Brantford Emissions
A tool that helps all Brantford citizens reduce their emissions and save money.
Overview
For this project, our group was partnered with the environment department of the City of Brantford. The city wants to launch a web-based solution that will help engage Brantford citizens in learning and reducing their
carbon footprint.
Roles and Responsibilities
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User Research
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Ideating
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Prototyping
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Usability Testing
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Visual Design
Design Tools Used
Research
Problem Landscape
The city of Brantford has declared a climate emergency alongside many other communities as of November 13th, aiming to be carbon neutral by 2050. This follows out client’s problem of engaging the residents of Brantford to reduce their emissions, climate change has been an issue for years and it is becoming increasingly more critical
User Research
We interviewed 24 residents within Brantford aging from 18 to 80 about what they had to say about climate change.
Those who we interviewed had a fairly large misunderstanding when it came to emissions levels. We would ask how they could reduce their emissions to be met with answers ranging from composting to water waste. As well as plastics and ozone depletion.
Participants also brought up the issue of the overall scale of the problem, that their efforts would be meaningless as it is such a large issue. Who we interviewed, mostly, felt as though they could make a change but what would the point be when they are just one person.
Product Goals
Once we completed our user interviews, we created a list of key information that we were told and created a list of goals we would like to achieve with our solution. Our goals were:
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Educate Brantford citizens on the current climate crisis and how to reduce their carbon footprint.
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Provide information that helps citizens reduce their emissions.
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Give Brantford citizens the opportunity to share information with other citizens.
User Journey
Empathy Map
In order to best encapsulate the information we gained from our user interviews, we created an empathy map that contained the users knowledge about their emissions.
Persona and Journey Map
Using all of the previously mentioned research, we created two personas that best portrayed our target users. Using these personas we also created their journey maps that portray their current experience when looking for information about reducing their emissions.
Testing
Medium Fidelity Prototype
Home Page
Personal Tracking
Community Map
Community Map - Electricity Filter
Get Involved
Midfi Usability Tesing
For our testing, our group split up and went to local areas, such as coffe houses, student lounges, and the library. Once there, we asked people if they could help us with a project of ours. We would first ask them a couple of questions and then present them our prototype and have them play out some scenarios.
Scenario #1
"You are curious if other people in your community have any recommendations on how to reduce the amound of electricity you use. Navigate to where you think you can find this."
Scenario #1 Evaluation
This scenario required participants to go to the community map page. Our participants were able to easily to find the page and understand what they were looking at. A crucial piece of feedback we got was from a man who mentioned he was colour blin and some of the colours of the pins on the map looked the same. This led to us adding icons along with the pins to solve this design issue.
Scenario #2
"Other Brantford citizens brought up a lot of good solutions for reducing your emissions but you would like to get the opinion of a local professional. Go to where do you think you could find the contact info of these professionals."
Scenario #2 Evaluation
This scenario was very straight forward but it brought us a lot of interesting information from our participants. Many of them informed that they would usually just search on Google for this information. This informs us that in order to have this feature be as effective for our users, we need to design it in a way that is easier and faster to access than doing a search on Google after visiting our website.
Scenario #3
"Now that you have learned more about your carbon foorprint, you want to find ways you can volunteer to help clean the city. Navigate to where you believe you can find this volunteer information."
Scenario #3 Evaluation
This last scenario had users navigate to the "Get Involved" page. Once here, we would ask them a couple of questions about their opinions on the information availble on this page. Most of our participants were passionate about this page and said they would use it become more involved. They felt that this information is very hard to find.
Living Green Landing Page
Community Map
Initiatives Page