User Experience, User Interface Design + Brand Identity Design
Earthly is a platform that empowers humans to share stories, find connections and take action through positive social/environmental initiatives. Earthly encourages social and environmental awareness of an individual's choices and the associated impacts via thought provoking content.
Prompts individuals to experience a higher level of connectivity throughout communities and encourages people to be conscious of their environmental and social impact.
INTRODUCTION
BACKGROUND + DESCRIPTION
The condition of the environment is deteriorating as humanity continues to live in an unsustainable way, exhausting resources and polluting the earth’s oceans, air and forests. Consumers are looking for sustainable product and service alternatives to their current choices, but don’t know where to look and how to make positive changes.
HOW MIGHT WE
- Show people how much power they have individually to enact social/environmentalchange?
- Make it easier for people to create positive change?
- Educate people on the impacts of their actions?
- Increasing the interest in social/environmental causes?
- Make positive choices easier for people and companies?
- Evoke a sense of connection for people to social/environmental problems/solutions around the world?
THE PROBLEM SPACE
- The environment is deteriorating and people feel like they can’t make a difference.
- Individuals don’t feel personally impacted/connected to the areas that are experiencing problems, so they are not driven to act
- People don’t know which companies/organizations are making positive and negative business ethics and impact
- People are not aware of the social/environmental initiatives.
STRATEGY
It was my belief that if given the option individuals would prefer to live more symbiotically with the environment. The research I conducted supported my theory, users wanted to make changes, but didn't know how or didn’t have the time to implement changes.
TECHNOLOGICAL, LOGISTICAL, and/or CULTURAL CONSTRAINTS
- Cultural disconnection to our environment
- Lack of environmental initiatives
- Low accessibility in rural areas
REQUIRED TOOLS + RESOURCES
Adobe Illustrator - Branding
Adobe InDesign - Documents
Adobe Photoshop - Photo Retouching/Formatting
Sketch & InVision - Wireframing & Prototype
USER PERSONAS
An important step in designing the experience is a careful understanding of the intended users. As a designer, it gives you perspective into who they are, what their goals are, where they experience frustrations, and where our best opportunities for design intervention lie. I envision two different users with similar environmental/social end goals, but unique attitudes/processes when using the Earthy app.
EXPERIENCE MAP
CHALLENGES
After the creation of the first prototype users found that the on-boarding process was unintuitive and unclear. Between the V3 Wire-frame and Final High-Fidelity prototypes underwent significantly revisions to the user flow to make this aspect of the experience more streamlined for the user.
SKETCHING + IDEATION
THE RESULT
Users appreciated having the issues categorized, as it made them aware of all the social and environmental issues that a currently taking place globally.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
People need sustainable choices to be easier and more cost effective.
Individual want their government mandate social and environmentally positive processes
Users don’t know what all the socially and environmentally sustainable options are and need assistance finding them.
People want to feel a greater sense of connection to the world around them.
HIGH FIDELITY SCREENS
VISUAL IDENTITY
The earthly logo concept was inspired by the Roman symbol for earth, with the quarters representing the four basic elements. Paired with a traditional serif font Bodoni Poster to create a sophisticated and classic aesthetic.
UI LIBRARY
CONCLUSION
NEXT STEPS
In the future I foresee Partnerships with already existing environmental and social organizations such as Green Peace, World Wildlife Fund, Global Wildlife Conservation and The Nature Conservancy. With these alliances Earthly would be able to leverage larger audiences to invoke more positive environmental and social change globally.
CREDITS
User testers provided an incredible amount of insight into the development of this experience, I learned a great deal about how to make the app much more logical, intuitive and user-friendly.
