Product Design
SADAR
How might we help 34,000 more animals?
A digital transformation for Somerset & Dorset Animal Rescue — a volunteer-run charity that has saved 34,000+ animals over 45 years. Replacing a broken WordPress site (scoring 2-3/10 across every UX category) with a purpose-built platform that lets people adopt, donate, and volunteer online for the first time.
Process
The problem
SADAR's website couldn't do the three things visitors came for. Adoption pages had no animal listings — just an unanswered phone number. The donation page had no way to accept money online. Volunteer CTAs led to dead ends. Facebook had become the charity's real digital presence — on a platform they didn't own.
Research & discovery
27 structured research areas covering UK charity compliance, payment processing, accessibility standards, and competitor benchmarking. Discovered Stripe's charity rate is 1.2% (not 1.4%), and HMRC Gift Aid requires 10 structured data fields with full audit trails — not the simple checkbox most implementations assume.
The approach
Mock-first architecture for elderly volunteer committee: environment variables control whether the system runs against real integrations (Stripe, Resend, Clerk) or local mocks. Full service blueprints mapped for adoption and donation journeys. Built on Next.js 15, Convex, Clerk, Stripe (charity rates), and Resend.
What's been built
Phase 0: 27 shadcn/ui components, 8 custom blocks, database schema with 8 tables and 15 indexes. Phase 2: Complete animal management with public gallery, filtering, profiles, photo lightbox, enquiry system with branded emails. Phase 1 (in progress): Online donations with Gift Aid, Stripe at charity rates, admin dashboard.
Gallery
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