My team created a clickable app prototype via Figma that enables you to lower your carbon footprint by booking flights sorted by the lowest amount of CO2 emissions. We did this by hypothesizing an assumption for the modern traveler, proto-persona and iterated persona creation after user interviews and surveys, defining the problem, ideating a solution with a specific feature set and critical path, and ending with prototyping, user testing, and iteration.

Aviation's climate problem

Our solution: making carbon footprint reduction easy for air travelers

Our app, Footprint, was built to encourage travelers to reduce their carbon footprint by booking flights based on the lowest CO2 emission.

Well Informed, Wanting Change

Characteristics

  • Aware and well-informed on climate change issues
  • They take active steps to reduce their carbon footprint where they can
  • They find it difficult and tedious to keep track of their carbon footprint on a regular basis
  • Tech-savvy
  • Travels a lot for work so they feel an internal conflict when it comes to air travel
  • Some even completely cut out flying to reduce the global impact

The Prompt — Build a clickable prototype and present case study - in two weeks

My Contribution

  • User research testing
  • Discovering the problem
  • Ideating a solution
  • All visual design and interactive elements
  • User testing and iteration

Constraints & Roadblocks

  • School project
  • Small scope and timeline

Week One —

Uncovering a problem

Our team was given the prompt to create an app for the modern traveler. Given the broad scope, we prepared interview questions to conduct user interviews and surveys hoping the survey data would make apparent the problem needing to be solved.

User survey

User survey to uncover the problem

User interview tidbits

A word cloud based on user interviews

We condensed the collected interview data and found climate change to be a topic of concern for multiple interviewees. There is an internal conflict of wanting/needing to travel but also being aware that most travel methods, flying in particular, are harmful to the environment.

Affinity mapping

Affinity mapping based on user interview data

How can we fly and reduce our carbon footprint?

  • Fly non-stop
  • Choose your flight based on the type of fuel
  • Fly coach
  • Fly cold, if possible
  • Purchase carbon offsets

One hope is that airlines would be forced to change the way they operate because of consumer behavior to reduce their carbon footprint.

Competitor analysis

Existing solutions were confusing, had poor discoverability, and a lack of data transparency.

We defined 3 design requirements for our app:

  1. Focus on discoverability
  2. Build trust with transparent data
  3. Utilizing whitespace to avoid overwhelming the user

Problem statement and brainstorming feature set

Our persona's problem statement and feature set brainstorm

Prioritizing features

Feature prioritization considering business impact and user needs

Week Two —

Storyboarding

Week two began with developing a storyboard to empathize with the user and imagine how using the app would play out in reality.

Proposition statement

We created a value proposition to clearly define the purpose of the app.

We focused on only building the critical path for the user: booking a flight. Our key feature set included providing a footprint score with transparency on how it’s calculated and tracking the flights against a user’s carbon footprint.

Lo-fi prototype

Lo-Fidelity Frames

Mid-fi prototype

Testing the mid-fidelity prototype helped uncover some blind spots.

We iterated based on user testing by:

  • Simplifying the amount of content in the onboarding screens
  • Clarifying graphical data
  • Making the carbon footprint number more obvious while choosing a flight

Hi-fi prototype

Our hi-fidelity frames changed a bit based on user feedback. We softened the color palette and provided more detail on the user's statistics and goals.

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