Karp
Karp connects volunteers, organizations, and vendors—making it easy and rewarding to give back by simplifying how people find opportunities and make a meaningful impact.
YEAR
2025
ROLE
Product Designer
SKILLS
UX Research
TEAM
Generate – Karp
The Problem
Many middle and high school students are required to complete community service hours, but the process often feels more like a box to check than a meaningful experience. Opportunities can be hard to find, and when students do participate, the work may not feel engaging or rewarding.
The Solution
Karp is approaching this challenge by creating an engaging, gamified experience that motivates students to volunteer. The platform integrates both in-app and real-world rewards, giving users a sense of achievement and recognition for their efforts.
Why Karp?
A coin economy built for teens, not professionals. A global job board or a paid consulting gig doesn’t help a 14-year-old trying to log service hours. So we built for the people actually stuck with the problem.
Built for students. Not professionals, not general volunteers. Just the age group already stuck logging these hours.
Mapped, not assumed. Grounded in comparing three real platforms, plus a sitemap and personas, instead of guessing from market size.
A compounding reward loop. Coins carry weighted value across every opportunity, not just a one-off badge.
Outcome
Takeaways
Trying to serve volunteers, orgs, and vendors all in one product could’ve spiraled fast. Keeping the matching experience tight is what kept Karp from losing its purpose. Learned how to work inside a full team structure, a dev, a tech lead, a design lead, all students, while still being the ones talking directly to the client.
Retrospective
Spacing between elements still needs work, and so does visual hierarchy. Some things compete for attention instead of guiding you through the app.