KLIMATKOMPISEN
/a school project
Problem
The large share of increased emissions comes from how we humans extract, convert, and use fossil energy. This continues to impact the climate. Currently, more than half of the world's population lives in urban areas, and this is expected to increase by 70% by 2050. If such a significant and rapid urbanization occurs, it necessitates new requirements, where urban populations need to address emerging issues in an ecologically, economically, and socially sustainable manner (UN, 2019).
Goal
For this task we chose to focus on creating an artifact that addresses reducing greenhouse gas emissions by minimizing emissions from transportation and creating a more sustainable society. Two participants within the ages 20-35 took part of this project. One participant owned a car and used it regularly, meanwhile the other participant prefered to go by train and did not have access to a private car. The goal was to include two different perspectives when designing the product to be able to create an application that met the users needs.
Design Process
To get started with the process we jumped straight into workshops with the users by using four different methods.
1) Contextual Inquiry
The participants current state was explored using the method contextual inquiry. Two tasks were presented for the participant to solve:
plan a trip to Gothenburg, explain how you would go about making a shorter everyday trip, in this case; your weekly grocery shopping. The results showed that a lot of thought is put into aspects such as time, environment, economy and safety when making decisions about these kind of trips.
2) Future Workshop
A future workshop was carried out to identify problems and find solutions for the future. This was done by some help from our participants with focus on exploring three different phases. These were — critique phase, fantasy phase and implementation phase. The method helped us represent the participants perspectives when developing the product.
3) Prototyping with participants
In the next step the participants were given a task where they were asked to, based on two separate scenarios, create two types of prototypes for each scenario. The two scenarios were based on the participants' concretized ideas from the future workshop. The participants had to create a storyboard each which described how and in which context the app should be used, they also created a digital dynamic prototype.
4) Evaluation
Two digital interactive prototypes were made in Figma prior to the evaluation with the participants. These prototypes were based on the collected data and analysis from the previous method where the participants got to create their own prototypes. Both prototypes aimed to encourage the user to make conscious environmental friendly choices in their everyday life, according to the design theme. However the prototypes were different in regards to UI. Two more participants were contacted for the evaluation in order to get feedback from a different target group. The new participants belonged to the age category 45-55. In the end, the participants preferred one of the prototypes over the other. However that one also got more criticism regarding the UI. Therefore a combination of the two prototypes was chosen for further development.
Functionality
The following functionality was included in the application:
The opportunity to enter their daily route via five options (car, train, flight, bus, walking) whereupon the application will calculate one's personal CO2 emissions.
See and compare yourself to your friends' results
Progress & enterprises
Take Aways
The collaboration within the group generally worked out very well. After completing the evaluation, we divided the final design tasks among ourselves. From a time standpoint, this approach proved to be the most efficient. It also meant that everyone relinquished control and it fosters trust and involvement, however it can lead to subjective judgements which I believe happened in this case. Which, in hindsight, impacted the final design. While the school's focus wasn't primarily on creating an application with a fancy UI, a quickly made UI kit could have been to our advantage.
If given the chance to redo this project, I personally would have reviewed the entire UI. I believe there are significant issues with the 'logo' and the selected colors, especially the green. Additionally, I would explore different types of icons used in the navigation bar and consider adjusting their sizing
