Helping You Protect Earth — a UX case study

Where is Earth Headed?

• Each year 14 billion pounds of garbage are dumped into the world’s oceans with most of that being toxic to marine life.
• There are 500 million cars in the world all producing 20 pounds of CO2 per 1 gallon of gas.
• In America, 40% of rivers and lakes are so contaminated there is no aquatic life and taking a swim yourself would be fatal.
• Plastic takes 500 years to decompose. Americans throw away 3 million plastic bottles an hour.

I could go on and on about the harsh reality of our planet, but you probably hear it everyday. Americans make up 5% of the world population, however contribute 30% of the world’s waste. This is why we are bombarded with information like not using straws, recycling more, buy organic, use less energy, less water, less chemicals, drive less, don’t fly. AHHH! How is a person meant to implement all these changes without rearranging their lifestyle?

How Can Designers Help?

My team, Taylor, Jake and I, knew we wanted to create an iOS app that could ease the stress of going green. We had a strict deadline of 4 weeks to have this in the app store. We had tons to research on our side however, exploring solutions for this topic was not easy. How could we make this a fun experience that users would implement into their everyday lives while also making an impact for Mother Earth? Creating a list of assumptions lead us to questions we asked the public to get an understanding of where people need help.

• How often do you recycle?
• What does ‘living green’ mean to you? Is it important?
• How often do you eat meat?
• Do you think of recycling the packaging when buying a product?
• How do you determine what products to buy?
• When buying clothes what factors do you take into consideration
• Do you know which types are accepted by recyclers?
• Does recycling frustrate you?
• What is your main mode of transportation?
• What would entice you to use public transit?
• Does going “green” require a big lifestyle change?

Our Users need a Hype Man!

We surveyed 35+ people and most knew about being green and thought it was very crucial to the environment. However, they had no idea how to separate types of plastics and opted to buy cheaper products verses eco-friendly products. People are trying so hard to help and reduce waste, but it’s frustrating and they feel uninformed. We collected data from interviews and research online to create our persona to represent all users.

Positive Reinforcement

Looking at our persona’s goals and frustrations, my team and I brainstormed what we thought this app should look like. Implementing a points system seemed to be a solution to making the app fun as well as showing users their impact on the planet. That idea led us to incorporate challenges and scores against other users.

Daily challenges would be simple tasks a user can do each day to go green.

• taking a reusable water bottle to work
• unplugging electronics when leaving the house

Weekly challenges would be a bit tougher but, a small lifestyle change you could accomplish once a week to lower your carbon footprint.

• starting a garden
• building separate bins for recycling

In our research, we found positive words would encourage the user the best. Challenges would support the user to take a step in the right direction of a lifestyle change. While our points feature will keep the user motivated.

Structure — Going Green

Going Green can incorporate several matters:

• Transportation
• Air Quality
• Recycling
• Meat Consumption
• Cleaning Products
• Water Usage
• Energy Usage
• Clothing

My team had a lot of big ideas that could go in so many directions. To find a direction to go in each of us made 10x10 iterations of features we wanted in the app. We were all on the same page of what we wanted the app to be, but we had different ideas of what categories features should go in. My team went though lots of brain-storming sessions that settled where are users wanted the features. Some of our more ambitious ideas were removed due to time constraints of the app production. Below are some sketches we worked through.

Features removed:

• Eco-friendly product barcode scanner
• Recycling center search by map view
• Compete with friends on challenges
• Link your energy/water bill to your account
• Animation of the world becoming cleaner as your score improves

My team and I were reluctant to remove these features. We believed linking the users bill accounts would be easier and quicker than manual entry. Also, having a live leaderboard would encourage users to participate more often. However, meeting our time frame was most important. We had to discuss what was feasible with our developers which is the reason we removed these features below. Ultimately, the app became more beneficial for the user in the end by having less confusing features.

Final App Features:

• Participate in daily & weekly challenges
• Increase your score and compare with others
• Manually enter energy and water bills to track impact
• Track transportation and gallons of gas used
• Read articles about the environment
• Learn about types of plastics and where to take them

User Feedback

Testing this app gave me incredible insight and validated the hard work my team and I put in. I saw our app was user-friendly and every task given to the user was easily accomplishable. I believe we got to this point by working really hard on brain-storming ideas over and over to confirm things were in the right spot. Two issues several people had with testing was understanding the Habit Tracker and why it was important and searching for a recycling center was not easy to find. Users were looking for a search bar when asked to complete the task.

Alterations:

• Habit Tracker was changed to My Impact
• Recycling center search was moved to a Recycling page
• Profile settings became more defined and accessible

We implemented these changes then tested again with different users. These changed helped the user understand the purpose of the app and why they needed to be involved.

Happy Users!

My team had to pivot our ideas several times to accommodate the developers and our time frame. It was tragic at times to let good ideas go, however, those ideas could always be implemented with more time given. Overall, this was my first experience working in an agile environment with developers and it was great! My design team had to work very quickly which led to lots of brain-storming, which I enjoy. Each morning we checked in with the developers and kept everyone on the same page. We made a great app that got us excited while encouraging our users to reduce, recycle and reuse. Going forward, our developers are working on a 2.0 version with all the lost features.

Thanks for reading!