SUSTANIS
My Roles: UX Researcher: Moderator/Co-lead, Designer
Team: Keanna Morgan, Dimitri Williams, Kealin Lamb, Tanae Burton
Timeline: 3.5 Months
Team: Keanna Morgan, Dimitri Williams, Kealin Lamb, Tanae Burton
Timeline: 3.5 Months
What is Sustanis?Sustanis is a mobile map application that will help users foster sustainable behaviors. The app will do so by helping users easily locate recycling locations and businesses that use sustainable practices. Sustanis will also utilize a gamification element to drive engagement from users and increase behavioral influence.
What problem does Sustanis address?Fostering individual sustainable behaviors is a primary factor in controlling climate change. Research has shown success in utilizing digital tools to motivate and educate users about sustainable lifestyle habits, yet gaps still exist within the marketplace. Currently available applications tend to be regional or silo subfields of recycling, sustainable shopping, and habit formation into different tools. This creates the cumbersome need to visit multiple sources to understand a true product lifecycle (from purchase to disposal).
The Sustanis app which seeks to provide users with a more complete picture of the circular recycling lifecycle, teaching them how to make sustainable choices, while consuming and discarding products. Focusing on actionability, education, and habit formation, Sustanis helps users locate recycling options and sustainable goods in their area; while also allowing them to record their sustainable actions to understand their impact. |
My Toolbox/Process
Why Did We Care to Research This?
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Research Questions
Possible Concerns Version One
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Research Methods
Competitive Review
Goal: Obtain a deeper understanding of the market by evaluating competitor products and Determine the strengths/weaknesses of each product to identify areas of opportunity for our design. Literature Review Goal: Provide a comprehensive grasp of the problem space and constraints related to recycling and access to sustainable products/businesses to drive a beneficial design. User Interviews Goal: Conduct participant interviews to examine their existing knowledge, behaviors, and attitudes regarding recycling and sustainability. Identify potential points of frustration in living sustainably, as well as potential opportunities for improvement. Personas Goal: We utilized personas to help garner a better understanding of the target audience, as well as outline characteristics of people who will use our product. The archetypical users represented the needs of a larger group and provided the team with direction for design. We identified specific goals, motivations, and pain points based on information gathered during initial research. Journey Maps Goal: The journey map was to visualize the different interactions that users will have with the product. It helped us to think about the overall experience in a more structured manner, as well as aided us in further identifying pain points and unmet user needs. |
Lo-Fi Prototyping
Goal: Create a basic outline of the design that highlights the main concept of Sustanis and communicates the app's content, layout, and flow. The lo-fi prototype will aid in prioritizing testing of functionality. Lo-Fi Prototype Usability Testing (Evaluation) Goal: To identify any usability issues that users may have while using the app. The data from the testing session allowed us to modify the design to address issues before moving forward in the design process. Mid-Fi Prototyping Goal: Further develop and refine the design and interactions based on the feedback received from the lo-fi evaluation. Mid-Fi Prototype Usability Testing (Evaluation) Goal: To evaluate the design improvements made during the last round of testing. The assessment looked at more of the application's features and interactions, and the feedback we received helped us identify any potential problems and areas for improvement. Benchmark Usability Test Goal: To compare the current design's performance to that of a top competitor's product. This helped us improve our prototype over time and inform potential future design decisions. |
Empathize
When trying to grasp the potential target audience we really struggled, because at first, we just thought, " Well....Everyone." However, in reality that's not how this works. So we really had to just break it down in simple terms. Who are the major groups that will potentially utilize this product?
The Solution-
Target Demographic: Users with interests in recycling, sustainability, and environmental welfare.
The Solution-
Target Demographic: Users with interests in recycling, sustainability, and environmental welfare.
Design Principles
Welcoming Environment
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Ease of Use
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Incentive Based
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Real-World Replication
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Competitive Review
To select the competitors, we first considered the distinguishing features of the proposed Sustanis app. There are many virtual options that aid making sustainable choices but we wanted Sustanis to be actionable and engaging. We aimed to do this through the incorporation of a map interface and a gamification element. Therefore in sourcing competitors for our review, we specifically choose to look at competitors that also utilized a map feature. We were unable to find a competitor that focused on recycling, sustainable shopping, and gamification so we chose competitors that utilized a form of these features.
To analyze our competitors, we used a strength and weakness analysis to highlight features, functionality, and content that we could emulate and/or improve on in the Sustanis design. |
Literature Review
We wanted to see what research was already provided for us. What trends, insights, and original perspectives on recycling and sustainable choices. This provided a comprehensive grasp of the problem space and constraints related to recycling and access to sustainable products/businesses. This helped with efficiency and design choices.
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We aimed to look at sources that discussed the use of mobile tools and applications to promote and educate on sustainable lifestyle habits.
Three sources were identified:
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User Research - Who is Sustanis For?
When doing user research for this particular case, we felt the best option was to hear from the participants directly in real time. To avoid any false or influenced answers via peers or the internet.
We also wanted to:
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Method-User Interviews
For our user interviews, we created a 30 minute Interview Script that outlined screener questions, informed consent, warm-up questions, general issues, deep focus issues, tools, and finally a retrospective and wrap-up. Two versions of the script were created, Script A and Script B, to accommodate both participants that actively recycle and those that do not. We thought it was valuable to also speak to participants that do not recycle to understand any barriers of entry. We interviewed 9 participants in total, 4 from the participant pool and 5 from personal connections.
For our interviews, we had planned to recruit participants utilizing the DePaul Participant Pool. However, due to a lack of study sign-ups and several no-shows.
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We secured 4 participants from the participant pool then gathered the last participants from personal connections. (Work, Internships, School)
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User Interview Demographics:
CharacteristicsGender
Female Male Other Age 18-25 26-35 36-50 51-65 65+ |
Frequency5 2 2 3 4 1 1 0 |
All of my Interviews were conducted via Zoom. Participants were given:
Participants were prompted about:
After conducting the interviews, the team utilized the online platform Miro to debrief our interview findings and undergo an affinity diagramming exercise. To get a better idea of what really stood out from our user interview data, jump to the Brain storming section and see how we utilized the Affinity diagramming method to organize feedback!
- An overview of the project.
- Asked the screening questions.
- Then asked to complete the informed consent document.
Participants were prompted about:
- Items typically recycled.
- Items found difficult to recycle.
- Recycling behaviors. (how often and anything that prohibits them)
- Drivers and motivations to recycle and shop sustainably.
- Positive and negative personal experiences recycling and shopping sustainably.
- Tools used to look for relevant information in these areas.
After conducting the interviews, the team utilized the online platform Miro to debrief our interview findings and undergo an affinity diagramming exercise. To get a better idea of what really stood out from our user interview data, jump to the Brain storming section and see how we utilized the Affinity diagramming method to organize feedback!
Jump ahead to the Brain storming section! Click --->>Ideate Section.
Define
Personas - Our motivations
*Personas created in Photoshop
Journey Maps - What paths are they taking?
We wanted to get a better understanding of how users would utilize the Sustanis product. To do this, we created a journey map to visualize the different interactions that users will have with the product. The journey map helped us to think about the overall experience in a more structured manner, as well as aided us in further identifying pain points and unmet user needs.
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We used, “Meera” and “Dennis” (from personas above) and we created a scenarios that included:
At a high level, these phases were broken up and visualized into “Initial”, “Obstacles”, “Exposure” and “Sustained Use”. Actions were identified and mapped to each of these phases with an associated “Mindset and Emotions” indicator to highlight the frustration and potential satisfaction points throughout the journey. Journey maps created using Figma. The Journey phases and associated actions were then formatted into cards with visual indicators to communicate the chronological order. Finally, a visualization of the flow was created to again communicate the chronological order of the actions while also highlighting the associated mindset and emotions at each phase. |
*Journey maps created in Figma
Ideate
Brainstorming-Affinity Diagramming MethodOur affinity diagram turned into a very large web of post-it notes. Leaving us unsure of how to move forward. It was like we were buried in data but just needed a way to make sense of the madness. An analysis method that worked, was clustering our data into different themes to inform the design of our prototype. With our themes sorted, we were able to pull out specific data points that gave better insight into what our participants were thinking during the interviews.
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Standout Themes
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Our participants had the most difficult time recycling bigger appliances and more complex materials (e.g. plastics and chemicals). When thinking about behaviors to combat recycling difficulties, some participants stated that they would like concrete instructions on how to properly recycle, or have some form of incentive when recycling. Education(on recycling) and monetary incentives were seen as the most common ways to boost interest in recycling; even though participants acknowledged that the lack of recycling causes adverse effects on the planet. (e.g. climate change and global warming).
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In the sustainable shopping theme, some of our participants had various experiences and statements on shopping sustainably.
Negative experiences: When shopping, some participants voiced that they were worried about the cost of shopping sustainably as one user cited it's very expensive. "But I also don't have unlimited funds to buy like, you know, only the nicest, most sustainable, organic hemp woven, you know, whatever, whatever thing that Whole Foods is trying to upsell me." Positive Experiences: Participants being vocal about shopping from thrift stores as a way to fulfill their clothing acquisition needs as opposed to buying from common clothing vendors. |
When describing the access to information and resources theme of our data, many participants didn’t know how to look up information and locate a stepwise process for recycling an object or purchasing in a sustainable way. The confusion from lack of knowledge would often lead participants to make unsustainable choices.
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Nevertheless, our participants also had personal motivations that influenced them to try and live sustainably which one of our participants illustrates stating,
"Having grown up in the city, I just remember learning a lot about recycling, and I feel like for my generation, it's kind of like recycling is sort of like wearing your seatbelt in the car. It's like, this is just a thing that you do." |
Prototyping
Prototyping Stage A
Lo-fi prototyping
We wanted to create an app that would allow users the ability to learn and live more sustainably. To fulfill this we began working on a lo-fi prototype that would help users fulfill these goals.
Key elements and functionality we wanted to address in this phase included:
- A map as the primary landing page to make it easy for users to visualize facilities that were close to them.
- A search functionality to quickly locate specific items, shops, or locations.
- A filtered approach to showcase recycling and shopping to properly sort subcategories within these areas and cut down on information overload.
- A clear way to present recycling and shopping subcategories so they were easily discoverable to users and funneled them to the appropriate.
- information Additionally filtering opportunities within subcategories to help users further refine their search.
- A balance between actionable and educational information.
- Information hierarchy and careful content selection on result listing pages and facility/shop details pages to communicate useful “at a glance” information.
- A way for users to record actions and view their lifetime status to understand the impacts of their sustainable habits, foster engagement, and entice motivation to keep using the app.
In these screenshots we display three flows. 1. finding a facility to recycle a printer; 2. finding a store to buy sustainable clothing; 3. logging a sustainable action.
Prototyping Stage B
Hi-fi prototyping
Taking the input gathered during our lo-fi evaluation, we made a few changes. We decided to apply full visual design to our second iteration, in hopes of making the tasks more clearly distinguishable. It was also determined we needed to further build out the prototype interactions to offer participants fewer dead clicks in our second round of testing.
Detailed Description of changes-
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Tests
Lo-fi Usability Evaluation
Issues Found-
We conducted a remote, unmoderated usability study on our lo-fi prototype utilizing the Maze software and found a few quirks:
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Hifi Usability Evaluation
For our hi-fi evaluations, we conducted a remote, moderated usability study on our hi-fi prototype using Figma and Zoom. Participants had to be at least 18 years old to participate in the study and must not have participated in any of the previous rounds of testing (user interviews or lo-fi usability evaluation) on the Sustanis app.
In general, our second round of usability testing went well, with a task completion rate of 100%. For the majority of the test, participants did not seem to have much trouble in completing them and navigating through the interface. However, participants did verbally mention a pain point of not being able to utilize search filters to locate specific facilities. Overall, the prototype performed well, as seen by the SUS survey results. With an average SUS score of 80.4, the prototype's adjective rating is excellent, implying that it performs well in terms of effectiveness, efficiency, and general ease of use.
In general, our second round of usability testing went well, with a task completion rate of 100%. For the majority of the test, participants did not seem to have much trouble in completing them and navigating through the interface. However, participants did verbally mention a pain point of not being able to utilize search filters to locate specific facilities. Overall, the prototype performed well, as seen by the SUS survey results. With an average SUS score of 80.4, the prototype's adjective rating is excellent, implying that it performs well in terms of effectiveness, efficiency, and general ease of use.
Benchmark Usability Test
We examined participant time-on-task data to assess the present design of the Sustanis prototype and compare it to a leading rival, Google Maps. The data was examined using SPSS, and a paired-sample t-test revealed that the p-value (.299) is greater than the alpha at. 05. Therefore, the testing results were not statistically significant, and we were unable to reject the null hypothesis.
Null hypothesis: There is no significant difference between the time it takes users to find a recycling facility that accepts printers in Chicago while using the Sustanis prototype and the time it takes users to find a recycling facility that accepts printers in Chicago while using Google Maps.
Alternative hypothesis: There is a significant difference between the time it takes users to find a recycling facility that accepts printers in Chicago while using the Sustanis prototype and the time it takes users to find a recycling facility that accepts printers in Chicago while using Google Maps.
Additionally, there was a 100% task completion rate for finding a printer using the prototype, but 50% completion rate completing the task using Google Maps. The average score for perceived ease of use (based on the singular task completion) for the prototype was 4.67, and for Google Maps it was 3.5.
Null hypothesis: There is no significant difference between the time it takes users to find a recycling facility that accepts printers in Chicago while using the Sustanis prototype and the time it takes users to find a recycling facility that accepts printers in Chicago while using Google Maps.
Alternative hypothesis: There is a significant difference between the time it takes users to find a recycling facility that accepts printers in Chicago while using the Sustanis prototype and the time it takes users to find a recycling facility that accepts printers in Chicago while using Google Maps.
Additionally, there was a 100% task completion rate for finding a printer using the prototype, but 50% completion rate completing the task using Google Maps. The average score for perceived ease of use (based on the singular task completion) for the prototype was 4.67, and for Google Maps it was 3.5.
Limitations and Future works
A positive of using these research methods was gathering data from a sample population that complimented our design. One negative of these methods was how time-consuming and difficult it was to find participants. Due to testing taking place during the COVID-19 pandemic, there were a lot of issues of participants not showing up for sessions and essentially "Ghosting" us or abandoning tasks/surveys before completion. To counter these issues we really had to utilize personal connection and our affiliation with DePaul University to locate reliable participants. Also, due to COVID-19 we weren’t able to do in-person interviewing and utilizing a remote platform such as zoom has its limitations in terms of audio capture, providing directives, and connection issues.
In the future, if I had the opportunity to improve on the app, I would allow users to be able to download the map and other location based information for different facilities to be utilized when offline. I would also test the app out in the real world to see how it handles connection issues, delays in action, and how users handle using the map and search function simultaneously.
In the future, if I had the opportunity to improve on the app, I would allow users to be able to download the map and other location based information for different facilities to be utilized when offline. I would also test the app out in the real world to see how it handles connection issues, delays in action, and how users handle using the map and search function simultaneously.