Removing the middleman between people in need and people who can help.
Needs Map is a map-based platform where people, schools and community groups list what they need, and anyone who can help gives directly. No intermediary decides where the help goes. As executive creative director, I led the UX, UI and development team that designed and built it. My company spent millions of dollars on it and donated it to the organization that runs it in Turkey. It has supported more than 10 million needs since 2015, and when a national emergency came, it became the coordination layer.
- Role
- Executive Creative Director
- Team
- UX designers, UI designers and developers, led by me
- Investment
- Millions of dollars, donated by my company
- Reach
- All 81 cities in Turkey
- Recognition
- Gold, Golden Spider Awards
Everyone in the chain meant well. The chain was still the problem.
Most giving runs through intermediaries. A person who wants to help sends money to an organization, and the organization decides what to buy, who receives it and when. The person in need usually cannot say what they need, and the person who wants to help rarely knows what a particular neighbor, school or community center is short of.
The founders of Needs Map set it up as a social cooperative in 2015 to take that chain out. Needs, listed by the people who have them. Help, offered by the people who can give it. A map between the two. The idea, the mission and the community are theirs. The platform, and the team and funding behind it, is what my company contributed.
Once you remove the middleman, everything the middleman did has to be done by the interface.
That is a heavy load for a screen. It has to establish who is asking, what they need, whether the request is real and how to answer it, for a person who may be stressed, on a phone and in a hurry.
Four steps, free for everyone
No money passes through the platform. Everything is given in kind, directly from one person or organization to another.
Open a free account
Accounts are verified, so a request on the map is a request from a real person or organization.
List a need
Individuals, public schools, cooperatives, voluntary groups and community centers list what they need under humanitarian categories.
List help
Individuals and companies list what they can give, or browse the needs closest to them.
Connect and give
People connect directly and arrange the exchange themselves. No third party handles it.
Two versions, one mission
The pilot
I led the team at my studio GRAFX that designed, developed and launched the first version in Turkey. The beta went live in October 2015 at the UNDP Social Good Summit.
We donated the platform to the organization that runs it in Turkey. Across the pilot and the 2.0 rebuild, my companies absorbed the full cost of design and development, which ran into the millions of dollars.
Needs Map 2.0
The first version proved the model and held the mission back. It lacked the visual clarity and usability to grow beyond its early use case, and a visitor had to work too hard to understand what was being asked, who was asking and how to help.
I led the Dreamspace team of UX designers, UI designers and developers, and we financed the rebuild ourselves. Before designing a single screen, we spent months gathering and analyzing data. The findings drove a new UX and UI, built from scratch and optimized for desktop and mobile.
Designed for people who are stressed, not browsing
Human-centric help categories
Help is organized the way people ask for it, not the way institutions file it. Someone who needs a blanket should not have to know which department handles blankets.
A color system that does not shout
The old interface used saturated, alarm-style hues. The new palette uses soft red for needs, mint green for support and light blue for resolved needs, so a person in crisis is not alarmed by the tool meant to help them.
Icons that work in any language
A new universal icon set lets people navigate the platform regardless of language or location.
Scheduling for individuals and groups
A single donor and a volunteer team can both commit to a time, which turns a good intention into a delivery.
The test was the week after a disaster
On January 24, 2020, a magnitude 6.7 earthquake struck Elazığ, in eastern Turkey. Forty-one people were killed and more than 1,600 were injured. Needs Map became the disaster coordination platform for civil society organizations.
Between January 27 and February 7, it coordinated:
The delivery mix was 53 percent food, 37 percent protective equipment, 8 percent clothing and 2 percent blankets, shelter and heating items. Figures are from the platform’s own operations data.
A platform proves itself the week after a disaster, not on launch day.
More than a decade in numbers
Independent sources first. Then the figures the platform reports itself.
From independent sourcesIndependent figures reflect the period each source covers. The 2026 figures are reported by the organization that runs the platform and include indirect support.
Four things that apply to any platform
The sector was humanitarian. The lessons are not.
Platforms win by removing steps, not adding features
The whole proposition was one fewer party in the chain. Every design choice afterward either protected that or undermined it.
Design for the worst day, not the launch day
People arrive at a tool like this stressed, in a hurry and on a phone. A calmer interface is a more effective one.
Build the emergency mode before the emergency
The platform that coordinated a national response in 2020 had been in daily use for five years. Nobody can build trust in the middle of a crisis.
Hand over what you build
We donated the platform so the people who run it would own it. A system that depends on its builder has not finished being built.
Needs Map was founded in 2015 as a social cooperative. The idea, the mission and the community belong to its founders and volunteers. As executive creative director, I led the UX, UI and development team at GRAFX and Dreamspace. My companies financed the work, an investment in the millions of dollars, and donated the platform to the organization that runs it in Turkey. It won Gold in the Social Responsibility Projects category at the Golden Spider Awards.
Independent figures: ILO profile of Needs Map and Ashoka fellow profile. Project page: Dreamspace.
I build platforms that have to work on the worst day.
Creative direction, product strategy and delivery for platforms that connect people at scale. I lead the design and engineering team, from diagnosis to build to handover.
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