Parks are bustling with life, but unfortunately, also brimming with rubbish.
EcoShrooms addresses park woes head-on, offering innovative waste solutions, modern amenities, and safety enhancements. Our field research reveals widespread issues with outdated facilities and safety concerns, driving us to reshape the park experience.
Teaming up with a partner, I collaborated with park visitors to craft a vision for greener, safer, and more enjoyable public spaces. Our efforts resulted in securing the top spot in our cohort for our product. Together, let's revitalize urban parks for all to enjoy.
Now, urban parks offer numerous benefits to visitors and residents like free space, free use of amenities and community events, yet we often see large areas of these parks with little to no visitors.
Well when we observe these open green spaces we also come across outdated amenities and facilities and can confirm that:
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Through competitors analysis, we found these urban parks primarily had large areas of green space being underutilised with a lack of amenities and facilities contributing to this problem.
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At the Stan Office!
At the Stan Christmas Party with my co-workers
Watching a Stan Original Movie
At a Stan movie premiere :)
Based off of our market research, we decided to investigate these research objectives, focusing on human-concious actions in relation to sustainability.
🤔 How often do people consciously notice their everyday behaviours and actions?
⛲ What might be the main reasons for why people visit urban parks?
🌿 How might encouraging sustainable energy practices promote human interaction with green spaces?
⚡ How important is sustainable energy practices to green spaces in urban parks?
We used four various methods of research all for different purposes as a way of obtaining insights to the problem we encountered.
In total we received:
Surveys
📝 110 User Survey Responses
(Which gave us a large amount of quantitative and qualitative data from our target users)
USER INTERVIEWS
🗣️ 5 User Interviews
(Gave us with context into unique and meaningful experiences so that we are able to better understand them)
Online ethnography
🌐 50+ Forums from the Web
(Allowed us to observe user behaviours and interactions from the online community)
CONTEXTUaL OBSERVATION
🌳 4 Park Observations
(To understand first hand what users experience and encounter at urban parks from contextual observation over at Sydney Park and Central Park)
From the user research we conducted, we organised all our data through affinity mapping by taking quotes, observations and findings through an affinity map trying to identify any trends.
Through this we discovered three main themes and six important insights:
Urban parks should offer more sustainable facilities and amenities, encouraging meaningful interactions and usage of green spaces for park visitors.
Poorly designed amenities in urban parks contribute to users avoiding green spaces as they’re unable to utilise resources needed during their visits.
Most urban parks offer little to no physical accessibility considerations in their designs. By providing accessible amenities and facilities that can be utilised by everyone ensures users feel welcomed and comfortable with their park visits.
Inclusivity as apart of urban park spaces is overlooked, favoured for stronger aesthetics and minimalistic images. Urban parks should offer friendlier and usable facilities and amenities, making users feel included and welcomed into green spaces.
There are little safe spaces within urban parks due to insufficient lighting and poor park environments. Urban parks should be consistent places which make users feel welcomed and safe.
Users often seek spaces where there are more human interactions and activities. By creating this type of environment in parks, it facilitates meaningful connections for users, promoting positive experiences.
Coming from these insights, we wanted to use these findings and sort them into an empathy map.
Every user is complex so grouping our data ensured that we could spot inconsistencies between their thoughts versus actions.
And after seeing the juxtaposition between quadrants in our empathy map, we wanted to visualise the entire end-to-end experience in an urban park.
So, Meet Caroline. She is an amalgamation of every bit of research we uncovered and she wants to go to the park.
Prior to our rapid storyboarding ideation session, we brainstormed and drew out various concepts we were vaguely interested in. We did this so that we could get every idea we had onto paper and ready for our second stage, storyboarding.
We conducted this ideation technique, each creating 3 concepts of our own to get our one-line concept into detailed narratives and refine our ideas and make 6 interesting solutions relating back to our key insights. We created fun and out-there things like a cherry blossom rest station and a step calculator.
Separately, we had both noticed a discrepancy in trash and recycling at urban parks. Or rather the lack of discrepancies. There just weren’t enough bins in urban parks. In my team member's storyboard, she took an idea of a standard bin and turned it into something interactive and cute, mushrooms. Furthermore, she pointed out how the use of an LED screen could increase interaction and play. In my storyboard, I looked at safety, creating amenities which lit up at night to create a welcoming environment to residents and visitors.
Between the six concept ideations we came up with, we put four to a team decision matrix. This assisted us in narrowing our options based on different attributes and allowed us to decide on which ideation was best to move forward with.
We created a set of attributes to score our ideas. The attribute ranged from notions of, play, accessibility, innovativeness, feasibility, and so on. We decided to use this specific criteria as we thought it was a strategic way to ensure our final product was something that met our users needs based on the brief we were given and the problem statement we developed from the discovery and define stage.
The question you’re probably wondering is, why mushrooms?
When it came to deciding what type of product we wanted to create, we wanted to ensure it was something that not only met our users needs, but also drew attention and sparked curiosity within users. The decision came down to three different purposes.
Our product comprised three primary sections, starting from sketching the low-fidelity concepts to crafting our physical prototype. Throughout this journey, our process heavily emphasized iterative testing.
We had two main components of our concept iterations. Focusing on balancing the physical prototype with our digital interface.
PHYSICAL PROTOTYPE
Ecoshrooms are bins shaped like mushrooms, featuring an interactive screen embedded within their 'stem'.
We crafted this prototype with careful intention, selecting and refining the key features of our product.
digital interface
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Recognizing that our mushroom-shaped bins would be prominently displayed in parks, we aimed to optimize every inch of space on the interface. Our goal was to ensure that park-goers could easily access and engage with essential details while enjoying their outdoor experience.
After contemplating user-friendly interfaces, we opted to maintain a single panel on the screen, with the other panel displaying a rubbish symbol. We made this choice because we believed inundating users with information on a bin wasn't the best approach.
Considering the bin's utility and the duration of user interaction, we decided to streamline our digital interface. We chose a simple design, featuring screens that transitioned from welcoming messages in various languages to adorable emoticon faces.
We settled on placing the rubbish hole at the top, right in the middle of the mushroom. This decision was made because having holes all around the mushroom would have reduced functionality. It would have been awkward for trash, with smaller and larger holes posing challenges for disposal.
When iterating our Hi-Fidelity prototype, we consulted a mood board to guide our visual design decisions and craft a welcoming experience for visitors to the park.
To emphasize the fun and refreshing intent of the design for users, I illustrated these mushrooms to convey a design aesthetic that aligns with this goal, ensuring it complements rather than impedes functionality.
Now that we had EcoShrooms, it was time to construct our prototype for user testing.
After much much deliberation, we decided to use paper mache to construct the mushroom whilst the stern underneath was a painted flower pot.
Using the university labs, constructed the physical model and carved out a hole for the rubbish chute.
Later on, we painted the ecoshroom bin according to the corresponding symbol for each type of waste. For instance, red represents general waste.
We used our phone lights to demonstrate the spatial aspect of EcoShrooms and paper slide outs to visualise our screen.
We tested two different aspects of EcoShrooms, space and sound. Getting users to think aloud whilst doing tasks, we got them to throw rubbish into the bins and listen to various sounds, rating them based on how affirmative they sounded.
Afterwards, we asked them some questions like:
“What was the first thing you noticed about our product?”
“Is there anything you're confused about?”
In total we had:
Our main feedback was:
People really enjoyed how cute and eye-catching the EcoShroom was and pointed out that the glow of the mushroom head was what first caught their eye as well as just the fact that it is a mushroom.
They really identified with the faces and text shown on the EcoShroom screens.
People did not think that the EcoShroom was a bin. In fact, most thought they were art installations or lamps.
People seemed to have trouble distinguishing what bin their rubbish went into as we seemed to have assumed that the colours of red and yellow were internationally recognised as general waste and recycling. For example, when prompting users to throw a Yakult bottle, which is meant to go into recycling, 55% of people threw the yakult bottle into general waste.
Sound was very preferential, no two people had a similar answer and we ended up with a skewed data range.
With these insights in mind, we continued to iterate to build our final product.
After undergoing secondary research, we conduced the triangulation method of surveys, semi-structured interviews and online ethnography surrounding the following research questions:
😳 How does the presence of shyness or sociability influence the experience of post-party blues and the effectiveness of existing strategies?
🥲 What kind of negative thoughts and feelings are young people having after a festive season, event or party?
😅 How and why are young people engaging in social debriefing sessions with their friends after events?
In total we conducted:
Surveys
📝 90 Responses
Semi-structured interviews
🗣️ 14 Participants
Online ethnography
🌐 30+ forums from the web
What did this tell us?
What are the primary challenges you face in maintaining consistent, meaningful, and in-person connections with your adult friends?
We discovered that digital distractions, communication barriers and social anxiety were the most prevalent challenges, sparking further inquiries into the reasons behind people experiencing these particular feelings.
Why are people leaving parties feeling so empty?
Who experienced post-party feelings?
Introverts vs Extroverts
The occurrence of post-event feelings appears to be evenly distributed between introverts and extroverts, suggesting that the post-event experience is not significantly skewed towards a specific personality type.
We sorted the notes from the online ethnography + survey + interviews and categorised them to find commonalities.
After synthesising and analysing our key findings, we identified 5 key insights:
Experiencing pressure to swiftly transition, maintain productivity amidst post-event emotions, and feeling compelled to update others despite facing negativity.
Greater anticipation of an event correlates with reduced post-event sadness and suggests a prolonged recovery period, while young individuals may experience confusion and diminished sense of purpose upon returning to normalcy after adrenaline-filled activities.
Balancing productive and relaxing activities, including moments of isolation for social battery recharge, helps in managing post-event emotions and regaining routine momentum.
Sharing personal narratives to enhance understanding, processing emotions through collective experiences, and nurturing relationships via ongoing communication.
Reflecting on memories through recollections or mementos such as photos and music, experiencing the event's excitement again, and practicing gratitude due to its transient, rare, and communal nature.
We categorised our interviewees among different demographic and event-going factors using a data sheet. These factors range from whether they are female or male to whether they are productive or restful during the post-event phases.
We identified interviewees with similar traits, resulting in two extroverted and one introverted personas along the introvertedness spectrum. They were categorised based on the events they mainly discussed: travel, concerts, or parties.
MARY
”The Social Butterfly”
19 years old
Recent highschool graduate
"Reconnecting with friends after the event is probably really important because I like to catch up and see what everyone's experience was.”
CHRIS
"The Closed Book"
22 years old
3rd Year University Student
"I try to enjoy the moment because I am aware that it won't last. Life's too short to dwell on what might be passing by."
TANYA
"The Traveller"
21 years old
On Sabbatical
"I just wish I could have talked to more people for longer. Because I talk to people on a surface level, just small talk.”
Articulating the challenges encountered during the emotional and social integration process of an individual grappling with anxiety at social gatherings.
We've crafted a User Journey map featuring Mary, illustrating the dynamic evolution of experiences from initial reluctance and social withdrawal to gradual adaptation and heightened anxiety throughout all stages of an event.
Our team generated numerous concepts through three ideation techniques. The ideas represented below are the final ideas from each ideation technique we had made. Through this process, we condensed our creativity into three distinct rough ideas.
Memento, a digital platform for storing and displaying personalised visual content.
Stash, a time capsule application which recap your digital media.
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Memory, a scrapbooking application that streamlines photo preservation and sharing through creative mediums.
We constructed a decision matrix to evaluate each idea based on various criteria such as likeability, market demand, and interest factor. Memento earned high scores primarily as we liked the base idea, which enabled us to tailor it to the appropriate audience without imposing a predefined structure.
However, despite this, we found ourselves drawn to the ideas behind both Stash and Memory, which outperformed Memento in our decision-making process. Taking this into account, we integrated various aspects of each concept into Memento, as illustrated in the low-fidelity frames.
Our team had undertaken 4 rounds of tests throughout prototyping from Mid fidelity to High Fidelity
As the initial step in the prototyping process, we began by crafting sketches that served as the foundation for our app's development. These sketches, meticulously created and iterated upon, provided us with a visual roadmap to outline the structure, layout, and functionality of the application.
Upon finalising sketches, low fidelity prototyping was utilised for the purpose of laying out broad concepts early within the design process. Out of multiple iterations, some significant iterations included:
We refined the visual design by transitioning low-fi concepts into mid-fi prototypes, a phase marked by numerous iterative adjustments aimed at enhancing fidelity and clarity in preparation for the final high-fi implementation. Out of multiple iterations, here are some:
We had tested our mid-fidelity design as static frames that we click through as participants described their thoughts and actions through:
cognitive wakthroughs
🗣️ 10 Participants
system usabiity scale
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🎙️ 15 Responses
We condensed transcribed data using an Affinity Map, where we analyzed expert recommendations derived from recurring feedback in an Insights Table.
Affinity Mapping
Insights Table
We opted for multiple iterations based on the severity or relevance to the problem statement. These iterations were then integrated into our high-fidelity design, following a carefully considered design system. Below are two examples of our iterations:
Prior to integrating interaction into our design within a suitable timeframe, we opted to assess our high-fidelity design with two participants: an expert and a user. Employing a casual Think-aloud test, this process sparked a complete brand transformation.
Originally, our primary colours were orange and blue, associated with optimism and warmth encourages users in their Post Event phase. However, as quoted by a graphic designer, these colours conveyed an:
"An Outdated Grandma Feel"
To combat the 'aged' look, we’ve changed to high-contrast black and white to still cater for that retro film-look and that pop of blue as our calming colour. We’ve included a casual tone of friendly emojis and lowercase headings that continue to reassure users. With the dark muted colours aimed to inspire that nostalgic 2000s appeal in young people.
It was now time to translate our mockups into interactive prototypes using Figma. Initially, we tested them with experts to pinpoint any significant deviations from best practices, and later with users to refine the application. Our approach included the following methods:
EXPERT TESTING
📝 Two Heuristic Evaluations, enabling experts to engage in discussions and reach consensus on usability issues.
USER TESTING
🗣️ 15 unmoderated think-aloud tests using Loop11 software, enabling us to capture insights from our target users through a comprehensive dataset.
One (out of many) iterations
📱 Are users easily learning what “label” means?
Based on user feedback, we made several iterations to improve the efficiency of inputting links into the link memo feature:
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So what did we do?
It takes the form of a friendly mushroom, in yellow and red colour for different purposes of waste disposal.
After investing significant time into researching, testing, and refining our designs, I've emerged with a project that I'm truly proud of. However, I did learn a few things in our pursuit for Memento:
💎 The double diamond
Looking back at our journey through the double diamond framework, we found it to be a great lesson learnt that sometimes, we don’t need to follow the rules so strictly.
As we immersed ourselves in sequential testing and iterative refinement, our methods became more intricate, presenting a greater challenge to navigate toward our final destination.
📂 File Chaos
We found ourselves getting lost in our component library, design system, and Figma files.
It wasn't until we realized the importance of design systems and organizing our files, prompting us to take action & significantly improving our workflow. We learned a valuable lesson: start implementing components and color styles early in our high-fidelity designs rather than waiting.
If Memento were to continue, I'd love to see:
🎐 You have reached the end of the case study! A sincere thank you for reading my ramblings.
It takes the form of a friendly mushroom, in yellow and red colour for different purposes of waste disposal.
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Some important learnings I made along the way
♿ Consider Greater Accessibility
Our current conclusions are that we need to make EchShrooms more accessible, this can be done by adding symbols, images and text indicating which rubbish should go where.
Furthermore, we’ll need to explore how to utilise sound in a way which suits everyone’s needs, possibly by rotating the sounds each usage or finding more affirmative-related sounds.
🔁 Modify the process to fit the need
Since this project was for a university unit, we had to swiftly research, prototype, and refine a design solution within a tight timeframe.
Through this experience, I gained a deeper insight into prioritization and utilizing UX tools to grasp the needs of the audience and enhance the design solution.
So where do we go from here?
If we were to continue Ecoshrooms, these are the steps we'd take to release it to the public. We planned out a comprehensive marketing strategy to generate awareness and attract users, followed by rigorous testing and refinement to ensure the product meets user expectations.
🍄🍄 You have reached the end of the case study :) Thanks for being a fungi and reading my ramblings.
When the party is over, where does my mind go? After is always scary. Let's switch it up!
Mobile Experience · Interaction Design · User Research
Campus cohorts are growing and growing. Let's find a study space together?
Desktop Experience · User Experience Design · Project Management
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