You’re at your local grocery store about to check out when the cashier asks, “Would you like to purchase bags?”. You regretfully accept, knowing yet again you forgot your reusable grocery bags at home. How many times and how many instances does this happen in a day, and how much waste do we actually produce?
Project Type
Academic
Timeline
10 weeks, January to March 2020
Role
UX/UI Designer, UX Researcher, Design Strategy
Tools
Sketch, Principle, InVision
Sustainable is an iOS app that helps eco-conscious consumers practice sustainable living by competing with their friends in various challenges.
This was an academic project I manifested out of a 12 week UX Design course at BrainStation in downtown Toronto.
How might we guide users who want to live sustainability so that they ultimately reduce their waste.
DISCOVERY OF PROBLEM SPACE
It all began when I left my engineering job to travel the world. I found myself in Sydney, Australia 🇦🇺 living a waste conscious lifestyle for quite some time. Upon returning to North America my travels opened my eyes to the amount of work we all need to do to decrease our carbon footprint. Sustainability is everywhere; you see it on social media, you see large corporations eliminating single use plastic, we know we can do better and yet we still struggle to maintain this lifestyle. As a designer, my purpose is to start with why.
RESEARCH + DISCOVERY
Let’s begin with the first section of the infamous double diamond: research and discovery. This is the period where you question, cluster, and gather primary and secondary research.
SECONDARY RESEARCH
77%
of people want to live more sustainably, however, there is a gap when it comes to practising.
34%
of people say that they lack the knowledge.
53%
of people say that affordability is a key factor.
Not only do these three key factors show that there’s an obvious struggle living a sustainable lifestyle, it was also mentioned that people felt isolated living eco-conscious despite a general curiosity regarding ones direct impact on the environment.
Let’s explore the existing market and its competitors.
MARKET AND COMPETITORS
What is working on the market? What isn’t working on the market? On a broader “birds-eye” scale, there are a lot of habit building apps, and a lot of apps that map sustainably conscious businesses but not a lot of sustainable guides.
You know what I smell? Opportunity.
PRIMARY RESEARCH
My job as a UX designer is to start with why — this is where I conducted my personal UX research including in-person interviews as well as an online survey. This would help me further develop my persona. I confirmed at the beginning of each interview and questionnaire that the interviewees fit the criteria.
Interview questions varied from general What does sustainability mean to you? to more specific What efforts have you made towards reducing your personal waste?
Interview Criteria:
18–35 years old
Eco-conscious consumer
Struggles to maintain a sustainable lifestyle
Has disposable income
What do we do with the collected data? Synthesize it.
SYNTHESIS
The second section of the double diamond is synthesis, where we converge the data into insights, themes, areas of opportunity and how might we statements.
USER INTERVIEW INSIGHTS
A plethora of data was collected from the online survey that was combined with the in-person interviews. Two questions I asked outside of the scope were, “What apps do you use the most on your phone?” and “How much would you spend on starting a sustainable lifestyle?” to understand how my users interact with mobile apps and how dedicated they were to making this change. The results are as follows:
95% of users have social media apps on their phone - this told me that people like to be connected.
I then categorized relevant content from the interviewees into user behaviours, motivators, and pain points. Further organization allowed me to see these grouped in themes and insights. Let’s just say the neighbours thought my backdoor was a scene from A Beautiful Mind…
THEMES
My top three themes are as follows with the main theme being planning:
People struggled to plan ahead of time which led to personal waste. Actions such as forgetting your reusable water bottle, running late and averting carpooling, etc.
“I find it's difficult when I'm out. If I don't have a fork and I need a fork, I'm going to use a plastic fork because I didn't bring one.”
PIVOT
This is where I experienced my first pivot.
After analyzing my data I realized I interviewed users who already practice sustainable living, however struggle to maintain the lifestyle. Who I should have interviewed were people who have a desire to be eco-conscious, but don’t know where to start. Because of the time constraint and the nature of BrainStation’s course, interviewing a new group that fit the modified criteria was not an option so the direction of my design had to pivot. I now focused on a group who needed help sustaining their sustainable way of life (pun intended).
PERSONA AND EXPERIENCE MAP
Meet Jessica, she is a conglomerate of all research conducted and synthesized. She highlights all the pain points, behaviours, and motivators of my users and ultimately has the same primary goal: to reduce her personal waste.
Below is a day in the life of Jessica. We use experience maps to highlight areas of opportunity - where does Jessica’s experience dip and how can we prevent that drop from happening? You can see that there are two areas of opportunity: first, when Jessica forgets her tumbler and second, when she feels guilty throwing out her disposable cup. I focused primarily on forgetfulness as it highlighted the users personal actions rather than opening another door in regards to municipality recycling protocols.
This brings us back to the original “How might we…” statement:
How might we guide users who want to live sustainability so that they ultimately reduce their waste.
In order to ensure Jessica fits within the scope of the how might we, I used the term guide to help direct users in their sustainability journey while leaving it open ended and free to interpretation ~ambiguous, am I right?~.
PIVOT
This is where I experienced my second pivot.
This experience map highlights users who were forgetful which addressed the original theme when conducting UX research: planning. However, if I went down this route, the app would essentially hold the user accountable by being a glorified reminder companion. During my UX research users found that they were living this lifestyle alone — to combat both forgetfulness and loneliness I pivoted the major theme to accountability. This allows users to hold each other accountable to a sustainable lifestyle rather than the product doing the work.
Top three themes revisited with a shift from planning to accountability:
People need to be held accountable in order to maintain eco-consciousness.
“Someone to keep me accountable - i.e. if you and your roommate made an effort to…improve your buying habits.”
TASK SELECTION
User stories were formatted as follows: “As an eco-conscious consumer, I want to ___________, so that _________.”
I populated about 30 user stories and categorized them into four epics with the major epic being guidance.
As an eco-conscious consumer, I want to be held accountable, so that I follow through with my sustainable goals.
I am proud to say that when you look back at the original How might we statement we are still in line!
How might we guide users who want to live sustainability so that they ultimately reduce their waste.
Finally, what was the task flow I wanted my users to embark on? I’m quite familiar with various task flows considering my engineering background so this was an exciting part of the journey for me.
TASK FLOW
The task flow shows Jessica going through the motions of starting a new sustainability challenge with a friend (or solo) to ensure she is held accountable for her actions.
IDEATION
The third section of the double diamond is ideation, where we diverge by collecting inspiration. This helps us sketch and draft wireframes to prepare us for the final stage of the diamond.
UI INSPIRATION
A lot of my inspiration came from an app called Fabulous, a habit builder. The dot system I used to indicate when users had completed a task. I also used inspiration from Apple’s Wallet and Notes apps where cards stack when users have multiple challenges at once. Finally the Duolingo app had a fun and playful achievements page which I used to show users their progress.
SKETCHING AND WIREFRAMES
Taking to pen and paper with the UI inspiration mentioned above opened doors for some serious exploration. I began with some crazy-8s to get the creative juices flowing.
