You may have noticed something new on our site. Watsi community survey data, donor feedback on ways you feel connected to patients, and a talented engineering intern have culminated in our newest feature: sorting and filtering!
We wanted to add filters to our site because we recognized that the Watsi experience encourages connecting on a personal level with patients through their stories and updates, and we know how meaningful it can be when both donor and patient have shared experience with a procedure, life stage, or country of origin. Similarly, we paired filtering with being able to sort results because we know the joy it can bring to be the first donor to put funds towards a surgery or the one that puts in the last $47 to fully fund a treatment.
Before we could start building, we evaluated how to filter and sort patients in a way that retains the equity of each patient being shown to a potential donor. We took great care to consider how filters could disproportionately encourage donations to certain profiles while leaving others more hidden or seeming less desirable. We're building a world with healthcare for all so we always want to uplift each and every patient regardless of age, location, or reason for being on Watsi.
We had a hunch of which filters would meet our needs of equity and individuality, but we still looked to our peers in nonprofits, crowdfunding, and tech to validate and challenge our assumptions. Across 25 different sites, we started to see patterns emerge, and settled on location, amount funded / remaining, and procedure type as the best focus for Watsi. Finally, with all of the potential improvements and possible pitfalls in mind, we began the designing, coding, bug fixing, redesigning, and testing of our first filter: patient country.
We are really excited that with this extra detailed way to find a patient, giving becomes even more personal. Maybe you'd like to help a patient from a new country with each gift and now you can. Simply filter to a single country each time you are ready to give. Maybe you'd like to be the final donor and see the funds hit 100% and you can do that too! Just sort by amount funded. Or maybe you like the serendipity of not knowing who you'll support. For this, we still have the "Universal" sorting option which maintains the "randomness" and gives every patient currently awaiting funds an equal chance of being the patient that appears first on the page.
Finding patients from a specific country is just the start for filters on Watsi, so keep an eye out for the next iteration. If you have ideas or a way you'd love to be able to find commonality with a patient let us know @ hello@watsi.org!
We also want to express a huge amount of gratitude to our intern, Sabine, who spent her summer researching and building this project. And, none of this would have been possible without a very special supporter who stepped up to fund the development of this new feature so that giving on Watsi can be even more personal for everyone in our community.
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computer person at Watsi