App fOr cOnstructIng sustaInble daIly habIts

A university group project to design a app meant for environmentally minded people to find motivation to choose sustainable daily habits by implementing gamification, motivation and rewards for choosing sustainable actions. We learned something quite unexpected in this project!

MIssIOn defInItIOn:

It's known that gamifying and motivating users make it easier to maintain their focus, attention and the likelyhood of the users to follow through on completing tasks. Based on this we set out to create an app where environmentally minded people can get ideas and motivation to perform sustainable actions, earn points which they can use for donations to environmentalist orgs or discounts at stores such as second hand stores.

Target group: Environmentally concious indiviudals, age group roughly 20-40.

Research & analysis - What are we dOIng:

We got together and asked ourselves what the actual goal with this project was, as well as what functions we want the app to fill. This is what we came up with:

We use daily challenges to engage the user.
A point system. You earn points by completing challenges and spend the points to earn rewards such as discounts or donations to environmentalist orgs.
Displaying personal statistics to keep motivation up to continue the environmentally concious habits.

User prOfIle and ratIOnale:

It was tricky to understand this particular user group. What do they want? What speaks to them? What do they dislike? What kind of app do they want? A community app? An educational app?

We figured that the user demographic is NOT interested in much education surrounding the topic, since they are interested in sustainability they realistically know what is sustainable for the environment.

Thats why we decided to focus on creating habits because even though there are many people aware of sustainability and the climate crisis, it's not a easy feat to change your habit. Which is why we will utilize gamification and motivation to engage the user to be more likely to engage in environmentally mindful actions in their daily life.

We also make the assumption that this demographic is used to and well versed in using digital and online tools (demographic is from rich countries like Sweden, young, engaged in activism to some extent) and thus we don't need to build up the users mental model of how the app works from scratch.

Because the target group was given in the assignment, we did not conduct our own formal user research for this project.

PrOtOtypes, testIng & sOlutIOn:

The first thing we did was all of us designers each took our pen and paper and started sketching on ideas for layouts and features. This was to see where we were all at mentally and to see where we align and what we might have missed in eachothers interpretation of the assigment.

We then gathered all our sketches and had a discussion on what we wanted to do, what we want to test, what icons we want to use and what functions work where.

Working analog with prototyping showed to be benefitial. as we could easily cut and paste parts we liked from each of our sketches to combine and explore concepts and ideas. We also werent restrained by digital tools and their limitations or nudges to design in any certain type of way from the start.

The tests:

The tests were very rewarding and influenced our design choices greatly.

The tests were done in the form of the test leader reading a paragraph about what the product is, how the test results will be used, that the testee has the right to end and revoke consent at any point of the test and what the test is about.

Then we did a very short introductory interview where we gathered basic data, like age, attitude regarding environmentalism and sustainability and I also added the question of what their favourite apps were to the roster of questions. Why?

Because we need to know what apps our target group likes and actually uses, this way we can start comparing and contrasting and asking more pointed questions for potential future development, like: "What do they like about this app?", "Why not a similar app?", "Can we implement elements of the target groups favourite apps?", "What features are the most popular on the most popular apps?"

This was not expanded upon on in this project because it was beyond the scope, but it would be suggested to continue exploring these thoughts and ideas when developing the product further.

After the short interview, the actual test started. The questions asked the user to navigate to certain parts of the app, find certain information on the various pages. Afterwards we asked the users of their experience and their thoughts on the concept, wether they would like to use the app and how likely they are to use, as well as an open question as to what might be missing or uneccesary features.

We did 2 tests on 3 people, new people for each of the tests. The first 3 tested with the analog prototype. The last 3 tested our iterated and improved digital prototype. Results and insights will be in the next section.

The first test was done with a lofi-phone prototype where we switched out sheets of papers to act as the various "screens" users will see while using the app. The goal was to test the following:

Is the concept appealing?
Do the users like and enjoy the functions?
Do the users believe that they would use the app?
Can the user find different places and items?

The second test we developed a digital prototype (a brief video walkthrough can be find on the right) based on the feedback and insights of the first test and we conducted this test on 3 people, different from the first group.

Here we tested for the same things as the first test. This is to see if our digital prototype changed anything about the earlier feedback, to see if we improved on any issues, and to get a bigger sample size for the general overall product questions.

Results & conclusions:

Test 1, analogue test main conclusions:

Discounts was a big motivator, which is a good pointer for future similar products and goals.
There was confusion about the navigation, specifically about what content is on the statistics page and profile page.
The rewards page was good as was with good icons and layouts.
Change the statistics page to the challenge page.
Include more information in the challenge page, like in the plant based dinner challenge, add on a recipe suggestion.

Test 2, hifi digital test main conclusions:

The 'cup' icon is misleading for the challenge page.
Like the challenges, but want more.
A motivation increaser would be to add a social function to the app where you can "compete" against people you add, such as family and friends, look at their scores etc. Testers also said this would increase the likelyhood they would use the app fora longer time.
Users want to see their points to understand how long they are from their goals.
Show spent points to understand your total points.
Add swipe functions to navigate between pages
Add a fire icon for streaks to increase motivation.
Use colors to guide the user.

So what did we learn? Many things were learned during the process of this project. Let's talk about the highlights!

We missed the mark on user needs! We assumed that our target demographic did NOT want social aspects of the app. Mostly because the target group probably already has enough social medias and did not want another app "to keep up with people on". We thought a better function would be sharing your score and progress on social media - like how you do highscores in games! BUT this was wrong! The users instead revealed in the interviews that they WOULD like to be able to "add" friends and family and compare scores and maybe challenge eachother. So while its not a "social media", it certaintly has social aspects.
Discounts and rewards are great motivators! It was clear that the attention and interest increased greatly in using the app when it was revealed to the users that they could get discounts in stores or donate to environmentalists orgs. Put your money where your mouth is, speak to the heart of the target group - advancing sustainable causes!

It is hard to confirm the actions indeed were done. As this was a hypothetical project, fraud was not a huge concern for the design team. But, in for further development it would be very tricky to confirm that the challenges indeed were completed. Perhaps some of the challenges can easily be traced (walking to work can be connected to your gps to track that you are in a walking speed going to work, for example) but this is of course not the case with all challenges.
Visual design is much more complex than just adding an icon! It took a lot of trial and error to find icons and moving content and information around different pages until we found the page navigations to be intuitive for the users, and that people understood what the different icons were good for and what they might find on the pages (frankly, with more testing we might need to revisit our visual design choices again). Choose icons and styles with care!