PIP
a citizen science mobile prototype and awareness campaign to support the goals of the All Irish Pollinator Plan.
The Challenge
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Pollinators are all the insects that visit flowers to feed off the nectar and pollen. They are important to humankind’s survival because they pollinate the plants that provide us with food.
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Ireland is struggling to protect the natural habitats and biodiversity of its pollinators.
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The All-Ireland Pollinator Plan was developed in 2015 to bring people together to create an environment where pollinators can survive and thrive again.
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Great changes have already been implemented through however still much work to be done in raising awareness and changing behaviors and attitudes.
The Goal
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To design and build a clickable prototype and outdoor campaign that helps to monitor pollinators and promote easy pollinator friendly actions that can be carried out and tested with users.
My Role
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UX researcher
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UI designer
Target Audience
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People who have access to a private garden or allotment.
Design
Process
01.
Research
To engage with users and understand what problems I was trying to solve I carried out primary and secondary research.
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Primary
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Interviews
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Online Survey
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Competitive Bench marking
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Usability Testing with note taking
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Secondary
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Research Papers
Interviews
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3 stakeholders
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60 mins each
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Recorded
Key Insights
Gathered useful insights into the current challenges and limitations experienced with pollinator apps and how they would like to see them work in the future. Also learned more about their pollinator goals for the future and how they would like to see these products evolve to reflect that. Possibility for future development.
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4 competitor citizen science apps
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focus on the pollinator monitoring process
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heuristic evaluation
Key Insights
The mobile apps that performed the best where those that
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were not solely dependent on GPS or mobile data
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used photographic imagery instead of scientific / latin names for identification purposes
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had a camera function linked to capture pollinator information.
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3 users
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1 tasks
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2 apps
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60 mins
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Key Insights
Navigation, complex language and pollinator identification options were the main obstacles for users tracking and monitoring pollinators correctly.
02.
Define
To make sense of the research, I used the following analyses methods to define the problem.
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Brainstorming
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Affinity Diagramming
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User Flows
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Personas
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Customer Journey Mapping
Affinity Diagram
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2 participants
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60 mins
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30 notes from usability testing
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Tools: Figma
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Key Insights
Data entry recording process for apps tested is quick so it became apparent straight away if the user could understand it (or not). The resulting affinity diagram revealed that pain points were experienced by users with
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Navigation - too much text to read,
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Species identification - language used
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Call to action - where to begin
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Behavioural obstacles - garden pests
User Flows
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Primary and Secondary Research Insights
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Tools: Figma
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Key Insights
Pulling together the research insights of user behaviour, I created 2 user flows to pin point where too much information or misinformation about pollinators is paralyzing users into inaction or leading users to actions that cause more harm.
Problem
Pollinators are struggling to survive because of an overall lack of human awareness of how to help.
Those who are aware of the problem often find the resources that are available unclear, not suited to mobile use or too time consuming to follow.
Analysis of the research showed that the common obstacles users encounter when using available citizen science apps are;
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unclear navigation
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insufficient or too much scientific information
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to frustration and confusion while using
the app
Solution
The Solution would include
Raise awareness of the All Ireland Pollinator Plan by through an awareness campaign backed up by a mobile app to provide;
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Access to knowledge with a choice of entry
level actions.
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Easy steps to follow with bite size information
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A convenient, time efficient method to track pollinator actions, progress and record pollinator data.
03. Design
Now I know the critical flows and scenarios that are causing the problem I start to design a flow that is as seamless as possible.
Task Flow
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Adobe XD
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User Flow Sketch as reference
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Using the user flow sketch above as a reference. I selected the part of the flow that focused on the user registration and the four simple introductory actions to get started as a citizen scientists for the task flow which were;
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wildflower count
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nectar calculator
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creating a network
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promotional materials
04.
Prototype
