veganday
Completed as a submission for Duke University’s Ideate Hackathon Design Challenge. VeganDay ended as a finalist and won the Energy and Environment Track.
Challenge: How can technology can help people make sustainable decisions?
For more information on what we pitched on, see: <Devpost Link>
Team: Kellen Wang
Time Frame: 2 days
Tools: Figma, Procreate
I worked as a Product designer during this project, creating the app concept and working to prototype the app.
The idea to build veganday came from my personal experience in journaling, and using an app called Forest on the app store, where you set timers to help yourself study. When you finish these timers, you can plant trees and grow a forest. I wanted to see how I could bring moments of delight into a lifestyle-driven app, and improve upon the tricks that make some habit apps so addicting to use.
MY INSPIRATION
An app that motivates a user to make sustainable food choices
We chose to tackle the Energy and Environment track to answer how a person can make more sustainable decisions. Over the course of two days, we conducted research, usability testing, heuristic evaluations, and wireframing. We ended up with an app focusing on making positive commitments and affirmations, so that a user could stay motivated and be aware of how their actions affect their carbon footprint.
The experience ended with a pitching event where we explained the viability of VeganDay as a product.
OVERVIEW
HONING IN & RESEARCH
By designing for everyone, we could have ended up designing for nobody
We quickly found how important it was to make an app for a niche problem. Instead, we wanted to make an app that could target a more acute issue in terms of the general lifestyle app market.
The food industry, particularly the beef and meat processing industry, was among the most significant CO2 & methane-emitting sectors of our economy. With many friends who had also gone vegetarian/vegan for environmental reasons, I guessed that there would be a significant amount of people who would want to go vegan, but lacked the motivation and habits to fully commit to the task. With some basic research pointing to the feasibility and market for a vegan habit-building app, we set out to find the key motivations of a potential user.
A habit-building app was hardly a new concept. But the implementation for a habit building app is largely dependent on the targeted habit. We wanted to 1) increase the motivation for going vegan 2) make users proud of their impact, and improve their relationship with dieting.
From peer interviews and field research, I found that a lot of people tried to change their diets cold-turkey, however it usually was not the most effective strategy:
User Research:
Interviews from vegan/vegetarian friends to get a better idea about the mental struggles of transitioning to and maintaining a vegan lifestyle.
PAIN POINTS
1. It’s difficult to have control in maintaining a habit.
2. Perceiving your immediate personal impact on a long-term solution is difficult.
3. Black and white: There’s a strict definition of being either a vegan or meat-eater. In reality, you can be environmentally conscious but still eat meat.
The three part plan:
1. Create an Incentive system to reward effort.
2. Use data visualization to create a perceived day-to-day impact.
3. Create a kind app: a non-judgemental user experience.
With these goals, we set out to made a product and resist sleep.
USER FLOW
The user flow outlines how the user would navigate during a typical use of the app.
The result
The user experience begins at the home page.
Here, the user is able to see their impact on the environment and relevant statistics such as CO2 emissions and favorite meals.
Here, the user can describe what meals they ate, and mark their progress towards eating vegan meals. Positive behavior will reward the user with tokens the primary currency used to purchase animal friends.
Otherwise, the user will receive a positive message that encourages the user to stay focused and motivated to achieving their goals.
The user will check in, the primary method used to insert data into the app.
To add a fun twist to the goals of building sustainable habits, the habitat provides a space to learn more about potentially endangered species. Users will try to make a full habitat, using the coins earned from eating vegan.
The breadth of animals in the habitat can be increased as users collect more. Users can also receive badges here for making friends and progressing along their journey of sustainable eating.
With their tokens, the user can purchase animal friends. Collecting a full habitat provides an incentive to continue habit building.
Occasionally, the user will want to look back and see their progress throughout the month.
We found that being able to be proud of our past accomplishments was important to us. The calendar’s color coding system enables the user to evaluate their past performance, and get information on past meals that they may have had. The ability to log notes can let the user rate their meals, write down recipes, or just talk about their thoughts.