Case study
UX Design
Designing a solution to help save pollinating insects
Bee Friends
An app to raise awareness and help people take action saving pollinating insects.
By registering their green spot on their balcony or garden , people can make green gates for pollinating insects to fly.
The app informs about simple actions that can be taken and encourages cooperation to create green paths through urban areas so that pollinating insects can fly throughout the city
Type of project
Semester assignment
Student assignment by a group of three members
Time used
4 weeks
Target user
Young adults, living in urban areas
Teamwork
As a team we have worked side by side throughout this assignment with shared responsibility.
Design challenges & Considerations
Time limitation. I would have wanted more time to work on this project and to further developed the solution.
Both challenging and exiting to find an engaging and fun solution to a complex and serious topic. To balance this, we needed to explore what both engaged and motivated the users to take action.
My role in this project
As a team we have collaborated throughout the whole project, with shared responsibility. My role in this project includes in particular: Research. Literature reviews, survey and interviews. Analyzing and gaining insight. Contribution to all workshops. Empathizing, making personas and user scenarios. Ideation and solution development. Usability testing, analyzing and iteration. Making annotations and wire framing.
Mission
How can we raise awareness around
the plight of wild creatures?
How can everyday people learn about them and help them?
How we approached the challenge
This design process has included the five design steps empathize, define, ideate, prototype and test.
We have conducted one usability test and recommendations for further development.
The scope of the task ends with creating mid fidelity wireframes, testing them, iterating and making recommendations for further development.
Research methods used
Insight gained from research
Insight
Research and facts must be the basis for raising awareness of the challenge.
People also need knowledge about what to do to help the pollinating insects.
People need to be inspired and engaged to drive them towards supporting the conservation of pollinating insects.
Hypothesis
Our secondary research indicates that bees and hedgehogs are the insects that people respond most positively to when it comes to engagement, in contradiction to more controversial animals, like the Norwegian wolf.
Based on what we've discovered in the initial research, it looks like millennials are the group most interested in environmental issues. Most of them also live in the big cities of Norway.
User goals
Persona & User scenario
The Idea process
Hierarchical structure and user flows
Task flows
Wireframes
Further development
If we would have continued the development of this solution, we would have made a number of improvements and several rounds of testing. We also would have increased the level of fidelity and worked on design decitions and accessibility.
Next steps
-Second usability test
-Made high fidelity wireframes
-Made components, animations and design system
-Increased accessibility
-Several rounds of testings
-Iteration and refinement
Recommendations on iterations
Reflections of learning and improvement
Useful experiences and learnings from this project
I found this project really engaging and fun. I discovered that the meaningful purpose of the project engaged me at a deep level.
The empathize and define phase was both time consuming and very interesting. With a extensive topic it was demanding to narrow it down and to find a simple enough solution. It's easy to want to do too much.
It was challenging to find a fun and motivating solution to engage the user to take action towards a serious topic. By exploring what motivated them to take action, we found that they needed an easy, fun and inspiring entrance to engage in such a serious topic. this emphasizes the importance of thorough work in the empathizing phase
Working in a team has been inspiring. We have learned from each other and collaborated well.