DX Portfolio
Habit@t
In Human-Centered Design & Innovation course, my teammates and I were give a design challenge, "A more sustainable city", to deign a product/service for residents in New York City in 12 weeks. We created Habit@t - a product composed of a phsical ring and a digital app. It aims to help New Yorkers, who lead high-stress lifestyles and lack sufficient interaction with green spaces, to enhance their well-being through change their lifestyle by getting more exposure to the green spaces.
Theme
Healthy Habits Green Space
Roles
UX Designer Researcher Prototyper
Tools
Figma iMovie Miro
The Design Challenge
The prompt for the HCDI Design challenge was to design to desing a solution to improve the sustainability of NYC.
Through doing promary research and secondary research, we needed to decide on a specific territory under sustainabiliy and the problem statement.
Problem Research & Insights
To identify the specific issue related to the sustainability in NYC, we took interviews among residents by asking questions from these three perspectives:
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The Understanding of Sustainability in NYC
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Personal Responce and Actions to Sustainability Concerns
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The Barriers of the Sustainable Life
We collected the wants/needs from interviewees and accordingly generate insights:
Wants/Needs
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The indoor living conditions about the apartment, the lacking of light and ventilation, because the manager of the buildings tried to divide the apartment to have more rooms to make more money
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More green spaces around the city would encourage more access to nature (ie: not knowing that the spaces exist)
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It is very unpleasant to walk around NYC due to its cleanliness and that she would always have to get an Uber/Lyft at night because it is too dangerous
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Tthe preference of working place: people prefer to work from home for the comfortable atmosphere, some prefer go to the office for better device, and some prefer go to somewhere else like starbuck
Insights/Learnings
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The conflict between people’s desire of better living condition and businessmen’s desire of making money
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Prioritizing nature in the city and having accessible ways of knowing that it exists
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Need of sanitary improvements and safe space
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People’s habit of working is changed, they value work productivity and also personal happiness.
Finally, our team selected to focus on the spatial sustainability, how to make full use of the space in NYC. We finally decided the problem statement is:
People in NYC don’t experience greenness as much as it would be good for their health.
Ideation
To address this problem, we brainstormed and put forwared three ideas:
IDEA 1 Greenline Bus
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Takes regular routes and turns them into more scenic routes that help people identify green spaces
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Runs through all the green spaces within specific borough which would help people new to NYC explore and simultaneously get an idea of the area surrounding them
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Would run on a schedule that could be found on an app, which would also have a map of green spaces.
IDEA 2 Green Resource Map
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The green space resources platform/app to make it easier to find a suitable green space
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Interactive Map Experience -> Showcases a park specific mapping of NYC
Engage Users to find more information on the green spaces around the city -
Include all the information about where the green spaces, what facilities they can provide and which groups of people are suitable for these green spaces with various tags and images.
IDEA 3 Green Reminder
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Devices such as Apple Watch can give reminders for clean air or visitations to green spaces
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Constantly reminding people the need for clean air / walks to green spaces
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Just like the ‘Stand-up’ feature already in Apple Watch
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Give out recommendations to local parks with easy routes
User Testing
After the ideation, we conducted another interview so that users can test and evaluate the three products. We also developed matrix and asked "If the three new products are available, please put them and their competitors on the scale" to help the users compare the three ideas and their competitors.
Voices from Users
“If you have a commute completely devoid of sunlight, all the days blend together very quickly. Having something to tell you to slow down and notice the changes could be a giant difference in your mental health”
“I like the concept of being reminded to go outside. It is such a simple task, but it makes a big difference”
“Sometimes when I have so much work, I realize the only time I would go out is when I go to work and go back home.”
Rating
Based on the feedback, we decide to adopt the idea of green reminder. Considering the portability of the product, we decide to design it as a jewllery, like a ring.
A ring plus the attached app functioning as a green reminder, whose name is Habit@t
Product Prototype
We further developed the idea 3, building a model for the ring and developing the attached app in Figma.
We provided more functions in the app, like nearby green resources, image gallery and green streak, to stimulate residents to have healthy habits.
