A donation app for coral reef restoration through gamified crowdfunding.
Duration
Type
2 weeks, 2019
Sponsors
Adobe, Pantone, Ocean Agency(Client).
Teammate
Kimaya Malwade
User Research, Wireframe, Prototyping, User Testing.
My Roles
Adobe Creative Jam (UX Design Competition)
Overview
Context
In this UX competition, we need to design a digital solution for an environmental protection organization called Ocean Agency, to enable people around the world to donate to ReefStars.
ReefStar is a product for coral reef restoration made by Ocean Agency. Specifically, ReefStar is an artificial metal frame, and corals can grow on it. A $35 donation buys a ReefStar and restores a reef with a dozen corals.
Potential Problems
1) Many people don't know coral reef ecosystems are dying, and how ReefStars can help restore coral reef ecosystems. 2) People can't directly perceive the benefits of ReefStar donations. 3) It's challenging for people to intuitively see their contribution of donations.
Solution
Reefstoration is an app for crowdfunding ReefStars through a social game. It attracts more donors by gamification and creating a social connection among potential donors.
Value Propositions
1) The interactive timelines enables donors to more intuitively understand the disaster happening in coral reef eco-systems.
2) The multi-player coral reef ecosystem restoration game turns the process of crowdfunding ReefStars into a gamified social interaction.
3) The continuously updated data and status of ReefStar donation enable donors to intuitively see their contributions and encourage donors to donate again.
Outcome
On-boarding & Homepage
• Get to know what is ReefStar and how Reefstoration works.
• Create or join a donation group.
Choose a Location for Your Future ReefStar
• When creating a donation group, You can decide where you want to put your ReefStar after completing crowdfunding.
Explore the Interactive Timelines
• Browse an interactive timeline to see what disaster is happening in coral reef ecosystems at the location you selected.
Play the ReefStar Game to donate
• Play a restoration game for coral reef ecosystems with your friends.
• Donate to make your undersea world more vibrant!
Invite Your Friends to Play Together
• Share your undersea world with your friends to let them get in.
• Build your unique undersea world together.
• Easier to reach the $35 goal with your friends!
See the Real World Impact
• After completing $35 crowdfunding, your ReefStar will be implanted in your selected location.
• You can see the status of all the ReefStars you funded before, also the frequently updated overall data of this campaign.
We interviewed 11 people from different ages and occupations.
" The ocean is mysterious to me and I have no idea what happened to the coral reef. "
Blaine, Undergraduate Student, 21
" I can't convince myself to donate $35 to the ReefStar campaign, what is that? "
Vivian, Doctor, 26
Key Insights
• People in non-tropical regions have difficulty perceiving that coral reef ecosystems are dying and how ReefStar can help. Therefore, attracting their attention is challenging.
• It's challenging to attract potential donors to donate $35 without other motivations.
Desk Research
We also researched some current donation websites for coral reef restoration.
Key Insights
• Individual donors can’t directly know where their money is used. The lack of transparency is a pain point in the individual donation experience.
Design Goals
1. Education
Enable people to intuitively learn about coral reef ecosystems, the disaster happening in it and how ReefStars can help restore the ecosystem.
2. Donation Process
Provide a more engaging experience and lower the $35 donation threshold to attract more donors to donate flexibly.
3. Sense of Achievement
Make users intuitively see their contributions to the coral reef ecosystem to encourage them continuously donate.
Ideation
Concept Strategy
we learned the concept strategy from Ocean Agency, which helped us generate effective concepts.
Outrage
Excitement
Optimism
= ACTION
Powerful Imagery & Powerful Science
Influential Brands & Activities
Innovative Solutions & Simple Involvement
Concepts & Evaluation
We generated two concepts based on the concept strategy.
Interactive Timelines
• We use scientific data to create a virtual speculative future of the coral reef ecosystem. Users can change the predictive future timeline by donating now.
Gamified Crowdfunding
• Convert a one-time $35 donation into a crowdfunding model for lowering the donation threshold. Seeing crowdfunding as an opportunity, we used an engaging social gamification to enable donors join or create donation groups for social activities.
• Play the game = Learn + Donate. We designed a virtual coral reef ecosystem restoration game as the crowdfunding process. People can learn more knowledge about the species in the coral reef ecosystem, and intuitively understand how ReefStars benefit the coral reef ecosystem in the process of playing the game.
Concept Evaluation
We integrated the Pros of two concepts: Using gamification as the core process while using an interactive timeline as the on-boarding experience.
Platform Evaluation
We chose to design a mobile app, as it's better for the gamified interaction.
Design
Key UX Flow
Prototype 1.0
Considering the time limit of the two-week competition and the focus on UX, we used an image style instead of motion graphic or 3D game styles in the game part to build our first prototype.
Click "play" button to play the video.
Testing & Iteration
We conducted user tests with 9 people, and got 2 key findings.
Finding: New users can’t clearly understand the overall donation progress on the landing page.
Improvement: Add user contribution data and the overall donation data on the landing page to excite new users.
Finding: Users who want to join a donation group think the landing page lacks some popular group recommendations for them. Improvement: Design a "Join Group" section on the landing page. And we divided it into two parts: the “Almost Done” groups and the “Featured” groups.
We also used a gamified UI style to build our iteration.
Reflection
Incentives and motivations are the keys.
When thinking about how to attract more users to donate, as a UX designer, I realize that I can design motivations and incentives that go beyond environmental awareness to attracts more potential donors. In this project, Gamification and building a connection between potential donors are the incentives and motivations we designed to make more potential donors engage in the ReefStar donation.
