MY COURSERA INTERACTION DESIGN CAPSTONE PROJECT:
durablEasy App: putting sustainability policies & desires into practice.
BACKGROUND
My journey in UX Design started after a sabbatical in Southern Africa during which I decided to redirect my career journey towards UX Design. During my (previous) career, working for several software companies in the labor market, I had come across some good, but also a lot of bad examples of UX design. Although it was often not primarily in my job description, I somehow found myself often getting involved in projects related to UX (re-) design. So, it was time to follow another passion!
So, after some online research, I found on the online learning platform Coursera the Interaction Design Specialization of UC San Diego. It not only offered the online training I was looking for, but also required hands-on assignments which would be reviewed by Coursera co-students. As a fairly newbie in this field, I liked the concept of interacting and learning from peers, so I signed up and started my new journey in June of 2018.
After the first 7 modules, all of which I had to finish, I could finally start with the 8th module of the course: The Interaction Design Capstone Project. During this 10-week project, I could put everything I had learned into practice and create my very own application. And here she is: durablEasy! In this post I summarize the weekly assignments and the design process to develop durablEasy, the app that helps users towards a more natural and sustainable lifestyle.
The course set-up provided me with 3 design briefs to choose as a base for the app development:
- Time: Redesign the way we experience or interact with time;
- Change: Design an interface that facilitates personal or social behavior change;
- Glance: Design a personal dashboard tailored to the needs of certain people.
I choose to focus on the design brief for Change, although it also would aim to merge into Glance. I wanted to learn about how people perform and make choices for everyday household activities and chores in relation to sustainability.
The reason to choose this focus was due to feedback of some of my relatives and friends. As I had just discovered recently, you could make your own laundry detergent by using either Horse Chestnuts or Ivy Leaves. In all my enthusiasm, I could not stop talking about it. The feedback of a lot of the people I shared this with, was firstly surprised, secondly intrigued and often ended with a remark like:
“I definitely should, and also would like, to incorporate less waste, more natural, less chemical practices, but if only I had an easy fix…”
To me, this showed that a lot of people are benevolent to Dutch promotional campaigns e.g. by local municipalities and other organizations on a macro level. However, changing one’s daily routines successfully requires taking baby steps and persistence. Experts claim that it can take up to a minimum of 21 days.
Lack of hands-on knowledge, information and/or feedback put strain on one’s desire to change. Coupled with lack of time, augmenting the appropriate behavior, no wonder even the best intentions of the majority prove to be in vain. This frustration lead to the idea of designing an application that that would offer an easy and simple way for people to gradually adopt changes towards a more natural and sustainable lifestyle.
I picked the habit of choosing laundry soap as a basis for my need finding. Selecting laundry soap is one of those basic things people due almost I wanted to learn more about if and how sustainability in the broader sense played a part in their selection of the laundry soap.
The main purpose of this design phase was to understand potential users, discover their considerations and learn from their experiences while doing their laundry in general and more specifically choosing their laundry detergent. Observations and interviews were conducted with 3 participants at their home. One of these participants actually invited me to go to the supermarket to explore the laundry detergents.
I asked my participants to walk me through the considerations and actions that led them to choose the laundry soap they use at present. I assumed due to trend to go green and growing consciousness of the impact on the environment, I would expect this would affect the choice for their laundry soap, but this was only an aspect for 1 and not even the main one. Habit, special priced offer and smell were given as the main reasons why my participants choose their laundry soap.
To get an even broader perspective, I randomly invited some family and friends to fill out my questionnaire; this yielded an additional 18 participants.
This led to a list of breakdowns and design opportunities to take into account while designing the app:
- Lack of knowledge of the ingredients in a product like laundry detergent;
- Hard to find (online) information on ingredients and their impact on personal health and their impact on the environment;
- Lack of knowledge and actual recipes to adhere to a desire to maximize the use of natural ingredients;
- Wrong mental model about benefits of separation of e.g. plastics;
- Changing habits can be very persistent; why consider change as you don’t experience a direct benefit;
- Relying on the commercial environmentally friendly messaging and claims of the producer unconditionally.
Brainstorming led to compile a variety of ideas/ scenario’s that could form a basis for the required functionalities of the app design:
- User struggles to juggle between doing household chores, spending quality time with the children and their busy schedules. User want to be able to combine these things in a sustainable way.
- User is out of cleaning and personal care products and shops are closed. However, user needs to go out and have some specific clothes clean for the next day. User needs a way to come up with cheap alternatives to be able to perform a household chore as user is out of regular products.
- User is interested in minimizing waste and e.g. already takes no plastic bags when buying vegetables and fruits. User wants to take this to the next level. User needs concrete ways/ information/ inspiration and instant support to do so.
- User is environment conscious, but to the extent that it does not limited user’s living comfort. User needs a way to view and review alternatives for household chores that meets this criterion.
- User is environment conscious and open to limit the impact on the environment or opt for natural alternatives. However, the information user is provided with is high level and does not affect the way user does household chores directly. User need a way to monitor or relate the effect of the activity/ action/ chore instantly.
- User views all household chores as separate entities. Some users do link choice for e.g. laundry soap to the choice of washing program and even the intelligence of the machine. User would like to have a way to look at household chores from a more holistic approach mostly motivated by either saving time or saving money.
- Most of the users mention that their choice for their laundry soap is highly motivated by the cleanliness of the laundry. However, almost none of them mentioned it, did actually test this. User needs an objective way to verify or compare usages/ products.
- Some of the users mention they re-use(d) the packaging for the laundry soap (especially the ones with young children), mostly for craft material for their children. Others are proud that they separate/ recycle it (i.e. putting it in a specific container). None of the users considers the option of reducing the amount of packaging. Users need a way to be helped to reduce the waste of the packaging.
- Habits are difficult to change. To be able to redirect oneself to new ways to do things, the new way needs to feel, smell, taste somewhat similar to the old way. E.g. for some of the participants of the need finding phase, it would help them if the laundry soap/ softener would smell similar to their current ones. Users would need a way to find a recipe to replicate it in a more natural way.
- Most of the users do not know which ingredients are in e.g. laundry soaps, and when asked one wonders aloud, why not as she does read and googles the ingredients and impact on her health for items like food, medicine, etc. User needs a way to instantly, while (online) shopping, get the information of its impact on personal health and environment for a specific product (like laundry soap) and its specific ingredients.
- User strives to maximize the use of natural ingredients due to sensitive skin and allergies in the family. For this, user has substituted commercial products for more natural ones as cleaning products. User is not aware of or familiar with natural products to do another household chore: laundry. As an early adapter, user should be proactively provided with sustainable alternatives for other activities/ chores.
- User has the wrong mental model for separation of waste e.g. plastics. User needs to be provided by direct information and feedback to link specific (plastic) waste to local regulations.
- User does not consider other brands, because user does not like as stated “change things that work”. However, user would be open to change if made aware of the impact instantly. Therefore, user needs to be able to get direct hands-on information/ feedback to become aware and therefore make more sustainable choices.
- User is proud of being very meticulous in the separation of their waste, purchasing only the most sustainable products, consciously use of water, etc. User relies on the commercial product description and does not do additional research on these claims. User needs a way to verify and/or check these claims and be offered the most sustainable one.
- User want to use more natural ways to do household chores but does not know where to start. User needs a way to get started and advised on concrete possibilities based on their personal schedule and routine.
- User claims information for people to do their household chores more sustainably are abundantly available online. User reads and follows several blogs herself, but hardly practice these herself. User needs a way to put her acquired (online) information into daily practices.
- User already produces her own natural products. However, user is sometimes out of ingredients which others might view as waste (like orange peelings or glass bottles). User needs a way to connect with potential local suppliers/ individual to provide user with these ingredients and reduce waste for the others in the process.
- User feels the responsibility for the impact of a product on personal health as well as impact on the environment lies with the producers/industry. User feels that the industry has to be completely overhauled in the way they produce and what they produce. User feels the industry has to be forced/ helped to change. User needs to be able to combine forces with mind-like individuals and voice/ share their findings.
POINT OF VIEW
Sustainability attracts a lot of attention and is a hot topic nowadays and a lot is being done, but still there is a lot to be gained to preserve the planet for future generations. The majority of people state, when asked, they want to contribute. However, the general focus on the topic is high-level and/ or limited to a dedicated (intrinsically motivated) happy few.
A lot is already possible for normal people to make more sustainable choices and incorporate these in their everyday life. Changing one’s habits is usually only set in motion due to either high intrinsic motivation, a monetary incentive, a treat of penalization. The durablEasy App aims to provide an alternative: providing hands-on information and suggestions for durable, natural choices, that are fun, saving money and adaptable to every household.
This way, durablEasy facilitates turning high level policies and target values on sustainability into practice.
Augmenting the amount of “mere drops in the ocean” that will eventually turn into a rain shower; that is the ultimate goal of durablEasy .
Storyboards help easily visualize a problem in a specific context and describe a complete story in a simple way. Of all the scenario’s formulated during brainstorming, I have created storyboards to describe different scenarios where a potential user is having a problem to which the app could provide a solution. I have included 2 of these storyboards.
STORYBOARD #1
STORYBOARD #2
Now, it was time to go to the drawing board; to get an idea of how the app would, could, should look like and operate. To be flexible, I had these initial paper prototypes configured by writing down and clipping out lots of elements and laying them out on my iPad mini.
PAPER PROTOTYPE #1
PAPER PROTOTYPE #2
Jakob Nielsen has defined 10 general principles to take into consideration for interaction design. These heuristics were used in the evaluation of the 2 low fidelity (paper) prototypes by 3 different people; 1 of them in-person and the other 2 were done remotely by 2 co-students of the Coursera Interaction Design Specialization:
- Visibility of system status.
- Match between system and the real world.
- User control and freedom.
- Consistency and standards.
- Error prevention.
- Recognition rather than recall.
- Flexibility and efficiency of use.
- Aesthetic and minimalist design.
- Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors.
- Help and documentation.
Each evaluator rated each issue they found issues with a severity rating (1 to 5) and provided each with feedback and/or suggestions. The feedback was really valuable and important to detect errors early in the process.
Based on the HE, the durablEasy app prototypes seemed to appeal (in basis) to the evaluators as well as to succeed in its purpose. However, I was provided with a lot of insight in the required improvements on logical routing, usage and placement of appropriate buttons and providing appropriate feedback and help to the user to further optimize the app. The major challenge would be to blend the 2 prototypes into 1 working prototype.
Link to my blended paper prototypes: https://invis.io/3FP1U97AWJS
HIGH FIDELITY PROTOTYPING
Next, I transformed the paper prototypes into high-fidelity interactive prototypes, first creating them in JustinMind and uploading these to make interactive on InVision.
INTERACTIVE PROTOTYPE #1
USER TESTING
Now it was time to hand over the first interactive prototype to be evaluated in-person by others to test its usability and detect possible errors.
The users were 2 relatives (one male and one female) between 40 to 50 years old. The female is one the persona I had continuously in the back of my mind when designing the app. She is really into trying to incorporate sustainability. The male tester was purposely chosen as being out of my potential user group to get an even more objective test of the prototype. Both of them are frequent users of mobile apps and use their smart phones on a daily basis.
LIST OF CHANGE
The feedback of the in-person testing led to a list of change requirements for the redesign of the prototype:
- Add informational/ instructional text for first time users that explore the application for the first time to guide them through the sequence;
- Provide more flexibility of usage of application by enabling back option (with current back button) as well have option to directly select what you want to do (usage of icons);
- Change color of the icons in lower menu bar to a more contrasting one for the operational icons to better distinguish between operational and non-operational icons;
- Fix dead ends in flows
- Add functionalities to profile pages, like changing profile page and have a look at achievements.
A/B TESTING
After having redesigned the initial prototype based on the feedback, it was time to measure real-time user behavior on the prototype with an A/B test. This AB test was done using the online test platform usertesting.com .
INTERACTIVE PROTOTYPE #2
Probably, you are familiar with the adage: “the last mile is the longest” …. Well this is how it felt to me at this point: there, I found myself after 7 modules and into week 9 of Module of the course. Forced by being limited in the design features, I switch to (re-)configure my prototypes in InVision Studio. Learning a new tool is always hard, but I was amazed at the speed and willingness of the InVision Studio support team to help me out.
For the A/B testing, my test plan was twofold; I wanted to find out whether the set-up of the top and lower menu bar would show significantly different click rates as well as whether the guided instructions in Version A had a significant effect on the usage of the app.
Usertesting provided quality and quantative insights from 4 users who recorded their interactions while using the app and practicing the ‘think aloud method ‘. This resulted in the following findings:
- All testers had difficulty pronouncing the prototype name durablEasy
- All testers valued the easy of the navigation on the app, there was a significant higher click rate in Version B with the categories in the lower menu
- 2 testers provide insightful recommendations on textual modifications
- 2 testers suggested to segment the 4 categories into more subcategories (either based on activity or on how it would impact the natural footprint of the user)
- All testers really appreciated the variety of the tips for each category
- 1 tester suggested to add a competition aspect based on user activity
- The hamburger menu in right top corner in version B was not identified as option to go to profile page; whereas the account Icon in bottom bar in version A was easily identified and used by users
- User 4 suggested to give more details to the reason why users of the app should incorporate a certain habit into their lifestyle and have it reflected in their profile page
- Segmentation of the tips add by users or app owner was mentioned by 3 out of 4 users to be desirable
- Spelling errors were mentioned by 2 of the 4 users
- One of the users specifically mentioned the addition of the competition element would motivate him to definitely use the app in real life
- User suggested to add an intro survey for registered users.
- Users were more inclined and found the back button in Version 2 (back button positioned in left top corner) easily in comparison to the back button in Version 1 (back button positioned in right lower corner).
FINAL PRODUCT
Due to time constraints of the course, I was only able to implement the following changes:
- Change hamburger icon in account icon in right top corner
- Correct spelling errors
The final result is durablEasy, an app that facilitates users to gradually adopt a more natural & sustainable actions in their daily routine. With durablEasy, users can easily find all the information in their own pace on topics they are interested in and get the motivation to go beyond. Therefore, durablEasy can be the app to turn “drops in the ocean” will eventually turn into a rain shower; “actions speak louder than words” in the end.
Link to prototype: https://projects.invisionapp.com/prototype/durablEasy-cjpgwx8fr00a9tq012dibm9n3/play/30db5df3
Link to promotional video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6J-DrWH-v8A
EPILOGUE
Of course (and I am the first to recognize this), my final app still leaves a lot of room of improvement. Luckily, my learning curve throughout this course has been mountainous and I am looking forward to the remainder of the hike!
As my final grade Is (hopefully) just around the corner; I would, first of all, like to thank from the bottom of my hart my co-students on Coursera for their willingness to help me out, review my assignments and their mental support (Brenda A. Greg B., Doriane L., Audree L., Rishav S., Vic R. , Helora D.; Slim S.; this one goes out to you!) I really appreciated our interaction throughout the course and I am looking forward a prolongation.
Secondly, I want to thank the great Support team of InVision Studio (Rashad, James and Joe; cudos to you! You know what it takes to turn someone into a long-term customer)
Last, but not the least: I want to thank Professor Scott Klemmer, Professor Elizabeth Gerber, Professor Jacob Wobbrock to have compiled this course. As a newly appointed Coursera mentor for future students of the 2nd Module of this course: Design Principles: An introduction. I am looking forward to share knowledge and insights vice versa.
Vera
If you want to connect, visit my Linked-in profile. I am looking forward.
RESOURCES
Icons from flaticon, pictures of pixabay, video enabled by renderforest, prototypes enabled InVision.
