Keep it Cool is an interactive campaign with the goal to raise awareness and to encourage people to make small, incremental, behavior changes to help mitigate the effects of Global Warming.

Overview

MY ROLE

I worked on this project alone,
with the guidance of my teacher Kate Rutter, and the always helpful feedback from my colleagues from CCA

PROJECT LENGTH

4 weeks

SKILLS/TOOLS

User Research (Generative Research); Branding (Illustrator); UX; UI (Sketch); Prototyping (Principle)

Research

I started the research phase by talking with people and conducting a survey to understand the level of knowledge people have as well as how much of an urgent issue this is and how they address it. From my research, I reached the following insights:

"I'm trying (to do my part).
Not sure what's anyone's part is"

People are concerned but
are not sure what they can do to help fight global warming.

"I use social media to alert
people and share knowledge."
"I see no point (in arguing with deniers),
their minds are closed."

Although it is very difficult to change a deniers mind, sharing knowledge is still the main way people get involved in this matter.

From these insights, and after doing some secondary research, I generated 2 "how might we" questions, that basically redefined this project's goal:

How might we provide the knowledge and the tools for people to engage in reducing their carbon footprint, by promoting small, doable, changes?

How might we create a campaign that can help people spread their knowledge and invite people to act against global warming?

Research

Ideation

My vision for this project was to create a big campaign that would mix different media and different approaches. It would include a strong visual system, with some traditional ad-campaign pieces, and an interactive app, which would have features like a carbon footprint reducer tool, offset certificates gifts, argue back (a text composer with credible sources of information to create replies in discussions about the topic), petition signer/creator, information resources, daily facts/tips, and more.

Considering the scope and duration of this project, I decided to focus on one main feature of the app, which is the Carbon Footprint Reducer Tool. Reducing each person's carbon footprint is one of the main ways in which individuals can do their part in mitigating the effects of global warming. There are some great Carbon Footprint Calculators online, but they are quite complex and difficult to use (there are multiple fields to be filled, and some of them require data that people don't usually know by heart). After some brief interviews, I realized that the simple fact of tracking some behavior change that will have a positive impact in the world can be enough to drive people to use it, even without tracking the actual carbon footprint changes.

Ideation

Concept

I organized a list of actions people can do to help mitigate the effects of global warming. From this list, I decided to focus on two categories (Waste Reduction and Water) at this first stage.

Here is how the product will work:

Users select (from a list) which actions they want to start doing. They then set their current state and desired goal for one week (the idea is to make small, incremental, changes, week by week). The app will help them remind and keep track of their weekly progress, as well as challenging other people to join them in those activities (using competition to create awareness and encourage more people to join).

Concept

Stories and Taskflows

Create Goal

- Select action(s)

- Set details (current scenario + desired goal)

- Set reminders

Manage progress

- Input data

- See goal details

- See current progress/status

Create Challenge

- Select goal(s) (previously created by user)

- Select friend(s)

- Set a “prize”

- Type custom message

Being Challenged
- View Challenge details
- Accept
- Reject
End of Week

- See if individual goals were accomplished or failed

- See if Weekly Goal was accomplished or failed

- See Challenge(s) result

- Reset same goal(s)

- Edit goal(s)

- Reset same challenge(s)

- Edit challenge(s)

- See awarded badges (if any)

- Share week’s results (goal(s), weekly goal, and/or challenge(s)) on Social Media (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram)

Mechanics of Actions

As described above, users will select Actions from a list, add the Details (Current Scenario + Goal for next week) and turn it into a Goal. The app will then help the user keep track of its progress towards each goal. But the way each goal is measured is different, as explained in the following table:

One relevant thing is that the metrics for each Goal can be Positive (things that the more the user does, the better - e.g. Number of times a user turn off the tap while brushing her teeth) or Negative (things that the user should avoid doing - e.g. Number of new bags used). This is a critical part of the User Conceptual Model of this product: some goals are about keeping track of bad habits and others are about keeping track of good habits. Making this concept very clear in the UI is one important visual design challenge for this project.

Stories + Taskflows

Mechanics of Actions