Before I joined the CS3216 class, I promised Prof. Ben I will do his homework, so I decided I should really do it. Here’s my critique. To save him the agony, I have decided not to write a thesis and keep it short. 😛
Anyway…
So what is Causes?
Technical description. It’s an application in Facebook that allows a user to make a difference by donating to a cause.
Non-technical description. It’s something in Facebook that allows people to make a difference by donating to a cause.
Hokay, enough of rubbish. So Causes aims to solve some problems, and in my opinion it is well positioned to solve what is known as the Social & Economic Injustice.
Socially and economically, we have created great disparities of wealth. A minority of the world’s population (17%) consume most of the world’s resources (80%), leaving almost 5 billion people to live on the remaining 20%. As a result, billions of people are living without the very basic necessities of life – food, water, housing and sanitation.
If the top 20% of the world’s population is 1.2 billion, then I am quite confident that Facebook users are amongst the top 5% (~300 million).
The problem with traditional forms of donation
The problem with traditional forms of donation are that they lack public visibility and transparency on a global scale. NPOs depend highly on volunteers to do all sorts of things like donation drives to keep them alive. There aren’t many self-sustainable foundations like Bill and Melinda Gates around. And if you haven’t forgotten the NKF saga where the infamous quote on peanuts came about, it’s obvious that we don’t really know where the money goes.
Basic Concepts
- The Power to Make a Difference as a Social Media. This app basically demonstrates the power of social media and that it should not be underestimated. As of this writing, the Hope for Haiti Now cause has raised US$42,930 (S$60,617).
- The Power to Make a Difference as an Individual. Unlike traditional donations (I’m referring to the tin-can school boys and girls at MRT stations), this app allows you ample time to search for a cause that you think really matters (than somebody preaching some unknown cause to you), read all about it before you donate. The best part is that it shows you the total amount (transparency) and others who have donated (confidence).
- Transparency. This app seems to have done a good job by naming the beneficary organization (usually registered in the US) and by reflecting the total amount donated. However, the same old problem still exists – we don’t know where the money goes.
Technical Concepts
- Main Navigation. Simplicity is the key. The adaptation of the Facebook UI is great, making it look clean. If you haven’t realized, clicking on Best Of brings you out of Facebook to www.causes.com which completely copied Facebook’s top bar.
- Front Page. It seems like the front page of the Causes app has a similar concept to BOOMZcart. It recommends you potential causes and also shows the causes that your friends are participating in, but there’s some issues I observed.
- The recommendations don’t seem to match any of my profile interests. Is it a targeted recommendation, or a random recommendation?
- I see four causes, but they’re all the same person. It should show four unique friends instead.
- Individual Cause Page. In my opinion this has been very well executed by mimicking Facebook’s user profile page. It provides user interaction (via Home tab), sufficient details (via About and Impact tabs), network information (via Members tab).
- Browse Causes. Under the Find Causes navigation menu. It’s broken (returns empty page).
Food for Thought
- Show me the money. Beneficiary organizations should provide detailed breakdown of where the donation money went. I’m not sure if this information is easy to obtain as I’m not a US citizen.
- Real People, Real Responses. What if somebody from the Haiti earthquake came in and said, “Thank you for your donations. My family survived the ordeal.” I would hope this to happen.
P.S. Sorry I wrote this post in a rush and it looks abit random with broken sentences and such. Hope you can understand what I’m writing 😛
February 5, 2010 at 9:51 pm
Justin, your style of writing rocks. Concise and clear.
Your point on real people, real responses is interesting. However I think the Haiti example is a little extreme, as I think that logging onto the net and thanking donors would be pretty low on their priority list. They’d probably still be fighting hard to survive, given the current situation there.
It would be nice to see this nice gesture for other situations, for e.g. people who have fought off diseases with the help of donations. There could be a way for donor and recipient to contact each other and share their thoughts. It adds a little warmth to the world. 🙂
-reuben
February 4, 2010 at 2:05 pm
I think transparency is very hard to implement in the US because of the privacy law and human rights given to each individual. Because from what I know, only sector specific industries have to be transparent about their accounts. But non-profit organizations are not part of them..
– Hong Jun
February 4, 2010 at 11:41 am
I always like stats 😀 But I don’t really get the numbers you gave, i.e.
If the top 20% of the world’s population is 1.2 billion, then I am quite confident that Facebook users are amongst the top 5% (~300 million).
Socially and economically, we have created great disparities of wealth. A minority of the world’s population (17%) consume most of the world’s resources (80%), leaving almost 5 billion people to live on the remaining 20%. As a result, billions of people are living without the very basic necessities of life – food, water, housing and sanitation.
How did the prior paragraph relate to the latter one :X
February 4, 2010 at 12:13 pm
Bah ok my mistake, the quoted paragraph was to describe social & economic injustice. The second paragraph was from linear division of 1.2 billion. 25% of 1.2 billion is 300 million. 25% of 20% is 5%.