Fantastic example of building a shopping website at WeCanBuildAnOrphanage.com

WeCanBuildAnOrphanage.com is a site built 100% on the Flash Platform and as an amazing example of how to build an experience into a web application. It’s built to help get donations to build an orphanage for children in Haiti who were born with AIDS. ( Yeah, you read that right. These kids got shit on thrice before they even drew a breath. )

It would have been simple to put up a website with a few pictures and a donation button but Luke Montgomery, the man behind the cause, went much further than that. He wanted to create an engaging experience that actually made you feel like you were a part of the building process.

To create a more engaging experience the site works like a shopping website. You can select the items that you want to purchase, like a complete meal for a child for .48 cents, or a box of crayons for .75 cents, or maybe you want to help with the construction of a school so you can purchase a concrete block for .98 cents. And the site tells you right next to the item how many of these things they need. Like, we need 5 screwdrivers, or 60 bottles of calamine lotion, etc. Talk about engaging. It’s impossible to look at this list and not say, “You know, I can chip in for a few days worth of AIDS medicines at $2.68 a pop for some kid.”

When you decide what you want to purchase you drag the image of the item into the box – you can see it in the lower left of the photo above. Again, experience matters. We click on buttons all day long. It doesn’t illicit the same experience as actually dragging something. It’s still a mouse that you’re moving be you feel like your doing something as opposed to just clicking.

What the site has done is turn the everyday experience of shopping for things on the web into a cause to help kids who really need it. If the site just had a donation box then you wouldn’t feel as much. Yeah, you’ve done a good thing but it’s not exactly visceral. With this site you really feel like you have done something more than fork over a few bucks.

Secondarily this site has mentally associated itself with something that is common in your life. So maybe the next time you’re at Amazon.com buying something you’ll think, “You know, the experience at WeCanBuildAnOrphanage.com was much better than this.” And maybe, just maybe, you start to think, “I want this item. But I don’t really need it. Those kids need food and medicine.”

You see, a regular donation type site is separate from our everyday experience. We donate and then don’t think about it again. But because of the association with a commen experiece this is more likely to be remembered.

That concludes my analysis of the site. But I’d like to say that I’ve worked with Luke Montgomery on other projects, and a little on this one. He’s an amazing guy. He’s helped me with UX on some of my projects, brilliantly I might add. To listen to someone talk about User eXperience while at the same time he’s bottle feeding a tiny baby with AIDS makes you wonder at how he does it. He’s given up a huge part of his life to help others. I just want to support him helping others because he’s much better at it than I am.

Another great idea that Luke had for the site was to let users create their own projects and target goals. You set up a donation target that you want to reach and then try and get people to help you get there. I’ve set up a group called geeks who care and have the goal of raising $5,000 for these children. I donated $50 to get us 1% of the way there. Hopefully my friends will help me get to 100%. Or better yet, maybe a few will create their own project and set their own goals.

Please help spread the word via your blogs, email, Twitter, Facebook, etc.

Thank you, polyGeek