Problem

“Climate change is transforming our region and its impacts are becoming apparent. Poor air quality, extreme weather, wildfires, and warming waters are transforming the earth and our society. Much work is currently underway in our government and through policies to incentivize and support industries in their transformation to a low-carbon economy. However, these policies do provide citizens with the actions they can take to make a positive impact.”

Research

We conducted 16 interviews to gather our qualitative and quantitative data.

93.8% of participants feel climate change is a major issue

93.8% of participants were skeptical of online information

87.5% feel overwhelmed by climate change issues

81.3% take action to combat climate change in their day-to-day

62.5% take further action past just recycling.

43.8% Engauge in climate change action with their communities

“I think I'm a little overwhelmed, actually, with the amount of resources. I have like books, podcasts, social media”

“ Climate change is going to disproportionately affect different groups of people living in a very wealthy country, and being, you know, in the middle class, we are pretty isolated from the effects of climate change.”

"we function as individualists, we do not function as, as a society of we”

Secondary Research

We set out to identify our users by creating Archetypes based on interview findings.

Journey Map

To further understand our users we created a User Journey Map on creating behavioral change.

Key Findings:

• opportunity to connect knowledgeable activists to knowledge seeking observers.
• observers are prone to drop off
• Best time for product marketing to launch would be after a catalyst event

Insights:

• Conversations on climate change can easily become emotionally charged and unproductive.
• Overwhelming concern over information accuracy online.
• Recycling alone isn't enough to slow down climate change.
• Community is vital to engagement with climate change solutions.

Challenges:

• How might we connect local credible experts to communities that will be impacted by climate change?
• How might we facilitate the idea of credibility without giving into our own biases?
• How might we attract new users and maintain current user engagement?
  

Proposed solution

We came up with several great product proposals. My product attempts to increase community engagement via an event application.

Ideation workshop

Concept Testing

Confusion guides innovation.

Feedback:

• 5/6 users believe 'challenging their peers' feature increases user engagement
• 5/6 Users do not find badges to be incentivizing
• Users are requesting a proximity filter
  

Suggested Changes:

• Strength in numbers; we should focus on the peer to peer educational aspect of the app.
• Primary function of collecting badges should shift from incentivization to credibility check.
• Map feature should show local events based on user proximity settings.
  

Design

Digital wireframes & user flows

Design Testing

Prototype version 1

Features

• Event Map
• Events
• Event searching
  
• Event posting wizard
  

Feedback

• 0/5 users used the event posting wizard.
• 4/5 users couldn't figure out how to go back a page.
• 5/5 users wanted want to be able to communicate.
• 4/5 users struggled with navigation on tasks.

Suggested changes

• Remove event posting wizard
• Add a back button
• Add a communication feature
• Add Navigation bar

Prototype version 2

Features

• Event Map
• Events
• Event searching
  
• Event posting wizard
  
• Navigation bar
  
• Texting
  
• User profile page
  
• Calendar
  

Feedback

• 5/5 users first clicked on the navigation bar to complete tasks of "attend the.... event".
• 4/5 users are confused by icons on event map.
• User asked, "how can I access messages without being logged in?"

Suggested changes

• Improve Icon recondition by conducting an icon survey; meanwhile reduce event icons to one icon.
• Add user login/ sign up to user flows

Prototype version 3

Features

• Event Map
• Events
• Event searching
  
• Navigation bar
  
• Texting
  
• User profile page
  
• Calendar
  

Final changes

• Badge preview on event page hero image
• reduced clicks to challenge a friend feature by 2
• Added New message notification

Final Product

Vera Natura

Design System

What I learned

take away

changes