Brief: To come up with a solution that helps tackle one of the current environmental issues.
Solution: TreeQuest is an educational tree-planting game that allows users to grow and take care of their own virtual trees, each of which then will be converted into a real tree planted by our partner organizations. You can track how your converted trees have gradually covered the deforested areas.
Also, it aims to provide users with intriguing information and helpful tips about plants and environmental sustainability, with a view to enhancing their knowledge and awareness about environmental issues.
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Design
Together with a teammate (Marketing), I worked as a UX Researcher and UI Designer to create an educational tree-planting game app that allows users to grow and take care of their own virtual trees while seeing their real impacts on the world. As we had a strict time constraint (1 week), we decided to apply Design Sprint framework from Google to create the solution. Due to the limited number of members, we had to adjust the timeline and tasks to fit in with our capability.
Day 1 - 2: Understand
Together with my Marketing teammate, we spent the first 1 - 2 days to gathered the data about global warming, then picked the area to focus(deforestation), empathized with users, and mapped out the problems.
Statistics show that reduction in tree coverage is one of the primary reasons leading to increasing global warming.
We then came up with different approaches to tackle this issue. Among all of those, we chose one simple but impactful solution which is planting trees and our hypothesis statement is if we can encourage people to plant trees, especially youngsters who have a growing concern for environment and want to have a healthy solution to stress, it will help alleviate this problem. We then conducted a research regarding young people and environmental issues which then proved that our statement was concrete.
Creating personas is a way to imagine who we would be designing for. We listed the motivations, challenges & pain points of the users.
After the research phase, we could deduce that the users want to plant trees but they find it difficult due to the lack of time and tree knowledge. We used the "How might we" questions to reframe our POV and open up the design challenge.
1. How to encourage people to engage in environmental activities like planting trees?
2. How to educate people about trees, helping them value the importance of trees?
3. How to convert virtual actions into real impacts on the environment?
2. How to educate people about trees, helping them value the importance of trees?
3. How to convert virtual actions into real impacts on the environment?
Day 3: Sketch and Decide
In the most creative step of the design process, we came up with as many ideas as possible, narrowed them down to three best solutions and created a sitemap after brainstorming, followed by the initial sketches of the app.
Create an app that provides:
1. Gamification: Planting virtual trees by completing quests and challenges
2. Knowlege quiz: In the quests, there will be questions testing knowledge about the trees they are planting
3. Real impact and real-time tracking: Each virtual tree represents a real tree planted by a third party. They can check how their trees grow in real life using google tracking.
1. Gamification: Planting virtual trees by completing quests and challenges
2. Knowlege quiz: In the quests, there will be questions testing knowledge about the trees they are planting
3. Real impact and real-time tracking: Each virtual tree represents a real tree planted by a third party. They can check how their trees grow in real life using google tracking.
Sitemap
Day 4 - 6: Prototype
Due to time constraint, I skipped the wireframe and went to prototyping. I then quickly designed the brand guidelines (logo, colors, etc.) and started to build up the prototype of journeys. Here are some of the main screens. For a full preview, please turn to page 10 to get access to the basic interactive prototype.
Splash screens
Onboarding Screens
Sign in/Sign up
Journey 1 - Plant a tree: Main screen > Choose plant type > See the tree information > Plant the tree
Journey 2 - Do knowledge quiz: Main screen > Open the quests > Choose quiz > Answer the quiz
Journey 3 - Donate trees/See real-time tracking: Main screen > Open tracking > Choose the tracking place > See the result
Day 7: Test
After finishing the prototype, we tested it on 2-3 real users and gained some positive and constructive feedback.
Further implications:
1. Leaderboard: Provide platform for users to track and showcase their achievements.
2. Relaxing feature: Incorporate elements such as calming visuals, ambient sounds, etc.
3. Community challenges: Offer shared goals and activities related to sustainability. For example, users can collaborate to plant a certain number of trees collectively.
1. Leaderboard: Provide platform for users to track and showcase their achievements.
2. Relaxing feature: Incorporate elements such as calming visuals, ambient sounds, etc.
3. Community challenges: Offer shared goals and activities related to sustainability. For example, users can collaborate to plant a certain number of trees collectively.
Prototype
Basic UI Kit
Marketing
