Sprout
Mindful Consumption, Simplified
Problem
Sustainable living is often overwhelming, guilt-ridden, and inaccessible. A lot of people want to live more mindfully, but the process is intimidating and confusing. Sustainability often gets portrayed as an all-or-nothing lifestyle, which makes it hard for people to start or stick with it in a realistic way.
Objective
Create an all-in-one, highly customizable system for building mindful consumption habits. Reframes mindful consumption as something you build over time with habits, systems, community support, and small wins that grow.
Background
On average, an American creates around 4 pounds of solid waste each day (EPA).
Items that are thrown away are often made of materials that will continue to exist for hundreds of years after. Despite the environmental impact of excess waste, the norm is to buy cheaply-produced items that are used just a couple of times before being thrown away.
According to an OECD survey, two-thirds of households are willing to make lifestyle changes to benefit the environment. And while reducing global waste requires infrastructure change, other aspects such as education and training, are necessary.
Wireframing
Drawing inspiration from other gamification apps, habit tracking apps, and health and wellness apps, I created a user flow, sketches, and then a wireframe.
I knew the app needed four main elements:
1. a customizable landing page for their actions
2. a community aspect, so users can connect with and motivate/be motivated by other users
3. easily accessible and organized resources to make their changes simpler
4. a way to visualize the impact of all their actions over time
Customizable Home Page
The home page is customizable and the user’s landing page with all of their actions
Community
The community tab functions similarly to a forum and microblogging platform, and is organized to make it easier for the user to explore new content.
Resources
The resources tab features staff-written content, which a user can save for quick access, and includes content like articles, checklists, and recommendations.
Profile
The profile page includes visualization of the impact of their actions, supporting the idea that many small actions have a large impact. Additionally, badges motivate the user to be consistent, and additional information allows the user to track their changes.
Reflection
I was very excited to work on this project and I am happy with the outcome. I think that this is an interesting and more unconventional approach to an issue that I am so passionate about. This project still has a lot of potential and room for expansion, and my biggest challenge was staying within my scope and timeline, and not getting overambitious. I kept wanting Sprout to be real and fully fleshed out, and I kept finding myself questioning tiny aspects of the brand and the app UI as if Sprout was really going to be released to the public. This, however, was very motivating, and I learned a lot about gamification and habit-building design.