Blog update #6 – Experiment Abstract and materials

1.Pilot test 

The pilot test showed that participants can finish the experiment tasks within 30 minutes. However, there were some issues:

• The think-aloud instruction was missing. Changes were made to the task description to include it.
• Participants focused on the content of the donation event when they decide on the amount to donate. Therefore, we made remarks to ourselves that we need to remind participants throughout the whole experiment.
• After participants looked at another interface, it is natural for them to change the amount to donate to the previous event. Changes were made to the task description that they can change their decision at any point.
• The total number of people donated to an event was missing. Changes were made to the interfaces to include it.
• One participant did not know that he can read more detailed information by clicking the “NEXT” button on the event list page. Therefore, we changed the button to “More Details”.
• One participant almost missed the friends element. Therefore, we included the color version of the friends’ profile pictures in the task scenario given to the participant, and if the participants still fail to notice the key interface element, we will walk them through each of them.

2. Experiment Abstract 

Motivating potential donors to donate is a huge challenge for charities. We introduce the use of segmented progress bar and community element in donation interfaces. A segmented progress bar is divided into segments proportional to the amount each individual has contributed. The community element is shown by highlighting users’ contacts on social media. To test the effects of these elements on promoting donation behaviour, we conducted an experiment with a total of 8 users. Our results show that (1) the community element is an important motivator for participants before they decided to donate to a charity (2) the segments of segmented progress bar can help participants to determine the appropriate amount to donate, and (3) events with segmented progress bar and community element has a higher mean level of engagement and trust for an organization. Overall, segmented progress bar and community element may be useful to motivate donation behaviour.

3.Revised supplementary experiment materials (no limit)

No changes was made to the consent form.

Some changes were made to the study instrument:

• An instruction to ask participants to think-aloud during the experiment was added. This is to ensure that we can get insight into what the participant is thinking.
• An instruction to allow participants to change the donation amount to an event at any point of the experiment was added. This allows flexibility to our experiment and we can better trace the rationale of the decision of participants.
• Instructions to remind the interviewer to walk the participants through the interfaces if they seem to be confused or fail to notice the key interface element was added. This is to ensure that participants will decide on the donation amount according to the key interface elements.
• A question “What about the interface caused you to donate this amount of money?” was added to the coding sheet. By adding this additional question, we can better probe the participant.
• Four donation events were added to replace the placeholder names.
• A color version of the friends’ profile pictures was added to the task scenario given to the participant. This is to ensure that participants can better relate the task scenario to the interfaces.
• An instruction that remind participants there is no payment process in the experiment is added. This is to avoid participants misunderstand that they need to make actual payments.

Some changes were made to the interfaces:

• Four realistic donation events were added to replace the placeholder events.
• Notifications that a feature has not been completed were added to functionalities that were implemented horizontally in the interfaces.
• Different number of goals are added to each event to make the events more realistic.
• The payment page is removed to avoid participants misunderstand that they need to make actual payments.
• The total number of people donated to an event was added because this is a standard information that should be shown in a donation event.
• The “NEXT” button on the event list page was replaced with the “More Details” button. This is to ensure that participants know that they can read more detailed information by clicking this button.

 

Consent Form: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vMlvFaWh6yFny0sTmqZubuaBIVoa4E6VdZ1WWidl9Nc/edit

Study Instruments: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1pRmQ-M6R_NSyUlTLrjjwEX_5iN3OBECsmUKv6SW8Ios/edit