CASE STUDY

Projekt Vita

A UX research project about trust, communication, and early collaboration around nonprofit partnerships.

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Overview

Role

UX Research

Timeline

12 Weeks

Research

Surveys + Interviews

Team

4 UX Designers

Projekt Vita is a nonprofit organization working with long-term, locally rooted development projects through knowledge sharing and collaboration. This project explored how companies understood that work, and what made a partnership feel credible enough to take further.

My role was to investigate that relationship and translate the research into a clearer direction. The work looked at where trust broke down, what both sides needed to understand earlier, and why that mattered for companies deciding whether a partnership felt credible enough to explore further. The project was done in school as part of Year 1 at Nackademin.

Problem / Context

Context

Companies and nonprofit organizations both rely on trust when starting a partnership, but they often come in with different expectations, needs, and ways of communicating. For companies, the question is often whether the collaboration feels credible and relevant. For nonprofits, it is about being understood, supported, and taken seriously.

Problem

Companies struggled to understand what nonprofit organizations actually needed from a partnership.
Nonprofits found it hard to communicate their value in a way that felt clear and credible.
Different expectations made early conversations uncertain and difficult to align.
Missing trust early in the process made collaboration feel harder to commit to.

Field research showed that trust often broke down early when expectations, needs, and value were not clearly understood. The concept responded by making the first steps of a partnership easier to follow and easier to explain from both sides.

Field research visit showing the local context around Projekt Vita — Field research made early trust gaps easier to see in context.

Approach

Clear intent was often missing

Companies wanted to help, but often struggled to understand what the nonprofit actually needed from the partnership.

Trust depended on how value was explained

Nonprofits had to make their work feel credible and concrete before companies felt confident moving forward.

Early conversations were hard to align

Both sides entered the relationship with different expectations, which made it harder to build momentum from the start.

Support often started with products, not money

For many companies, the first step felt easier when they could contribute something tangible, often their own products, before committing financially.

Research portrait used in the Projekt Vita case study — Research insights translated into clearer ways to frame the partnership.

Outcome

The project showed what helped trust form early in partnerships between companies and nonprofit organizations. It made it easier to see where uncertainty started, what both sides needed to understand sooner, and how credibility affected the willingness to move forward.

Trust was shaped as much by communication as by intention.
Early clarity around needs and expectations made conversations easier to align.
Making value easier to explain gave both sides a stronger starting point.