Helping Gen Z build positive relationships with sustainable energy
Client
Wildgrid
Team
Brenda Son
Fan Fang
Yixin Chen
Yuri Kim
Duration
9.2022 - 12.2023
Keyword
Product Design
User Research
Gamification
My Contribution
Led the ideation and prototype stage of the project
Conducted 10 interviews, desk research, and usability testing.
Synthesized research insight to inform design decision-making.
Responsible for key frames UI/UX design
00 Overview
Problem
Climate change has 59% of young people extremely concerned, and 84% are at least moderately concerned. 1 in 5 people who said they would volunteer for a global warming organization actually did so.
Focus
Young people who are aware of climate change but have been unable to act due to a variety of obstacles.
Key Research Insights
Predominant negative reinforcement
The primary discussions surrounding climate change center on guilt, doomerism, and bad news.
Confusing climate action information
74% of Gen Z get their news from social media, where information is frequently misinterpreted, and it is difficult to fact-check.
Low on time/commitment
The time and resources available to younger people for climate action are typically very limited.
Success Metrics
# of people convert to clean energy.
# of daily missions completed
# of virtual pets adopted
Solution
‘Kudo’ is an app that helps Gen Z take bite-sized climate action alongside a virtual pet.
Project Process
01 Define
Specify the problem and project scope. Acquire a more in-depth familiarity with the subject
02 Discover
Conduct research to understand the user and the problem
03 Analyze
Analyze the raw data to find patterns. Identify design opportunities by distilling insights.
04 Design
Generate ideas based on insight and shape them through a matrix that aligns with user pain points.
05 Deploy
Translate idea to tangible solution, constantly validate it with
Original Challenge prompt from our sponsor, Wildgrid:
“How might we make it easy for Gen Z to take meaningful climate action?”
01 Define
We sat down with our sponsors to learn about the problem they are trying to solve, and what concerns they have. Then we conduct secondary research to learn more about the current situation around the subject.
Sponsor meet up
During the meet up, we gained a better understanding of the challenge they are facing:
“We are having difficulty getting people to sign up, and even if they do, there's less than a 7% chance they convert to clean energy.”
Krystal Persaud, CEO of Wildgrid
Context research
We decided to focus on young adults using clean energy. Gen Z stands out for climate change activism and is the generation that worries about climate issues the most. However, very few people take action. Clean energy is the most effective climate action we could take out of all the options.
59% extremely worried, 84% at least moderately worried about climate change
Nearly 40% of US CO2 pollution comes from power plants burning fossil fuels.
1 in 5 people who said would volunteer for global warming organization actually volunteered
Secondary research
We set out to do desk research to learn about the current situation around clean energy. We did the research in four domains: sociology, economics, science and technology.
“How might we build a positive relationship between young adults Gen Z and sustainable energy to drive meaningful individual impact?”
Revised Challenge Prompt
02 Discover
The team conducted 10 semi-structured interviews to gain a clear, deep understanding of users. We chose a wide spectrum of interviewees, ranging from sustainability advocacy leaders to people who don’t believe in climate change.
User Interviews
Our Goals for the interviews are:
Opinions about climate change (clean energy, other sustainability)
Awareness of existing clean energy options
Meaningful climate action decision process(push factors, success, failure)
Interview Question Example
When you hear “climate change”, what are the first things you think of?
What kind of sustainable actions do you think are out there?
When you heard of Clean energy what are the three descriptive words come in to your minds?
In the past few years, have you done anything to improve your knowledge about climate change?
How would you rate yourself on a sustainbility scale of 1-10?
Where do you usually get news about climate change (if you do)?
Interview Highlights
I think people get so overwhelmed, like “analysis paralysis,” because people being overwhelmed by climate change is a global issue. I do it a lot, too.
- Jay, a sustainability advocate
If it’s expensive to buy, install, or maintain, then I wouldn’t do it.
- Kyle, a new university graduate, living in Queens.
Since I work, it’s harder for me. I have the weekends available, but I also help out with my family.
It’s hard to find the time.
- Judith, a young working professional.
03 Synthesize
To find trends and patterns, we handled the raw data in a number of different ways:
Color Coding
Affinity Diagram
Empathy Mapping
Visualizing Pain Points Pattern
Persona Spectrum
Interview affinity diagram
Pain points map
Empathy map
Persona Spectrum
We focus on the users on the left of the spectrum who are aware of the issue but have less commitment.
User Pain Points
We found that the biggest barriers to taking climate action were:
Lack of time to devoting towards fighting climate change
Negative attitude around climate issue
Lack of affordable and impactful off stuff people can use
Our Goal
We’re focused on
improving the positive relationship between young adults and sustainable energy
BECAUSE
people desire actionability but run into many obstacles
FOR
young adults (Gen Z and younger millennials)
04 Ideation
We use research insights to guide our ideation process. and constantly check back on problem statements and pain points to validate our progress.
An overview of our ideation process:
Write down general ideas based on the affinity map insights
Group and summarized direction
Run Ideation/Brainstorm workshops, using the adopted version of Crazy Eight to generate ideas for each direction
Score ideas on a matrix derived from user pain points
Paper prototype on features
Check back with the correlation between paint points -> value props -> features
Idea generated from affinity diagram
User Journey
Crazy Eight Workshop
At this point, we had identified four potential directions that aligned well with our goals: a virtual pet, energy-saving measures, handcraft projects, and spreading good climate news. However, we are unsure which direction to pursue.
To address this uncertainty, I designed and led our version of Crazy 8s workshop because, in this way, we can quickly see tangible solutions, which will offer us a better ground to evaluate each direction. We generated ideas from the four topics above, then each of us presented our ideas to the group and organized them in Figjam.
We used eleven matrices to evaluate and score these directions subjectively, with the goal of selecting the one that best addresses our users' pain points.
Virtual pets won over other directions easily.
Our Design solution
Fun Vibe
+
Effort overtime
The virtual pet is a visual representation of the user's effort as well as a proxy we use to associate climate action with a fun vibe and something they truly care about.
Climate action seems inconvenient and out of reach. A sustainable lifestyle, however, can make it painless. We help people choose to live a sustainable lifestyle with confidence by giving them curated daily missions and tasks, one step at a time.
Idea to Prototype
After decided the key features we tested with paper prototypes
Create information architecture
Then we built a lo-fi prototype and tested it with 7 potential users.
Main Features
#1 Complete the onboarding quiz to match you with your pet. You will also able to customize it later in the app
#2 Daily Mission
Every day, Kudo offers a curated mission on clean energy. You can fill up your cloud by completing them!
#3 Taking care of your pet
Get a mysterious prize every time you fill up the cloud tank. Those prizes will allow you to decorate, interact with your pets! Keep them happy!
#4 Community
Connect with your friends and interact with their pets to establish a tight-knit community of sustainability. You are not alone on this journey.
05 Deploy
Takeaways
This is the project I’m most proud of during the first semester of SVA. We tackled a challenge that we were passionate about and developed an end-to-end solution. Takeaways from the project:
Each step should be connected. It's important to ensure that each step of the process is connected and informed by research insights. This can be achieved by regularly looking back at the user pain points and value propositions and ensuring they align with the current direction of the project.
I found joy in creating high-fidelity prototypes with appealing visual design. Especially for this project, it can be an effective way to communicate the concept of our product.
Involve everyone. In this project, we found ourselves lost many times; beside staring at our Figjam board for hours, talking to classmates, mentor, or even someone who has no idea what we are doing helped us get over the hurdle faster.
