What is it?

Minimum is a startup that helps to track, reduce, and offset users' carbon emmissions. Minimum connects with users bank accounts to parse their transactions and calculate their carbon emmissions. It then allows users to buy into existing projects that will automatically offset their environmental impacts. Without checking out their own release of the product, our role was to design an interface solely with that value proposition in mind. We summarized these functionalities into three main tabs:

TRACK:

In the track section, you can see a dashboard breaking down your carbon footprint in the past week. Minimum automatically scrapes information from your bank expenditure to understand the products and services you consumed that would contribute to your carbon footprint.For more granular items like mileage, time spent in the shower, and cash purchases not included in bank information, you can update your carbon foosteps with the daily check-in function in addition to logging individual items.

REDUCE:

reduce section shows tips of the day, educational components suggested to users by the app, in addition to top news items about carbon emissions.

ZERO:

The offsets section will be where users manage their carbon offsets portfolio. This is where they can see what their current portfolio comprises of, whether it is deforestation projects or replanting reefs. Users will also be able to buy into new projects, which they can browse in a discover sub section.

Sketching and Wireframing

We began by sketching four different interface ideas for the app. After looking through all the ideas and discussing which components of each sketch best represented minimum's goals, we created a simple wireframe to guide our prototype design.

Mockups

Next, we made an interactive “high-fidelity”(hi-fi) prototype based off the wireframe we created in Part 1, after which we presented our mockup in studio for a round of critiques. We received good feedback from peers and a Product Designer currently working at Facebook. The key takeaways:

• We needed more consistent transitions, CTA, and fonts
• The navbar icons were not informative enough on their own
• Inconsistent use of color-coding for increases/decreases

This led us to develop a more cohesive style guide in addition to the prototype in the following section:

Hi-fidelity Prototype

Tasks to think about when interacting with the prototype: how would you log your daily carbon footprint? How would you add another project to your carbon emissions portfolio?

User Testing

In our final step, we conducted our own usability test through a remote user testing service (UserTesting.com), using our newly created, interactive hi-fi prototype. We gave our users a set of tasks and questions to complete based on interacting with our Figma prototype.

Task items:

1. First, you would like to track your carbon emissions in this past week. How would go about that? What day did you emit the most carbon? [Success: Yes, No]
2. Now, you would like to log your daily carbon emissions. Walk me through how you would do that. [Success: Yes, No]
3. Your next task is to explore your current portfolio holdings of carbon projects. Which project currently does your portfolio comprise the most of? [Success: Yes, No]
4. Finally, you would like to browse carbon projects and add a new one to your portfolio. Protecting Rainforest looks particularly attractive to you. Walk us through this process. [Success: Yes, No]

Questionnaire items:

1. What frustrated you most about this site?
2. If you had a magic wand, how would you improve this site?
3. What did you like about the site?
4. How likely are you to recommend this site to a friend or colleague (0=Not at all likely, and 10=Very Likely)?

Analysis: Overall, the feedback we received was quite positive. User 1 had the hardest time of the three users navigating the app, especially with the first task of tracking which day he emitted the most carbon. He attributed this to the lack of labeling on the graphs. Because of the nature of the prototype as a mockup with less detail, and hence the graphs were intentionally vague, we believed this made a lot of sense but was not worth modifying in the final iteration.

User 2 and 3 had an easier time navigating the interface, and both were quick in being able to identify how to log their footprint in addition to adding a project to their portfolio. Interface-wise however, both had some issues reading all text, and future design would increase the size of the labels especially on the navigation bar.

However, overwhelmingly, the first task was somewhat confusing for all users. Only the second user fully answered the question of which day had the most emissions, as the first user ended up giving up on the task upon not finding the graph informative informative enough, and the third user thinking she had completed the task but only entering into the submission form. This is largely because the dashboard is not as interactive as the other areas and is simply a static page filled with some graphs and text. The next iteration of designs would make them pop up and clickable in some areas to make them more engaging.

Key points from the final questionnaire are summarized below:

1. Frustrations:

   letters are way too small, data entry is too hard (too manual; more data points could be automatically collected); weekly graph was uninformative

2. Magic Wand:

   Make the words pop more or change from black to another color; give the app more ways to track data, such as through miles travelled or shower time length timer in the same way fitbits have additional features. This way users don't have to manually enter data but simply connect a device.

3. Like about the site:

   Navigation was generally easy; aesthetic is very clean, and traversal is generally intuitive.

4. Recommend (out of 10)?

   7,8,5

Final changes to interface: Some final changes we would make based on the feedback received would include making the dashboard more engaging and self-intuitive, because this is the area most people struggled with. One person's comment about the text being not visible is enough to justify making the text larger, or having an option to being able to do so. Afterall, accessibility has to include everyone!

For the purpose of the mockup, the quiz and logging information was very general. The next iteration of designs would test the actual forms themselves and which pieces of information are most logged, and which need to be made easier to log perhaps through automatic entry as one user suggested.

Conclusion

At every step, we received very helpful feedback on how to make the minimum.eco App interface more engaging and intuitive. The initial design we set out with had an intuitive flow and framework, which was something most of our users and feedback agreed with. The biggest points of change throughout were with the icon designs, text styles, in addition to components style.

Some next steps for functionality would be to add in a more robust browse section for users to discover projects to add to their portfolio. We would also work on intergrating the app with existing fitness hardware to help with data collection. And the dashboard would be made more interactive and engaging through pop ups and buttons.