovery (search and filters by target group, urgency, location, causes), Volunteering (local, online, skill-based opportunities), and Fundraising (create, manage, and track campaigns).
The design system uses a deep navy and white palette with blue accents, chosen to communicate trust and calm rather than the urgency-heavy reds commonly used in donation platforms.
Dāna remains a personal concept project. If developed, the first thing I’d validate is whether the unified three-role model creates too much cognitive overhead for users with a single clear intent, or whether the cross-pollination between roles genuinely increases lifetime giving.
The platform is designed to be simple, transparent, and meaningful: not just a transaction tool, but a space where giving becomes a habit.
