We’re halfway through our third season of “Wireframe” already! You can listen to the third episode embedded below or in your favorite podcast player, and of course you should subscribe at adobe.ly/wireframe.

This installment tries to unpack the role of user experience design in crowdfunding and charitable giving. Of course it’s a particularly relevant question now with so many people under so much duress from COVID-19 and the volatile economy that has accompanied it. From the episode notes:

As the pandemic created health and employment crises, a lot of people found themselves in urgent need of financial help. As a result, crowdfunding platforms are proving more popular than ever—creating personal connections between those of us asking for help, and those of us with money to give. We look at how platforms like GoFundMe, Kickstarter, Patreon and Chuffed deploy different strategies in their UX design to encourage us to give, and give more.

We managed to get some really great voices to help us explore this story, including designer Charles Adler, one of the co-founders of Kickstarter; Ursula Sage, director of product at Patreon; and Prashan Paramanathan, founder of giving site Chuffed. We’ve also got designer Shay Walnut, who has a very personal story on how crowdfunding made a difference for him in this pandemic.

You can find Wireframe at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, PocketCasts, Castro or wherever you download your favorite shows, and you can listen to previous episodes and find out much more at adobe.ly/wireframe. And come back in two weeks for the start of our second half of the season; we’ve got a terrific episode on the design of those streaming video services that are enabling all your binging marathons through this pandemic.