Inspiring Environmental Action Through Mobile Applications
Doing More, Feeling Better, and Fostering Connections for the Everyday Environmentalist
Background: Who is our client?
Our client is a local nonprofit aiming to improve the environment through the reduction of food waste. Currently, they have a small section of their website dedicated to providing easy to use, at home tips to help readers reduce their food waste individually.
Project Overview
This project was a two week sprint by myself and two other UX Designers. Our project included each stage of UX design, from the user research, to defining the problem, designing the solution, and delivering a high fidelity prototype of our application. Throughout the project, we were all equally active in each stage of the project. This project was completed 100% remotely.
Methods
Surveys
User Interviews
Affinity Mapping
User Persona
User Journeys
Design Studio
Divergent Design
“How Might We”
Comp Analysis
Wireframing
Prototyping
Usability Testing
Tools
Google Surveys
Google Sheets
Google Slides
Google Docs
Whimsical
Figma
Video Conferencing
The Life Cycle of an “Everyday Environmentalist”
Surveys- 35 Responses
We started with a survey to get a rough idea about how people thought about the environment, and how they felt about their contributions (positive and negative) through their daily habits.
Care about the environment
Have previously changed their habits to improve a social cause
Think that food waste is an important issue
User Interviews - 5 Interviews
We followed up with a user interview to get a more in depth look at their thought processes regarding their eco-friendly motivations, and how those motivations were influenced over time.
We found that people had a wide range of reasons they were motivated to engage in eco-conscious behavior, including for the sake of the planet, animals, a personal enjoyment of nature, and in order to preserve the environment for future generations.
“Being Informed is Why I Want to Be Better”
These motivations were rooted in a moment of learning about the state of the environment, through documentaries, reading, from friends. Their decision to make a lifestyle change either happened in that moment, or a related moment later on- like when they were throwing away excess food, or eating animal products and reflected on the info they learned earlier.
“Change is Hard To Maintain When I Don’t Know What I’m Doing”
What prevented them from making sustained choices was a lack of actionable and easy information that they could use in their daily lives. It was difficult for people who wanted to make radical shifts in their life to find ways that they could maintain those changes- whether that was with dietary changes, or how to shop better to reduce their food waste, etc.
Saying “No” To Old Behaviors is Hard to Explain
Another breaking point for their motivation was social pressure to conform to more “normal” behavior. This is particularly strong for those who change their diets- during holidays, or with extended family, who may not recognize why they’ve decided to make this shift.
User Journey
Based in the synthesis of our user interviews, this user journey represents the most common user path towards changing their behaviors and daily activities as they strive for more socially friendly (particularly environmentally friendly) actions.
Now We Know What Drives Them, How Do We Design for Them?
Our Users Need Information and Support
Specifically, they need:
access to information about the environment in a more general/global way
access to tips they can use in their day to day
a community of people who can support them on their journey to sustainability bliss.
We wanted to leverage the passion of like-minded individuals in order to create a (mostly) user-content driven community that would give users access to steps/tips/etc that others were doing.
This would:
Fulfill a sense of confidence that users were doing enough
Relieve a sense of isolation from their lifestyle change
Provide users with habits they could do in their day to day in a range of types of impact (food waste, recycling, emissions etc.)
Give our client a platform where their mission to reduce food waste could be more visible, and celebrated.
How Does It Work?
Users can post articles, tips, or videos in different categories, for example food waste. From there, other users can comment, save, share, like those posts, much like any other social media. As a user, from the beginning of the app, you can tailor the app to your interests, which would populate the “home screen” with related posts, or you can search a specific category.
The Glories of “Challenges” in Habit Change
We wanted to use gamification- the process of adding game elements to a non-game experience in order to better engage our users. It was important in easing a few different challenges our users faced.
By giving users challenges and rewarding them with badges, leaderboards, etc. we can erase that sense of “I’m not doing enough” that is so pervasive amongst our users and detrimental to long term success of shifting habits.
Furthermore, the ability to vote is a great way to encourage re-engagement. Even without the motivation to post, users have a sense of control over the content they are seeing, which is important to users This also means that we can create a “leaderboard” of top comments, and challenge winners. These are all “internal triggers” that help to influence users to engage, without making them feel forced or pushed.
Overall, just providing users with a place to post their ideas, interact with each other, and engage in challenges, we can address their needs, while also easing the negativity that can come along with long term positive changes.
Results and Reflections
Feature Prioritization is Important
This project helped shape me as a designer by helping me to prioritize features based on our user research. We had so many different ways that we could have gone about helping our users to continue to grow into the people and consumers that they wanted to be, especially considering they were already highly motivated.
We knew that we needed to prioritize providing information, and general tips, but had a plethora of ideas that we could use in order to help users face food waste as an issue. We knew that grocery shopping was a primary change users had already made, such as going shopping in smaller trips more often, so that they didn’t have to throw away what they over bought. Ultimately though, we didn’t want to prioritize it because we learned that our users are not focused on changing beyond those habits.
We also knew that staying informed was a primary motivation, and that a large amount of that information was coming through social media- which is why we wanted to prioritize the mobile application. Although, I have to admit, this case study only covers the most essential features of the application, and I learned how important time management was because initially we didn’t prioritize features which ended up being a huge time cost for us as designers.
By not slowing down and disseminating what was truly the most important feature/set of features our end product was a little bit scattered, and still needed a lot of work. While I have the luxury of no deadlines for a concept project, in the work force this would realistically be a hindrance to my team.
Companies Do Indeed Have Budgets
I had a ton of fun with this project, but for a local non-profit I doubt this would have been reasonable. Throughout this project our user was king! In retrospect I think it would be beneficial to keep the business needs in mind with more respect to the struggles they face, financially, in terms of man hours etc. Having worked with start-ups, I strive to make the most impact with the least amount of work created for devs. In that respect, I don’t know that I would declare this project as a success, but as a practice in user driven experience, I’m very proud of what I’ve created.
Thank you for your time, I hope you enjoyed reading!