Live a green life & help the environment!
Challenge
Concept
To build an experience that helps people be more conscious about their environmental impact and reduce their environmental footprint.
We are in an era where people are looking for ways to adapt a green life style as well as make their homes smart to save energy. I have designed a high level concept based on the idea of having smart appliances at home that can connect to a mobile app to make people more conscious about their environmental impact. The app lets the users keep track of the utilities they consume everyday including water, electricity and gas. It makes the users more aware and mindful of their consumption of these utilities as well as helps them keep track of food wastage. It also provides them incentives, such as rewards/coupons to keep them engaged and provides them tips on how to reduce their environmental footprint.
The app has four main features, each of them are described in detail
Water consumption
This feature of the app let's the user keep track of his/her water consumption. It's based on the concept/idea of having smart touchless faucets which can measure and display the flow of water on the tap itself and connect with the app to send this data. These faucets are also equipped with infrared sensors to only turn on when motion is detected and stop when there’s none. To make people of all ages especially kids, more conscious of water wastage, the faucets will have LED lights in the centre which change color from green to red after a certain (defined) amount of water is used. The app also let’s the user track his/her daily/weekly/monthly water consumption and displays a graph for monthly usage, so a user can compare the usage from month to month. When the water consumption is below a certain threshold in a month, then the user will receive notifications sharing the benefits of saving water to keep him/her motivated.
Food wastage
The idea of this part of the app is to measure and make a user more conscious about food wastage. I thought of a concept of having a smart organic bin, which is equipped with a weighing scale to measure and display the weight of the food being wasted. This smart bin then syncs the data with the app showing the amount of food being wasted every week. The app provides a solution to the user to reduce food wastage by planning weekly meals and creating a grocery list so they only buy what is required to prepare the planned meals. This helps them save money on extra groceries which end up in the bin and also be more organized. The user is rewarded with different “badges” when the weight of the bin is below a certain threshold.
Rideshare
This app also provides an option for a “Rideshare service” helping the user reduce his environmental footprint by reducing pollution, decreasing traffic and saving on gas cost. In order to keep the user engaged, the concept is to provide every driver who offers a rideshare some discount at the gas station; this incentive will encourage people to switch to carpooling.
Electricity
This feature tracks the energy consumption in the house which helps the user stay on top of his electricity usage, reduce monthly bills as well as environmental impact. The app gets this data by syncing with the user’s online “Hydro account”, to get a meter reading based on the monthly billing cycle. It displays the daily overall meter reading in KWh (as displayed on the bill) as well as a breakdown of energy consumption of appliances, lights, air conditioner, and other power outlets. To keep the user motivated, the idea is to provide rewards such as, “Save on Energy coupons”, which can be redeemed at selected stores, when the average monthly usage is below a defined threshold. It also plots a graph based on daily/weekly/monthly energy consumption making it easy to monitor the usage.
Created an interactive prototype to visualize the concept behind the app and how it functions
Sketches
Wireframes
Style Guide
Mockups
Learnings
I took this design challenge from a concept to a functional prototype; this journey involved a lot of steps – from thinking of creative concepts of smart appliances to doing a ton of secondary research on every aspect of the app feature. In this process, I also did user interviews to understand their perspective, then applied it iteratively to the app design. The next challenge was the visual design, to come up with a look and feel which is simple and intuitive, yet engaging for the users.
