Verdant

As a team, we were interested in exploring the domain of global warming for our project. Global warming has been an ongoing issue for people around the world. With carbon dioxide emissions gradually rising, many people are beginning to be more conscious about their lifestyles and how they can reduce their personal carbon footprint.

This project is a feature design proposal created in a senior level user interface & experience design course. The objective was to design a potential feature for a pre-existing application, working within their established visual language, patterns and workflows.

In order to better understand the domain our design would exist within, we conducted a survey to gain a sense of the current relationship individuals share with the environment and how they perceive their environmental impact. Our primary research allowed us to gather diverse responses from over 50 participants with ages ranging from 18-61 years old.

Upon reviewing the results, I synthesized the data into 2 insights to inspire the team moving forward as we explored an area of intervention.

The domain of environmental awareness can encompass a wide range of topics, however through our primary research we were able to discover an area of intervention. As a team we were interested in focusing on answering the question,

From the research and insights collected, we synthesized our data to create a persona that would represent our target audience. Our persona served as the foundation of our design as it mapped out our users goals and motivations.

After a rapid brainstorming session, our group came to a consensus and decided to move forward with a carbon footprint tracking application. In order to envision how our persona would interact with this type of system, we formulated a journey map to see potential touchpoints that we could use to drive the design of our application.

As there were several features to the application, the team split up the tasks and as a result I was in charge of leading the design of the "logging transportation" aspect of the application.

Prior to finalizing the design of our application, it was important for us to allow for the test to be analyzed through the eyes of individuals outside of our group. Through conducting user testing with 14 participants, we were able to gather insights on the state of the core workflows of our design. In order to understand whether the intention for the application came across clearly, we allowed for users to explore the application without any guidance to monitor how they naturally reacted with the design.

Moving forward we provided scenarios to the participants, monitored their behaviour, and noted any thoughts, questions, or concerns they had while interacting with the workflow.

Upon reviewing the results, I synthesized the data into 2 insights to inspire the team moving forward as we explored an area of intervention.

The main profile houses all the analytical data regarding the user’s personal carbon footprint. A visual chart displays weekly and monthly emission amongst the different categories. Users are able to view each category separately and view a detailed breakdown of their logged activities.

Carbon dioxide emitted from water and electricity consumption are logged based on inputted data from the users. Through scanning their utility bills or manually inputting details, Verdant is able to track a user’s carbon dioxide emissions for both water and electricity usage by providing weekly averages.

Users are encouraged to explore unique ways they are able to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions through engaging in proactive goals. These will ensure that users are able to feel accomplished in discovering how small actions can make a change in their overall carbon footprint.

I personally found the development of this project rather tough due to it being the first time I had to collaborate on a design project completely remotely. However, by ensuring our team was constantly on the same page, we were able to develop our solution despite not being able to physically work together. Throughout the design process, it was important for us to be open to criticism in order to push the design to its full potential. This project revealed to me the importance of user testing and how it can reveal pain points that are not necessarily obvious from the designer’s lens.