Platform
Web | Mobile
Timeframe
May 2021 - Launched April 2022
Responsibilities
UI/UX Design, Strategy
Twitch Charity - First-party fundraising
Charity fundraising has long been a cornerstone of Twitch’s community, with creators collectively raising approximately $285 million for charity since 2011, including $111 million in 2020 alone. Despite this success, streamers and viewers face significant barriers to making charitable giving seamless and impactful.
Recognizing these pain points, we saw an opportunity to empower both streamers and viewers by building a first-party charity tool. By integrating charitable giving directly into Twitch, we aimed to remove friction, ensure transparency, and create a safer, more rewarding environment for everyone. This tool reflects our commitment to amplifying the positive impact of the Twitch community while addressing the unique challenges of fundraising on the platform.
Twitch Team: Dev Iyer, Danny Fewaz, Tiffany Yang, Colin McClure, Campbell Compton, Victoria Joh, Patrick Steward , & Alex Roy
PayPal Team: Michael Budwig & PayPal Giving Fund business and legal team
User Problems
Streamers
Streamers face challenges in facilitating charitable giving through their content, including complex revenue-sharing models, income tax implications, and long payout timelines, all while navigating potential harassment during high-visibility campaigns.
Viewers
Viewers encounter friction in supporting these charitable efforts, often needing to leave the Twitch platform to donate, which disrupts their engagement and raises concerns about transparency in how their contributions are allocated and used. Together, these issues create barriers to seamless and impactful charitable giving within the Twitch ecosystem, affecting the experience and trust of both streamers and their audiences.
Starting with the user: Aligning through a Design Sprint
We kicked off this project with 10 empathy sessions, using structured questions to explore the setup, execution, and outcomes of charity streaming. These sessions allowed us to dive deep into the pain points and challenges streamers face, ensuring we built solutions rooted in real user needs.
To align leadership and create a space for innovation, I facilitated a design sprint. This structured process helped translate insights from our research into actionable solutions, ensuring that our product direction was both user-centered and strategically aligned across teams.
Elevating viewer engagement - The charity stream experience
Twitch Charity is a mode that transforms the channel viewer experience into a dedicated fundraising platform, seamlessly integrating donation features to support charitable causes.
1. At a glance - Orienting on a charity stream
To create a seamless and intuitive experience for viewers landing on a Twitch charity stream, the Info Card was strategically designed and positioned near the donation button. This card quickly orients viewers by introducing the charity, clarifying its purpose, and instilling confidence in its authenticity. By leveraging Twitch’s first-party charity tool, the design prioritizes trust and verification, ensuring a secure environment that minimizes potential harassment while enhancing the overall experience for both streamers and their audiences.
2. Raising the bar - Goals and gratitude in charity streams
In charity streaming, working toward a shared goal is fundamental to driving participation and engagement. My design replaced the traditional subscription leaderboard with a dynamic charity goal display. This display updates instantly with each donation, ensuring every contribution is recognized in real time. By prioritizing collective impact over individual rankings, the design creates a stronger sense of unity among streamers and their communities, enabling them to rally together and celebrate their shared success while reinforcing the core purpose of giving
3. Streamlined giving - Fast, trusted, and seamless
The donation checkout process was designed to keep users connected to the stream while ensuring a fast, seamless, and trustworthy experience. It minimizes time away from the action while providing all necessary information for charities, PayPal, and Twitch. This balance of speed, transparency, and legitimacy builds confidence, allowing users to donate without missing a moment.
4. From click to kudos - Confirmation & recognition
Donation confirmation is essential, but recognition often matters even more to Twitch viewers. The system provides instant confirmation of donation, updates the charity goal in real time, and announces contributions in chat. This ensures every donation is acknowledged, even if the streamer can’t respond immediately. Together, these elements create a seamless, rewarding experience that values every donor and strengthens community engagement.
Behind the scenes - Streamer set-up for fundraising
Charity streaming often involves months of preparation. Our goal was to simplify every step, making the setup process so seamless that streamers could focus on their cause, content creation, and go live with just a press of ‘play.’
Charity set-up in the Streamer Dashboard - The Charity Page is simplified into four easy steps: search (with an intuitive design for filtering through over 16,000 charities worldwide), select a cause, set a goal, and press ‘play.’ This streamlined flow empowers streamers to focus on their mission effortlessly.
1. Choosing a cause - Streamlined search for streamers
I designed intuitive filters and location-based search functionality to help streamers quickly find causes they care about. Recognizing that most streamers already have existing relationships with specific charities, the design ensures they can effortlessly locate and select their preferred organizations.
2. Setting the goal - Driving purpose & participation
I crafted an intuitive flow for streamers to easily set a fundraising goal. This feature focuses efforts, inspires participation, and fosters a shared sense of purpose, ensuring streamers and their communities can rally together toward a meaningful impact.
Scaling for the Future – Our team set-up the backend for the goal field to eventually recommend the optimal target based on the streamer’s community size, ensuring goals are both achievable and impactful.
3. Seamless start to giving
I ensured the final step of the charity setup flow provides clear confirmation of all details, giving streamers confidence in their setup. With a single press of 'Play,' streamers can easily transition into their live charity event, focusing entirely on connecting with their community and driving impact.
4. Fundraisers & history - Tracking impact over time
A simple way for streamers to view and manage their past and ongoing fundraisers, complete with downloadable reports for deeper insights. This feature empowers streamers to track their impact over time, analyze successful campaigns, and leverage their history to strengthen future efforts, fostering a deeper connection to their charitable initiatives.
Completing a charity stream - Celebrating impact
5. Closing the loop: Celebrating impact
A clear and satisfying flow for wrapping up a charity stream. This step provides streamers with a summary of their achievements, including total donations and community participation, while offering downloadable content to review and share their impact. By celebrating milestones and recognizing contributions, this final step reinforces a sense of accomplishment and encourages future fundraising efforts.
Scalable Goal Design for Mobile and Beyond
When designing charity goals, it was essential to ensure they seamlessly fit within Twitch’s broader ecosystem. At the same time, I was also working on Community Goals, including Follower Goals and Subscription Goals, which required a unified approach to goal-setting across the platform.
My designs needed to be scalable across multiple platforms and goal placements, ensuring consistency while allowing for flexibility in different use cases. This approach created a foundation for future goal-driven products while maintaining a cohesive and engaging user experience.
Proven results: Transforming fundraising on Twitch
Twitch Charity has empowered streamers to raise funds for over 16,000 charities, exceeding the adoption goal nearly threefold (70% vs. 25% target) and generating over $11 million annually in donations. Highlighting its success and significance, Twitch Charity was featured as a keynote product at TwitchCon 2023, underscoring its impact on the platform’s ecosystem and community.
My key learnings
Fresh eyes, fresh perspectives:
The value of not over-investing in early perfection was vital. We were working against a priority clock, one which could easily place fundraising off the business’s list. Quickly draft 2-3 rough ideas and share them with colleagues from all roles, not just designers. This approach gave me the ability to pitch ideas effectively and invited diverse feedback early, leading to stronger outcomes and iterations. Starting with simple grey wireframes gave us the iterative momentum to see this project to the end.
Collaboration & integration
Collaborating with PayPal teams taught me the importance of frequent touch-points and quick meetings to ensure legal alignment between organizations. This was especially critical when handling international taxes and financial transactions. Clear prototypes and consistent communication ensured compliance across 180 countries, while keeping the design process agile and effective.
Strategic stakeholder engagement - The power of a Design Sprint
Design sprints are an incredibly effective tool for engaging stakeholders and aligning teams. By condensing exploration, ideation, and decision-making into a structured, time-boxed process, design sprints bring focus and clarity to ambiguous product spaces. Stakeholders feel heard, enabling them to contribute their expertise and build a shared sense of ownership in the direction of a new product. This alignment not only accelerates buy-in but also ensures the final design reflects diverse perspectives, driving confident solutions.
Try it yourself
This project made its debut in May 2021, and we’re just getting started. With ongoing work on features like goals, recognition, and charity integrations, we’re building even more satisfying and rewarding feedback loops for streamers and their communities.
If feel-good moments are your thing, check out live charity streams.
Articles & Press
Tech Crunch (Article)
The Verge (Article)
Twitch Blog (Blog)
TwitchCon Keynote (YouTube)
