RE-
A sustainable product recommendation app
Similar stuffs, but with quite a few screens are having different motions,
one problem is the file size & loading time
Overview
People are more and more interested in sustainable product. There's a growth in sustainability-marketed product. But according to Harvard Business Review in 2019: '65% said they want to buy purpose-driven brands that advocate sustainability, yet only about 26% actually do so.' Seems like people's action are not follow up with their idea.
In this project, I want to understand what are causing the gaps, and design a solution to promote the sustainable product.
My role
Product vision, user research, UI/UX design, prototyping
Tools
Figma, Illustrator, Photoshop, Framer
Deliverables
Mobile app
Challenge
What can we do to promote sustainable product to increase the chance of people make better decision on consumption?
Design process
Waiting to be visualised
Discover
Background research
User interviews
Competitive analysis
Define
Persona
Feature prioritisation
Key user journey
Information architecture
Design
Low-fi wireframe
High-fi wirefraem
Design system
Interactive prototype
Visual mock-up
Testing
A/B testing
Usability testing
Refine prototype
For better understand the project in a short time, I have organised the selective content in three sections.
01 Analysis
'Intention-action gap' of sustainable products
is widely existing
The one big impact of living sustainable in a personal level is your consumption habit. Based one several market reports, People are become more conscientious about what they buy. However, a 'intention-action gap' is vastly existing. According to new research from Getty Images, 92% of respondents claims environmental concerns impact their purchasing decisions but 48% of them won't commit to the idea.
The main causes
According to a few market reports, the top three reasons that people don't act on buying sustainable product are:
They think sustainable products cost more
They don't know how to decide
They might have to compromise convenience
I have conducted the user interview (click to see the user research) with 10 people regarding to these three causes, and here are a few representative comments from the user:
It's quite expensive and how I know it is better than the cheap version?
For the same price I can get two cheaper ones.
Maybe next time I will get the more sustainable one.
I have a vague idea of why it's better to the planet. But I never have the time to look into it.
It can be a restriction, for example,
bring a water bottle with me means I can't carry a small bag when I'm out.
Cost
more
don't
know
how
Cost
more
don't
know
how
Inconvinence
Narrowing 'intention-action gap'
Communicate clearly why the product is good
To promote the sustainable product, the good way is to give information of what the consumers want to know. After collecting ideas from marketing reports, online articles, and brainstorming (click to see the process), I have listed the potential angels for the topics that can promote a products.
Based on that I have also conducted user research in these steps:
1. Rate the topics
Give a score to the communicate topics. 3 points are the highest, 1 point are the lowest.
2. Pick the most interested topics
Asked them 'what do you most interested among the potential angels I listed below?'
3. Collect user's ideas
Asked them open questions such as: 'Do you think these angels are what you are interested in?' 'What else information do you think can be include in each section?'
Here a demonstration of the result that most relative to this project:
Communicate
topics
The score
(Full score is 30)
Potential angles of what information to give
17
24
18
Good for
the environment
Relatively good deal
for the consumer
Well-designed
product that
solve the inconvenience
People have only see the price number but didn't count in factors such as:
• how long can a product last
• how's the daily use experience
Show people what's the environment challenge is this product related to.
• Keywords
Words that are familiar to people so they will understand the impact or challenge immediately
• Environmental challenge & fact
A simple message to remind the user what's the issue
People are particular interested in this info
The inconvenience can caused by people didn't discover the right product for their needs.
• A collection of the same products
Give people an overview of what products on the market
• Highlights of the unique design
Clearly shows people what design problem does this
product solve
Users's needs/expectation of app for sustainable product
8 out of 10 users in the user interview shows high interests of having an app specific for sustainable product with information of why a product is better for the environment.
I have collected their expectations of the app and some concerns.
(+ empathy map)
The user prefer the app to be
• An all-in-one place for purchasingsustainable product
• A platform have educational value
• A platform they can look up for certain product
• An app that cost a little time to find things they want
• A place they can communicates
• An app that is fair and trustworthy
The user don't want the app to be
• An app that have too many information so
they have to spend more time to look into it.
• An app makes you feel the only right way
to do is to buy these products
Competitive analysis
I have looked into most of the sustainable-related app in the market. These apps can be separated into these topics shown below. The focus of analysis are fall into these two sections.
1. UX: How they category content, navigation set-up, etc.
2. UI: App layout and how they present their content (main features, content categories, onboarding, etc ).
Sustainable lifestyle/
goal-oriented apps
Apps for checking product ingredients
website/blog that
recommend products
I have also read a few official documents related to sustainability to gain a systematic understanding of what's the proven way to encourage people to live more sustainable, and most importantly, what information are defined as something to prove a product is sustainable. I treat them as experts' opinion as well.
02 Definition
Creating an statement
After gathering the research and data, I formed a more detailed understanding of what user's expect from such an app.
This app is a platform that introduce sustainable product with supportive information to help users gain a better understanding and encourage them make conscientious consumption choices.
The app should be
• Friendly, inspiring & fun
• Easy to use with clean layout
• Suitable for busy young professionals
• Offer information that user's are
interested in and display in a easy-to-
digest manner
• Easy to find where to search product
• Be able to check a product
supportive information in a short
amount of time
• feel encouraged
• Form a better consumption habit
People should
Persona
Based on the market report, the majority of consumer who are more attempt to to make sustainable lifestyle choices are Millennials, female with good education.
Primary persona
Key features
After synthesising the research and data, there were several topics that stood out. I prioritised based on the impact and user's main needs. These are the topics that will be include in this project.
Purchase :
Categories list
Supportive info
- Primary : Good impact on the environment
- Secondary: Good value & good design
- Similar products
Search for product
Easy to find search bar
- Search a specific type of product
- Search for an environment issue
The following two features are what I'm planning to build in the future. In this project, I will only include them in the layout.
Place for review a product and new ideas about a product:
- Collect complaints to a specific product and what can be improved
- Collect ideas of what product people are looking for
- Place for small business to introduce their product or even launch a crowd-funding
More educational information & articles for specific environmental issue
Key user journey: Discover sustainable product
I have designed a golden path of discover sustainable product for the persona character Serena, and ideally how would she feels like when react with the app. I have also showcased what design details would lead Serena to achieve the desired emotion.
Information architecture
Combining the key feature and key user journey, I have added the additional alternate path for the 'search' feature, and other supporting threads. (IA need to be improved)
03 Design
Brand attributes
Friendly, inspiring & bold
Start with categories list
Big topic ➜ small items
Small items ➜ big topic
Feature: display product with supportive information
This feature is the core feature of promoting sustainable product, so I start the app design with this feature first. The layout should be clean and the information should be display in a way that the user can find the part they are interested at the first sight.
The interface will need:
• Product picture
• Product overview (brand name, product name & price)
• Product basic information (short description)
• Keywords help use understand the challenge & impact immediately
• Primary supportive information (environmental challenge & impact)
• Secondary supportive information (Value for the money)
• Secondary supportive information (design-related content)
• Comments of people who owns the product
• Where can you buy
• Save button
Flowchart
This feature