UX design case: the SavEr
Be a self-motivated energy saver from now on
Hello, we are “the Saviors” and welcome to our project “the SavEr”. This project is made by Shiqi Yu, Xinyu Chen and Jacky Chen that are all Computer Science students from University of Waterloo.
Topic
Reduce energy cost
Our design process
1.Understand our target users.
2.Translate the needs into functionalities.
3.Create design ideas.
4.Prototype design.
5.Test and evaluate.
6.Build final version.
Understand our target users
To understand our target users, we have created some imaginary personas and empathy maps.
Personas
empathy maps
Translate the needs into functionalities
Changes
After gathering information from our exploratory study with our interviewees, we have changed our ideas on how this project will go.
Previously, we have thought we want to accomplish the goal to generally help people to save energy, maybe with some help of home devices like Google Home or Nest. After some interviews with students and graduates, we found that most of them do not care about saving energy, not to say how to save energy. Thus, we moved from the “methods” to “motivations”. We are now focusing on how to grow people`s motivation on saving energy, so we decided to aim at young people from 15–35 instead of mid ages and elders like in the personas since they have enough consciousness on energy conservation.
Exploratory study results
Affinity Diagram
Work models
we want to see what we can do specifically from the connection between user themselves and house properties.
Create design ideas
Main function
After some brainstorming, we have come up with some creative ideas like:
- A social page that users are able to share their saving moments with their friends.
- A tips and news page that users learn how they can save energy efficiently.
- An usage page that users see their detail usage of energy like electricity, gas and water.
- A score system that users score points from every unit of energy they have saved.
- A ranking system that users compete their points with their friends and neighbors.
Then we created some scenarios to guess what can happen when users using our product:
Story boards
Prototype design
First, we have created some low-fi prototypes based on our functionalities.
Wireframes
Then we created a series of wireframes to simulate the user flow of our APP.
Hi-fidelity prototype
Test and evaluate
After we hand our low-fi prototypes to our interviewees and test, we have gathered great suggestions to improve our APP.
A user suggests that we should have a shop page that include all the possible gifts that can be redeemed with current points to make it more convenient for the user to browse gifts. The same user also suggests that the ‘plant a tree’ option for 2500 points is not a suitable reward considering that the user can get or aim for tangible goods as rewards. User also mentions we are lacking a monthly user usage screen and that this screen is more important than the daily or weekly displays as they want a clear view of their billing cycle. Moreover, the application should set a monthly usage goal for the user. Overall, we did not meet all our study goals because we overestimated the number of people that would redeem points for trees rather than tangible items. We also focused too much on giving users a day to day report on energy consumption rather than a monthly report.
After some reasonable improvements, we are finally going towards the last step:
Build final version
After the completion of our high-fidelity prototype, we want it to be as specific and intuitive as possible, especially, we aim to make users really engaged in our system, for example, our social page, ranking system, energy saving tips and the redeem store. Generally, we need information about
· what the common user flow is when users using our app. We need it to see if users follow the right instructions and orders as intended, for example, is some button intuitive and obvious enough to click on?
· what page or function users pay more attention on. We need it to address and improve our popular functionality so that we can attract more users.
So, we expect questions about our functionality and user flow, how they interact with the buttons and tabs.
Our plan for heuristics evaluation:
· “Visibility of system status”: we want to see if users can notice their energy usage at the first place or not.
· “Match between the system and the real world”: since we have a social page, we want users to feel as natural and comfortable as in the real world.
· “User control and freedom”: since we have a redeem page, users may want to change their mind after choosing a type of gift. For example, we can allow a one-hour tolerance to let users to change idea.
· “Error prevention”: also, as in redeem store, users may choose by mistake, so we need an extra confirmation to make sure users choose the right thing for them.
In terms of the gamification design heuristics: we are aiming at the “Purpose and meaning” for users. Since we have a score system and scores can be redeemed for gifts, we want to see if it is beneficial enough for users as well as the gift providers and hydro company.
Presentation poster
