Platform that educates residents on sustainable practices and fosters a community around sustainability.
We had the opportunity to collaborate with the Sustainability Committee of University Park on a project aimed at promoting sustainable living practices among residents. The goal was to create a digital platform that fosters engagement, education, and action towards sustainability within the community.
Over a series of four design sprints, our team worked diligently to understand the needs of University Park residents, develop a comprehensive solution, and create a gamified user-friendly experience that promotes sustainable behaviors.
How might we effectively encourage University Park residents to adopt and maintain sustainable living practices in their homes and daily lives, while fostering community engagement and collaboration?
We designed a multifaceted digital platform that serves as a hub for sustainable living in University Park. The platform includes educational resources, a list of actionable sustainability practices, gamification elements, and administrative tools for the Sustainability Committee.
Meghana Alla
Pooja Gajera
Rushenka Christopher
Resident User Onboarding
Completing a Practice and Gamification
Making a post on the community forum
Understanding what sustainability means
We started from having no idea of sustainability for a town. In order to get a better understanding of sustainability we conducted
01
Market Research
We took the top down approach and researched everything under f sustainability umbrella in the world and then narrowed it down to UPark neighbors.
02
Expert Interviews
We couldn’t speak with our users yet so we spoke to SME’s and members of the neighboring Tacoma Park sustainability committee to get some inspiration.
Understanding the userbase
Based on the research and census data we tried to get a broad understanding of the user base and create initial personas.
01
Residents of University Park
They will be using the platform to assess their sustainability practices, understand their environmental impact, access information about sustainability initiatives, learn best practices for environmental conservation, and engage with the community on sustainability-related issues.
02
Green Team
The Green Team or the Sustainability team of University Park. They are responsible for overseeing the implementation of sustainable practices in University Park. They use the platform to collect data, analyze sustainability metrics, and make informed decisions. They will also update and make changes to the portal
Laying down the skeleton of the app.
In order to determine the information architecture of the practices page we conducted a simple card sorting exercise with the residents of university park and some proxy users. We conducted this online and in person.
Low fidelity sketches, ideas & Crazy Eights
Building on research insights, we decided to develop an initial mockup of our online platform for the residents of university park. We sketched out how we thought the pages should look independently and what features they should have and then voted on the best ones.
Mid fidelity designs & user flows
After some initial sketches, and voting on our favorite features based on our problem we created mid-fi wireframes to build out interactions and flows to test with users.
Adding motivators & fun elements
Now that we had a list of features and a basic idea of how the page would look we were left with a big challenge. How to motivate residents to be sustainable?
01
Gamification
We wanted to use the "leveling up" dopamine trigger to motivate users to be more sustainable. Residents could earn cool badges and show them off on their Profile
02
Physical Rewards
We emphasized the need of physical rewards. Something like a plaque that residents could put on their front yard or town merch.
03
Continuous engagement
The town had to constantly have activities planned for the residents to keep them engaged. Constant engagnement is a form of motivation.
04
Community aspect
We added a community page for people to be able to share their progress and ask questions to their neighbours. Gamification along with the community aspect is a strong motivator.
Level up by earning points
Complete challenges and earn badges
Building a consistent and scalable design system
Having 5 creative heads working on this project, this task was more challenging than we anticipated. We started out by creating a moodboard. Each of us then created our own version of a screen and we voted to pick a design theme. After lot of back and forth we were able to finalize our design system
Usability testing findings
We tested out the designs with 7 residents of University Park. We were looking to test the clarity, completion and comprehension of the different features we made.
01
Unclear motive of the application
There was no clear explanation of the motive behind tha application and how user's could earn points and progress.
02
Practices IA was not clear
There was a lot of confusion between "Habitat and Biodiversity" and "Garden Management"
03
Profile Page could be better organized
Profile page could be better organized to show the current progress of the user towards ongoing practices, and badges.
04
Mixed emotions on gamification
Some people felt that there was too much gamification. Almost felt like a childrens app.
05
Point split up for badges was not clear
There was a lot of confusion on the points split up for badges and Town challenges.
Iterations
Based on the feed back we made some changes.
01
Added an "Our Mission" section on the home page and an elaborate onboarding flow.
02
Updated the Practices IA and made it more understandable.
03
Overall simplified the visual design information breakdown to make the content more easier to consume
Final Designs
After incorporating the user testing feedback we got our high fidelity screens ready for handoff.
Open on desktop to view figma prototype
This prototype just represents the screens. It does not show the gamification or other features in action.
Providing key resident insights
The admin side homepage showed some key usage insights. This page provides high level overview for all the residents of Upark and the admins could delve deep into the activity of a single household as well
Editing resident portal pages
Our admin users were not technologically advanced, so we wanted to keep the screens as simple as possible. We decided to take the WYSIWYG approach for editing all the key pages on the website.
My key learnings while empowering sustainable communities
The project successfully delivered a multifaceted digital platform that serves as a hub for sustainable living in University Park. The platform includes educational resources, a comprehensive list of actionable sustainability practices, gamification elements to encourage engagement, and administrative tools for the Sustainability Committee.
01
Balancing Gamification and Seriousness
Balancing gamification with education and community aspects was key. While gamification drove engagement, too much made it seem gimmicky. Finding the right balance celebrated achievements while emphasizing environmental impact.
02
Clarity in Communication and User Experiences
User testing revealed confusion about the app's purpose and how users could earn points and rewards. To address this, clear explanations through improved onboarding and in-app messaging are essential for better user understanding and engagement.
