For Planet
Environment Agency
Inspiring young people to take collective climate action
The Environment Agency highlighted young people between 12 and 15 years old as the primary age group that they wanted to engage.
Tom, 13
"I worry the planet’s problems are too big for me to fix."
Along with the Environment agency, another stakeholder in this project was the Lancashire Youth Council. In the discovery phase, we conducted some workshops to learn more about their goals and gain insights about the demographic.
Ideation workshop with EA and Lancashire Youth Council
Screenshot of concept site map from workshop
The consensus from the workshops was that the solution could be effective with the target user if it leveraged a heavy gamification aspect. Alongside the stakeholders, we came up with a concept for what the app could look like.
Due to our access to the target user through the Lancashire Youth Council, we were able to employ multiple methods of research to collect feedback.
Surveys
11 Responses
12-19 years old
Interviews
3 Participants
13-16 years old
Group Discussion
8 Members
From Lancashire Youth Council
1
Action Verification
We presented an idea where an action would require “verification” by an authority figure to be marked as complete. Participants liked this, but felt that there should be more of a reward if an action required that extra step.
2
Customisation
Many also said that they wished for more customisation than what the concept was showing. For example, users mentioned wanting the ability to choose their own usernames and add other things to their forest like animals.
3
Community Features
Participants often mentioned that being able to see the contributions from others would be a motivating factor to complete more actions.
4
Competition
the idea of being able to compete against other users also came up a lot as something that participants felt strongly about.
To give users a sense of immersion for user testing participants, I created a facade of a look and feel. During user testing, most of the users fed back that the illustrations, use of colour, and type felt too young or too old for their age group.
Logo ideation
The EA had a fixed date that they wanted to kick off the pilot study. Therefore, we needed to work with the stakeholders to prioritise features for implementation and for roadmap.
The client had no pre-existing direction or brand identity for the app apart from the name "For Planet". So, we had the opportunity to start with a clean slate and ensure the look and feel integrated well with the subsequent design system we would create.
Logo ideation
We completed the look and feel sprint with a set of key UI components, type scale, and colour styles to give the stakeholders a sense of the aesthetic direction.
Look and feel board
After the look and feel sprint, I facilitated another session with the Lancashire Youth Council to get impressions on if the visual aspects of the app were more engaging.
Look and feel feedback from LYC group discussion
For this project, a new design system needed to be created. Although native components on respective platforms were leveraged where necessary. It was important the aesthetics of components felt special and unique.
Sample of screen designs that were used to inform development on interactions and components
Users can spend points earned from completing actions to grow new trees or level up existing ones through seven stages. Every user's forest can look different.
Examples of forest combinations
1
Choose an action
Users can browse for an activity they want to complete on the actions tab. They can also filter by action type to find something related to a particular kind of climate activity.
2
Mark the action as complete
Once the user has found an activity they want to do, they would then go away and complete the action. Once complete, they would confirm in-app. Some actions require verification from an authority figure such as a teacher.
3
Collect points
When users mark an action as complete in-app they get rewarded with the points. If a user completed multiple actions that required verification, they would get a notification that shows the point total earned.
4
Spend points
Users can then choose from a range of options to upgrade their forest. They can choose to plant a new tree, or grow an existing one.
5
Grow a tree
Users are then presented with an animation showing tree grow or level up.
6
View your forest
They are then taken to the Forest tab that shows all of the trees they have grown so far, and highlights the change after spending the points.
Level up trees
Users can spend points earned from completing actions to grow new trees or level up existing ones through seven stages.
Avatar generation
Users are automatically assigned a random avatar and username when they join, giving them a unique identity within the app.
Group leaderboard
Users can join a group, with any points earned from completing actions boosting their team’s rank on the leaderboard.
Quiz based actions
Some actions can be completed by taking a quiz, allowing users to earn points without needing a real-world activity.
Assuming the users completed all actions that they committed to in the app, the 200+ users made this combined impact over a period of 6 weeks.
13.2
Tonnes of C02e saved
35,453
kWh of energy saved
1 million
litres of water saved
