Website / Educational Game
Team & Solo Designer
Solo UX/UI / Research
Figma
Photoshop
Illustrator
ESB reached out to our college Maynooth University for ideas / solutions to the problems related to the future of the company. The brief can be summarized to
“Outline an overall approach to helping Irish Energy users engage with Demand Response activity.”
Originally this project was within a team, which gotten good feedback from ESB but I came back as a solo designer to enhance the final Ux and Ui design.
I wanted to design a space that would help influence/encourage users to engage with demand response. For this project, I wanted to see users relationships with energy.
ESB’s problem is a very well known problem, energy being used up and the consumption of fossil fuels. The first problem is how can I funnel multiple problems to one? The second, who am I trying design this for. Third, how can I encourage people?
Designed a service which is more compelling for youth to engage with.
Created a design which corresponds to the businesses goals in a creative approach.
Designed a digital solution which joins youth competitiveness and active learning.
ESB told us their main problem was a demand/response problem.
Peak periods is when there is an overuse of high energy items. This makes produced renewable energy be consumed and making them rely on non - renewable resources.
Research Goals
Learn more about the roles of the people in a household and how they can differ.
Discover the relationship between users and energy use.
Learn psychological reasoning for the actions of the users.
Explore the users knowledge about energy usage.
Uncover possible solutions related to research insights
Before I did research I had a few assumptions about the problem space. These were areas where I wanted to prove them or if they are invalidated by research.
For this research we wanted to understand how people view and user their energy.
Splitting our information to two different research topics.
Research different roles and their relationship with power usage at home, divided by consumers and billpayers.
Learn their routine and identify areas of compromise.
Consumer
vs
Billpayer
Discover how responsible people felt about their own carbon foootprint. We want to see peoples awareness and knowledge about their energy use
I interviewed 10 people, consisting of 6 Billplayers (30 - 60yr old) and 4 Consumers (14 - 25). Trying to learn their behaviours and reasonings.
Billpayers
Consumers
The consumers are more conscious of their
electricity usage when their parents are at home. When the parents aren't home they were more likely not worry about something being left on.
Few consumers believed that they would be
more conscious of their electricity usage when they move out.
People want to make a difference, but feel that their own efforts cant tackle the problem in an impactful way.
This feeling of powerlessness makes users not care about their energy usage.
People are not educated on energy, which contributes to a lack of meaningful change in consumption habits.
Lack of knowledge means users will not put any meaning behind the topic of energy saving.
With these insights, I got curious about other topics, specifically on influencing behaviours and learning processes. So I had questions I wanted answered:
Parents generally influence the children more, but the reverse is also true.
In the study “The Role of Parenting in Adolescent Development” by Nancy Darling and Laurence Steinberg (1993), it says that parenting styles and behaviour shifts can shift due to the changing needs and behaviours of adolescents.
The strongest influence of behaviour can vary to person but the most notable ones are social influence and rewards.
According to the study on different ways of learning, the study “Active Learning Increases Student Performance in Scien.....” by Scott Freeman. (2014) says that active learning is the most effective kind of learning. ThiS includes engagement, peer to peer, interactive methods etc.
With the user research, I wanted to solidify the target users and why I wanted to choose that group.
They are more susceptible for environmental action.
They also still have the mental capacity to understand thier own actions.
Have influence and can create impact to members of a family.
Meet Jim and Jenny. There are 2 personas showcasing billpayers and consumers. Ultimately to see how we can create a solution that would get both parties involved while focusing on consumers.
Jim and Jenny are personas created by the needs, pain points, lifestyle, experience and motivations of the users in the interviews I conducted
With the interviews, personas and secondary research in mind, I brainstormed possible features.
Create community engagement with the target audience.
Primarily educating the younger generation, ultimately influencing the older generation.
Modify target users outlook in energy saving actions.
With the goals in mind, I added features needed to create that goal.
Congregation
Energy usage programs in school - extra curricular activity.
Leader boards
Milestones / Targets
Freinds Activity
School Rivalry
Friend Insights
Educate
Energy Tracker
Quizzes
Energy news
Shows Events
Energy Facts
Modifying
Progression Points
Rewards / Prizes System
Progress Bars
Competitions
Friendly Rivalry
I wanted my product to reward the target users behaviour towards saving energy. Having the youth be the leading charge, while having the support of their families.
I knew which features I wanted to include and was starting to build a picture of how the website would look & function. To further help define the structure and architecture of the website, I created a website map and how users will flow.
I first looked at ESB’s company website to make sure my layout and experience is similar to what they have already established. Of course directed to a younger generation.
Having mapped out my websites features, I proceeded to create the wireframes.
I wanted to focus on structure and placement, so I began with low-fidelity wireframes. My goal for the structure was a modern, simple and brighter colours to attract younger users despite asking quite a lot of them (behavioural changes).
The Users that I focused on is more likely be used to digital products, so I wanted to see how they found the experience. I set myself goals for this user test so I can see what changes to do before the final design.
Test onboarding and see if the user understands what the apps goal is.
See how they find the friend list and the process of adding, generating, choosing and saving a plan.
Get their thoughts of the app and if they would install this app.
Test the user if they understand the layout, structure and functions in the home page.
See their thoughts of the home page displaying multiple events.
Since there is a lot of frames in this website, I only wanted to test user experiences in high priority features, and also test A-B progress.
Test was conducted with 5 people educational skill raging from 1st year to 6th year secondary school level.
Users felt that the double sign in options were unnecessary.
A smaller change that i did was the text length, they showed me that the text was way too long in some parts, in times just skipped it and stopped reading.
There was also unnecessary text which didn't really give information on the topic.
From the test I did some changes in the profile page. Removed settings (added no value) and most importantly added achievements tab. It was added to increase the long term engagement since a user said they would only do the test and that's it.
Fonts
Headers -
St Ryde
Header (2) -
Open Sans
Main Text -
Arial
173d6d
0067a1
5fb2de
fefef8
1a1a1a
f07d1a
04a64b
Profile
Friend Page
Daily Quiz
Store
Rankings
Events
Achievements
Shop
Chat Page
Notifcations
Level Difficulty
Energy
Go to
Estimated Time
This product is incomplete, although its design is functional there is still lots of things to be done for this project to be a viable product that would be used by actual users.
The next step for my project, from a UX perspective, would be building the platform and keeping tabs on how customers engage with it. What works? What doesn’t? Could anything operate more smoothly? How are the needs of users changing over time?
There is also the business side of the project which needs to be further thought upon. How would it be funded, is it profitable?, benefits, product stategy?, etc. A lot of things which needs to be discussed for a service like this to be launched.
During this project I went straight to hih fidelity wireframes and testing. I believe this was too much work for the results given. I wasted a lot of time trying to make the perfect high fidelities and when it needed to be adjusted, changed or just overall reworked I spent more time redesigning for aesthetic instead of functionality.
For a project like this I learnt that when presenting final concepts ideas there is much more than the thought process, UX and UI when presenting. If I were to do this project again I would like to spend more time in outside research in a business point of view, how this concept would work.
This would be more about funding, stakeholders, how the project would bring in benefits to the company and what the company has to sacrifice and if the benefits are worth the takeoff, etc.