Forest: A Sustainability Platform

Concepting a platform from scratch to encourage everyday sustainable choices

Year

2022

CONTEXT

Client Project @ frog

Responsibilities

/Conceptual Design /Wireframing /Interaction Design

Project Overview

Our job was to design a conceptual brand and product that imagines sustainable practices as desirable, from the ground up.

Forest is a platform that seamlessly integrates with your daily routine to guide you towards sustainable alternatives in eating, shopping, traveling, and living. Forest will partner with third party services like Google Shopping and Airbnb to promote sustainable alternatives.

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Outcome: Welcome to The Forest

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My Responsibilities

As the sole Interaction Designer for the Forest project, I utilized research from strategists to conceptualize story vignettes, including a dashboard and social feed. Collaborating with the strategists, we developed narratives for features like recommending sustainable food options during shopping. After finalizing the wireframes, I partnered with the visual designer to infuse branding and UI elements into the final screens.

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Qualitative Research Overview

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The Strategy Team at frog organized a focus group to react to various design concepts, value propositions, and incentives offered by a hypothetical future sustainability platform.

The research team synthesized their findings to reveal a summary of strategic choices the "sustainability platform" should take into account while determining what features and functionality to take on.

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Key Takeaways

Sustainability is more than just Carbon Footprint
Less consumption, more action
Gather the community for motivation towards cause

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What should the platform focus on?

Based on the research conducted, the app could impact education or action. The strategy selected Focus 2 as the direction: Motivate and Activate. As the Interaction Designer, my goal was to create concepts that influence users to not only consume informative content, but interact with their community, 3rd party products, and take action. We prioritized the app's need to foster community, emphasize action, and promote sustainable practices beyond just the Carbon Footprint.

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Key Conceptual Features

Forest Feed to connect with your community
Find a Forest for tangible interactions with sustainability
Eat, Shop, Live, and Travel to incorporate green practices into daily life- making it not just necessary but desirable

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Sketches: Fleshing out the story

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Sketching the experience of each feature led to me asking myself questions like: What does it mean to cook or learn about eating sustainably? How does it feel to choose a sustainable alternative product for your home?

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Wireframes: Finalizing the Layout of the Story

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Refining the low-fidelity wireframes allowed me to explore alternative ways to achieve the main objective of the feature.

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Eat Well Story Vignette:

Delivery to visual design team after last wireframe.

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In the "Eat Well" experience, for instance, my initial screen prominently showcased recently purchased grocery items. After receiving feedback from the team, in a subsequent version, I distinguished the sustainable grocery shopping tool from the "Eat Well" media content, having it as a feature a user can click into when necessary versus content what is always showcased on the opening screen of the Eat page.

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Hand-off to Visual Design

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As the wireframes were approved by the strategy and design team leads, I used sticky notes of Figma to indicate to the visual designer which screens were ready for her to transform. As smaller edits were made after handoff (because there are always last minute edits), communicating through slack and tagging on Figma comments efficiently was a challenge and learning process.

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The visual designer look lead on creating an entirely new and unique visual identity for The Forest that would allow the app to stand out, stray from the conventional "sustainability green" and appeal to younger audiences.

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