The Climate Reality Project
Motivating people to act in a way that is kind to the environment by starting with a very small habit.
T Y P E
Concept project.
T E A M
Nobuto Nishizawa, Rebecca Li.
M E T H O D
Business analysis, competitive analysis, user interviews, surveys, affinity mapping and data synthesis, archetype development, comparator analysis, sketching, wireframing, prototyping and usability testing.
D U R A T I O N
2-week sprint (Jan 2022).
M Y R O L E
UX Designer.
T O O L S
Pen & paper, Figma, Miro, Notion.
Our brief
The Climate Reality Project is focused on education and countering denial campaigns worldwide with a ground-up approach by creating community leaders who help educate the public.
They are seeking ideas for a tool they can put in the hands of everyday people to motivate them to act kindly to the environment.
In this concept project, my team designed an app that encourages local produce growth to minimise agricultural and transport impact.
Current audience
The Climate Reality Project’s current audience is highly motivated to contribute towards climate change. They include business leaders, community leaders, parents and the younger generations.
In this project, we focused on the everyday people who did not fit in this category.
What makes The Climate Reality Project different?
We found three main types of organisations.
Target focused - E.g. Zero-emission by 2050.
Information focused - Authoritative expert advice.
People focused - Education and motivating people.
We found The Climate Reality Project to be in a unique position with a ground-up approach - we felt it was important to capture this essence in our design.
Understanding how people feel about climate change
To understand how the public felt about climate change, we conducted a survey that asked questions around;
View on climate change
Current sustainable habits
Motivation for their habits
Habit building traits and history
How they like to learn
Received
37
Survey responses
From
AUS
Residents
What the charts showed
90% of people felt climate change is an important issue, the main concern being the global environment.
Almost all participants were recycling and conserving energy and resources at some capacity.
People were motivated by financial incentives and knowledge. They also wanted it to be easy to act on.
Digging deeper and finding out the “Why”
Surveys told us that majority of the people cared about climate change and were already contributing positively, yet they were only motivated when there was some sort of a reward or a personal benefit. This prompted us to conduct interviews to dig deeper and find out why.
Conducted
6
Interviews
Ages
20-40
Diverse cultural backgrounds
What we heard
“Most of the time climate change feels far away from us in time and location.”
“Convenience of driving is hard to avoid, even if I know it's not good for the environment.”
“There is so much information out there, we don’t know what to believe?”
Who are we designing for?
The inconsistent eco carer
I care about the environment but I'm often distracted by life and I do my part if it's easy enough.
Behaviours & Attitudes
I recycle when I remember to do it but it’s not my priority.
If a store has an eco option, I would be happy to take that option.
Needs & Goals
I need an easy way to contribute towards climate change and feel like I’m making a positive difference.
It would help if I was reminded to be more eco friendly.
Frustrations
I want to be eco but it’s hard to start a new habit and continue.
Currently, certain types of eco acts are a little hard to do because we lack infrastructure and/or guidance.
The problem
People need an easy and simple way to contribute correctly and positively towards climate change as a part of a community.
It is also important for people to know that climate change is affecting our local environment to bridge the gap they currently feel.
Where do we put our focus?
The Electricity/Heat sector which has the biggest emission would be an obvious focus area, but our research showed that 57% of people were already conserving energy with two participants having solar panels.
This led us to believe that we could achieve a higher impact by targeting the agriculture and transport sectors.
We found that
57%
of people were conserving energy
Concept A - Eat Less Meat
Motivating people to eat less meat by tracking their meals and visually associating their food type and mood.
Numerous studies show that a plant-based diet gives you more energy and may lead to other benefits, this is because animal-based foods can take a lot of energy to digest.
This concept aims to reduce agriculture and transport CO2 emissions by reducing animal product consumption.
Concept B - Little Farm
Our second concept was about motivating people to grow vegetables in their own homes to create a family habit.
The app involved sending initial seeds to encourage people to get started growing and would remind users to water the vegetables and give them tips on best-growing practices.
This concept aims to reduce agriculture and transport CO2 emissions by reducing growing produce locally.
What did the users think?
We received more positive feedback for the Little Farm concept as the notion of growing felt more closely associated with Climate change and had a possibility of spreading to wider applications.
We heard some concerns around growing vegetables as it can be difficult and required space, this led us to start at an even easier level of growing herbs.
Conducted
4
Usability testing
What we heard
“Not everyone has the space to grow vegetables in their homes.”
“Vegetables can be hard to grow and if they die, I probably wouldn’t try again.”
“I think I would want more help growing the vegetables.”
We all know that growing herbs at home won’t actually make a difference to global climate change.
What it does do is start people on the path of growing edible plants at home which might lead to growing vegetables, community gardens, collaboration with councils and fewer trucks transporting produce.
This isn’t just about growing herbs, it’s getting individuals to contribute and think about the impact we all have on our climate.
Getting free seeds is common, how is this different?
Woolworths, Coles and Bunnings have been known to give away free seeds as a way of marketing in the past. What they don’t do is give customers a way to grow them successfully.
Little Farm tackles this by having a comprehensive herb guide and a reminder system to assist users to succeed in growing their herbs.
What features do we prioritise?
In order to help the inconsistent eco carer grow herbs, we focused on:
Sending seeds to the user
Logging your plants
Notifications
Planting guide
Calendar
Other features which could be added at a later date could be:
Community forum
Photo and post sharing
Meal recipes
Volunteer help system
Larger plant database including vegetables
Concept
Little Farm aims to encourage people to grow vegetables at home to localise their vegetable supply.
To get people started with planting habits we focused on herbs as it is smaller and easier to grow.
The onboarding process allows users to select 3 seeds which would then be sent to them.
Herb database helps users learn about their plants.
Once user log their plants, timer is trigger to send notifications for watering and harvesting.
Users are able to track the progress in weekly or monthly view with specific information about each herb.
Since the app is designed to send notifications per plant, we felt it was important to isolate notifications per plant.
Next steps
1.
Research and working out the costs of sending seeds, human resources for building data of herbs and in the future, vegetables and other plants.
2.
User testing on how we can keep the users engaged by providing further engagement through virtual and/or physical rewards and costs associated with building these systems.
3.
How do we build a community around growing herbs and vegetables to keep the conversation going, again costs are associated with building these systems.
Reflection
Climate change is a very large topic - focus on one area quickly so you have more time exploring and testing the areas within that topic.
Clearly demonstrate your thinking, if you show people the solution without explaining the reasoning and thinking, sometimes it just won’t make sense to them.
Simplify the idea, people can be lazy about recycling or starting habits, make it as easy as possible so that the concept has a chance to succeed.
