Overview

The purpose of volteer.us is to be a web application that can allow users to create and manage volunteering opportunities that they can share with other people. The site will also allow other users to view the event and sign up to participate. During the sign-up process the site will display a near-realtime list of participants so users can see how many people have already signed up to help decide if they want to participate. The process is intended to be "friction-free" by not requiring a sign-up process. Instead, users will use their email address to sign up and manage their event. A future iteration may allow for mobile/SMS as well.

What problem does this solve

Many groups use an email approach to request help or rely on larger applications (facebook, etc.) that require a sign-up for users to create and participate in events.

Target Audience

The target audience for this application is small informal groups and clubs. E.g. social groups, extended families, community & religious groups.

Design Objectives

• Mobile first, responsive web application. Assumption that 90%+ of users will interact with our application using mobile device.
• Leverage front-end framework to support dynamic user interaction
• Interactions with back-end services using JSON web services only
• Use dotnet core for back-end services.
• Explore Azure functions to support API's
• Leverage third-party API's to provide address lookup, and mapping

Actors

1. Organizer - the user that creates and manages the event
2. Potential Participant - organizers share the event with potential participants
3. Participant - person who has entered their information and indication a level of participation

Use Cases

Event Management

1. Organizers can create an event
2. Organizers can edit an event
3. Organizers can delete an event
4. Organizers can send notifications related to the event

Participation Engagement

1. Potential participant can view an event
2. Potential participant can sign up for an event
3. Participant can see real-time updates from other participants
4. Participant can remove themselves from an event

Lookup

1. Anyone can enter their information and receive an email including all events coming up and a link to all events in the previous 30 days.

Notifications

1. Event Creation Creator will receive an email notification after creating an event. The email will contain the link they can share with their group and an "admin" link that they do not share, but they can click to manage their application.
2. Participant Signup Participant will receive an email notification after sign-up. The email will include a link to the event information and an "admin" link to allow them to change their settings or remove themselves from the application.
3. Lookup, upon entering their information a user will receive an email notification including all upcoming events they are participating in and events from the past 30 days that have been completed.
4. Significant Event Change. Upon a significant event change (e.g. event place or time) by the organizer the participants will receive a notification of the change of event details.

Model

Volteer Data Model