Dec 14, 2022
Designing for a Low-Carbon Future
UX Research, UX Design
Brief Overview:
This was a project I worked on during my Masters at the University of Washington. I worked as the lead researcher and designer and designed a data-backed application that helps students lower carbon emissions by making informed transportation choices!
Sept 30th, 2022
“ Investigate, analyse, understand and work with your team to come up with a solution, a solution that could be a policy, an application, a physical product, just anything that works towards creating a Low-Carbon Future, 5 years in the future!”
This was the given prompt. Work on designing a solution that works towards creating a low carbon future.
But,
Thus, with this we got off to start the project!
Secondary Research:
We deep dived into understanding the greatest contributors to carbon emissions and wanted to find areas of consequence that we could actually impact with our work!
With this alarming discovery, we also focused on researching current solutions but, most solutions for carbon emission reduction focused on policy enforcement, and most climate change policy attention has been addressed to long-term options. It was not effective and achievable in the short term.
Of all the behavioral changes mentioned, the ones related to transportation created the greatest impact in reducing carbon emissions! Thus, with data-backed insight into a specific problem space for lowering carbon emissions, we focused our
Problem Statement:
We now worked towards having a holistic understanding of the ecosystem as reaching an effective solution for most problems requires three faced understanding: Business, Technology, and Users.
With this in mind, we listed down the main stakeholders of the ecosystem.
Find the Research references here:
https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/fast-facts-transportation-greenhouse-gas-emissions
https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions#:~:text=The largest source of greenhouse,Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks
https://www.pnas.org/doi/pdf/10.1073/pnas.0908738106
https://aaafoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/18-0019_AAAFTS-ADS-Research-Brief.pdf
We then proceeded to understand our users better but ran into a major problem: the user base of our project was very extensive! Designing an application for a wide user base without the bandwidth for accurate research would lead to making a lot of assumptions and designing on wrong data. Thus, we re-focused our problem statement to a user group we had great access!
Final Problem Statement:
With an understanding of the ecosystem and the problem space, we defined multiple research questions and now proceeded to investigate and find out information to design!
Field observation validated some of our assumptions and led us to more unknowns. To answer those unknowns, we decided to draft a survey.
The survey aimed to confirm some of our found assumptions and also expand and explore some other questions that we had in mind.
Based on our research and insights, we analyzed data and triangulated a bunch of findings to list a set of requirements. Mentioned below are our top requirements:
● [User]Help students who do not own a car to find eco-friendly transportation methods that fit their schedule
● [User]Encourage students who own a car to choose eco-friendly transportation methods.
● [User]Let students who drive to understand the potential disadvantage that may happen regarding their transportation choices.
● [User]Estimate the time for different transportation methods
● [User]Should provide students with diverse transportation methods
● [User]Decrease the time students spend on finding different kinds of transportation
● [User]Decrease the time students spend on commuting using eco-friendly transportation
● [User]Flexible methods to help students change their schedules
To represent our user base and have a clear understanding of their needs and motivations we created two user personas to represent them.
Now we had the users in mind and their problems, motivations, and goals. To design an application, and specifically, it’s interaction, an understanding of their needs in a more contextual way we described three prominent scenarios with solutions.
From the storyboarding, we identified key interaction points that could be added to the features for class scheduling and transportation with time limitations.
Lo-Fi Prototyping:
Based on the requirements priorities and storyboarding insights we created the first prototypes. A low-fidelity model of our final application to test on the users.
We used Figma to design the Lo-Fi prototypes and tested the designs.
Usability Testing:
We then tested the prototypes with a couple of users and recorded insights and problems. The tests were done on two major tasks:
- Signing up, setting up schedules, and choosing a transportation option to their destination.
- Using the set transport medium to navigate to a destination.
We then worked on these improvements and created a Hi-Fidelity version of the application!
For this, we set a design language: colors and fonts, representative of an “Eco-conscious” application.
Reflections:
Working in a multidisciplinary team enhances product design by a lot!:
Even though I’ve been a UX designer for a year, I’ve never had the opportunity to work with teammates from different backgrounds. The value added to a product’s definition increases by multifold with different perspectives being added when working with “fresh” ideas that my teammates, leveraging their experiences provided. I have a newfound, rather premature observation that working only with designers can sometimes limit the knowledge that is being used to design solutions. Designers sometimes can get lost in the rigidity of “processes” and “methods” that a fresh pair of eyes can point out.
I’ve learned over the course of this project that, User-Centric design comes at a middle ground between creativity and rationale. My teammates, especially Ian with his DataScience background drew key insights from a technological perspective that pivoted our project towards a more holistic understanding of the fesabilities of design would not have been possible without his input. So going forward in a “working world scenario” I will try to have as many key stakeholders involved in the designing process as possible.
Don’t fall in love with your ideas!
Initially, right after the secondary research phase of the project, defining questions and NOT coming up with solutions was hard. I thought of designing a “communal transportation application”, thinking at that stage it would be the best. As natural a tendency as it is, to think of solutions and jump at the excitement to work on a “novel” idea that you believe could develop into a great product, I found, it is far more important to keep yourself grounded and open to information as it unveils through research. Thorough research, though difficult is what makes great products great and hence we moved to find out what users needed and designed a far better solution.
Disagreements are important: maintain constructive discourse regardless of how difficult it gets!
This was a part that I think I need more improvement on. In hindsight, I realize how important it was for all of us to think independently yet discuss ideas, battle them out with respectful rationale and choose ideas that work towards said targets! An agreeable team, that does not contend within itself will end up creating a bad product through a path of least resistance.
Think crazy but focus on one conversation at a time:
I think as designers it is important to have leeway to think of crazy ideas. This is especially important during the lo-fi prototyping stage of the idea’s development. Innovation occurs when creativity flows and has no bounds. It can also misfire and lead to a lot of time wasted chasing ideas that sound good but lead nowhere. A middle ground between thinking crazy and keeping sight of targets and timelines should benefit me going forward. A note to myself: THINK CRAZY BUT KEEP FOCUS ON ONE CONVERSATION AT A TIME! meaning, have a target in mind, a very specific target, and feel free to ideate however you want on it.
