MinE is a website that will provide people with information about the issue of global warming and how it affects the world. MinE will create a new interactive way for people to become more interested in global warming and want to make a difference.
Discovery
From our survey, more than 80% of people care about global warming and want to learn how to help. Most of them have observed pollution, weather changes and other effects of global warming around them. Our survey also found that people are interested in learning more about VR. Overall, we learned many useful facts and information about our issue and users that will help us in making MinE successful in making a difference in the world.
Competitive research
There are not many for-profit companies in the environment industry, nonetheless, we conducted industry research for the top 3 companies.
Strategy
The problem MinE is trying to solve is making people become more aware of global warming and how global warming has a big impact in our world. People know about global warming but they do not see it firsthand how it affects our world. It may seem like it is not affecting the world now, but in the long term it has a serious impact on our environment and health.
Our solution to the problem was originally a VR app, but since not many people owns a VR device right now, we based our design on desktop. User is immersed in an environment where global warming impact is noticeable. They can look around and see the surrounding and learn about what caused it. User can join chat room to discuss related topics and also be involved in “Act group” to help raise awareness, clean up and better the surroundings.
After my teammates conducted user research, I created persona to better empathize with users.
User Empathy Map
User Journey Map
Click to Enlarge
Design
I prefer starting out with low-fidelity wireframes to think through the structure of web pages. I used Balsamiq to iterate through the design process.
With the goal of creating a minimal and clean website in mind, I created a high-fidelity prototype using Sketch. Then I used this version for Guerrilla testing.
Web design Overview
Landing
Explore
Map
VR View
Chatroom
Act Group
Guerilla Testing
Reflection
What did you learn?
I learned the basic UI of web pages. I also learned Balsamiq, Sketch, Invision, and Guerilla testing.
Were there any insights from user research that surprised you?
I wouldn't write user research questions like this due to social desirability – people feel like it's desirable to say they care about the environment. Instead, we should ask how much time people spend on saving environment and their occupations to better target the audience.
This project was one of the highest marked in our class – 93% final grade.
