Earthly

Earthly

Join the Green Movement -

A Community for Environmental Protection

Tools

Adobe XD, Figma, Google Survey, Salck

Team

Team of 3

My Contribution

Wireframe, Lo-fi, Hi-fi prototype, Heuristic Evaluation
Guerilla Usability Testing

Method Employed

Face-to-face usability testing, Heuristic Evaluation, Guerilla Usability Testing, Think Aloud method

Deliverables

Usability testing reports, User testing script

The Problem

 Many people turn a blind eye to environmental degradation because they think their impact will not be big enough to make a lasting difference. There is a high percentage of recyclables that are improperly thrown away each day and not many helpful resources exist to quickly answer these concerns. From America to Japan, people want to be sustainable, but oftentimes do not know where to look for the opportunity. This leads to sustainable habits being placed low on the priority list.

 Many people turn a blind eye to environmental degradation because they think their impact will not be big enough to make a lasting difference. There is a high percentage of recyclables that are improperly thrown away each day and not many helpful resources exist to quickly answer these concerns. From America to Japan, people want to be sustainable, but oftentimes do not know where to look for the opportunity. This leads to sustainable habits being placed low on the priority list.

 Many people turn a blind eye to environmental degradation because they think their impact will not be big enough to make a lasting difference. There is a high percentage of recyclables that are improperly thrown away each day and not many helpful resources exist to quickly answer these concerns. From America to Japan, people want to be sustainable, but oftentimes do not know where to look for the opportunity. This leads to sustainable habits being placed low on the priority list.

Unleashing the Voices

A Journey of Discovery through User Interviews and Surveys

To understand people's recycling awareness, we conducted user interviews and designed a survey to investigate their habit. We retrieved some significant findings that are relevant to our ongoing research, which is shown below in 3 interviews and 121 survey responses.

Affinity Diagram Breakdown:

During our affinity diagram synthesis, we found multiple commonalities to consider when correlating between our three interviewees. For instance, all 3 interviewees currently live in New Jersey but in different parts of the state. We thought this might be significant in determining which environmental factors are relevant to people who live in rural versus urban areas of the state of New Jersey. Some of these findings are important indicators of behavioral patterns, while others pointed us toward potential marketing tools that would help users identify with the Earthly app.

Highlight of Raw Survey Statistics:

Based on our survey, the vast majority of the respondents are highly interested in the reward system. Surprisingly, most of the respondents feel they are somewhat educated about recycling knowledge, but there are 34.7% of them rarely or never pick up trash in public.


Findings:

Our overall discovery shows that people feel fairly uneducated about their role in climate change and want to make a difference. Unfortunately, the population that we sampled feels that help is needed when trying to gain community involvement.

• There is a need to improve knowledge of environmental sustainability

• Lack of motivation.

• There is a desire to volunteer and be engaged in the community

• Community involvement could be most beneficial for two types of stakeholders: college students and families with children.

Meet Earthly's Users

Personas

Based on the quantitative and qualitative data we learned, I outlined four representative users to shape Earthly’s design moving forward.

Storyboards

A student walks through a littered urban area and snaps a photo of the trash to post on Earthly's community connect page. The community plans a cleanup event and 5-7 volunteers show up to clean the area. After the cleanup, the volunteers enjoy a refreshing drink at a local cafe with a discount for their efforts.

A mother of two high school students had a hard time getting her children to realize the importance of recycling. So she went to Earthly to look for a good event to sign her kids up for. After deciding that visiting the local state forest would be a good idea, she signed up to volunteer through the application. At the state forest, they cleaned up the park and collected water bottles to bring in to a local Fro-yo shop. The yogurt shop accepted water bottles and in return provided a 15% discount on their food.




Designing the solutions

Based on our user interviews and surveys, we found that organizing clean-up events in suburban areas and designing an incentive-based application with discounts and educational content could encourage people to participate in recycling activities. Therefore, we want Earthly serves as a community for people who are passionate about environmental protection, where they can join clean-up events with their friends based on their location.

Wireframe & Information Architecture:

As a solution to the communities needs, Earthly plans to engage community involvement through our app to activate volunteerism for all ages. The overall goal of increasing community engagement would to be promote volunteerism to clean up surrounding areas in need. To promote these solutions, our Earthly application will have the following key features:

1. Local clean-up events page

2. Reward system

3. AR and trivia feature to refresh users's sustainability related knowledge

Putting Our Products to the Test

1st Design Iteration: Guerilla Usability Testing & Heuristic Evaluation

After we finished our high-fidelity prototype, the Earthly team use two usability testing methods to test our app: Guerilla usability testing and heuristic evaluation. We hung out at the local Panera Bread and recruited random people to test our app to conduct Guerilla usability testing, and tested by a group of 3 Human-Computer interaction course classmates for heuristic evaluation.

We identified a list of tasks for them to perform and took close notes of their feedback, and we also proposed solutions for each problem they point out. The user feedback can be categorized in 3 categories: visibility, feedback, and mapping.

After we finished our high-fidelity prototype, the Earthly team use two usability testing methods to test our app: Guerilla usability testing and heuristic evaluation. We hung out at the local Panera Bread and recruited random people to test our app to conduct Guerilla usability testing, and tested by a group of 3 Human-Computer interaction course classmates for heuristic evaluation.

We identified a list of tasks for them to perform and took close notes of their feedback, and we also proposed solutions for each problem they point out. The user feedback can be categorized in 3 categories: visibility, feedback, and mapping.

After we finished our high-fidelity prototype, the Earthly team use two usability testing methods to test our app: Guerilla usability testing and heuristic evaluation. We hung out at the local Panera Bread and recruited random people to test our app to conduct Guerilla usability testing, and tested by a group of 3 Human-Computer interaction course classmates for heuristic evaluation.

We identified a list of tasks for them to perform and took close notes of their feedback, and we also proposed solutions for each problem they point out. The user feedback can be categorized in 3 categories: visibility, feedback, and mapping.

Visibility – does the user know what to do just by looking?

  • “Go back” button was not obvious.

  • Users don't know how to use a certain feature.

  • The bottom menu only has icons so it was difficult to understand what the feature are at first glance.

  • There is a lack of personalization besides name and photo

Feedback – indication something has happened or changed

  • Figma lag.

  • QR code was hidden, users don't know where to present their QR code to event host.

Mapping – where am I and where can I go?

  • Saved items were not stored in a location that reflects the mental model of our pool of usability testers.

Proposed Design Solution:

  • Add an 'Onboarding' page as users sign-up to better explain how things work.

  • Make the "Go back" button hit area bigger

  • Add progress tracker in the profile page for users to check their accomplishments.

  • Show saved and registered events in the profile page to let users easily access again.

    Things we did well:

  • Clear and concise flow of the prototype

  • Uniform design and consistent color scheme/fonts

  • The Purpose of the app is easy to understand

Design System

Introducing Earthly

After several rounds of design iterations, Earthly’s final user interface was ready to roll. Earthly provides users and businesses the space to put ideas into action. With Earthly’s self-reporting feature, local residents are able to acknowledge an area within the community that needs beautification. Our application will use location-based services in order to foster an environment where community members can host clean-up events within surrounding areas.

Customize your experience

Earthly has up to 9 trending topics in sustainability available for you to learn up-to-date events around your community.

Stay close with your friends

In each evet detail page, you will be able to see the host of the event and who are going to the event. You can also leave a comment or shoot a message directly to them for specific questions.

Stay turned with your progress

Each event you attend will automatically count toward into our award system. You will be able to redeem coupons, free drink, etc. once you finished your challenge.

Augmented reality (AR)

With the latest AR feature, you can see your surrounding CO2 emission, and sustainable suggestions with just one single tap.

Be an event organizer

Each event you attend will automatically count toward into our awar system. You will be able to redeem coupons, free drink, etc. once you finished your challenge.

Lastly, some of the greatest lessons I learned…


  • One size does NOT fit all! We found truth in that statement during our usability testing phase. For instance, some users were very pleased with the app and thought that it was easy to learn how to use, while others were confused about what some of the features meant.

  • It is really important to remember the initial problem statement you started with so you don't lose sight of the overall purpose of the project.

  • To be a good designer, you must be a lifelong learner. The design process is iterative in nature, so it's imperative that those involved have an innate curiosity to improve their knowledge base on the problem at hand.


  • One size does NOT fit all! We found truth in that statement during our usability testing phase. For instance, some users were very pleased with the app and thought that it was easy to learn how to use, while others were confused about what some of the features meant.

  • It is really important to remember the initial problem statement you started with so you don't lose sight of the overall purpose of the project.

  • To be a good designer, you must be a lifelong learner. The design process is iterative in nature, so it's imperative that those involved have an innate curiosity to improve their knowledge base on the problem at hand.


  • One size does NOT fit all! We found truth in that statement during our usability testing phase. For instance, some users were very pleased with the app and thought that it was easy to learn how to use, while others were confused about what some of the features meant.

  • It is really important to remember the initial problem statement you started with so you don't lose sight of the overall purpose of the project.

  • To be a good designer, you must be a lifelong learner. The design process is iterative in nature, so it's imperative that those involved have an innate curiosity to improve their knowledge base on the problem at hand.