Researching the Space

Domain  Research

• There’s an increasing amount of climate change activism among the younger generation, led by Greta Thunberg.

• Recent poll suggests 66% of people in the UK would make personal sacrifices for climate if they knew others were doing the same.

• There’s growing evidence that economies would benefit from climate change action.

Competitor Analysis

After analysing some direct competitors (see below), we took inspiration from 2 indirect competitors:

Airbnb: Photography had a real life, community feel and was different from the stock images found in competitors. 

Drink Seriously: Striking and bold design, with great use of whitespace and bitesize information.

Full competitive analysis can be seen here.

User Testing

Summary

The Snowball Website

To learn what users think of climate change and to put the Snowball website under the microscope, we conducted user interviews, a UX audit and a 5-second test of the homepage.

“I want to see how the impacts are relatable to me. I like seeing numbers and graphics.” - User

Style 1 - Bold, Confident, Clean

Style 2 - Fun, Social, and Inclusive

Style 3 - Neighbourly, Welcoming, and Local

Key design takeaways:

• The client particularly liked the use of bold colours and shapes in the style 1 Moodboard as well as the direction of the photography and card style in Style 3’s style tile. 

• We learned that users also tended to like bright, bold colour schemes.

Divergent Designs

Converging into one design

To converge into one design direction, we conducted a survey that included a new converged design alongside our 3 other original designs. Out of the 90 participants surveyed and additional client feedback, the new converged design came out on top.

Logo Re-design

I saw an opportunity to improve the old logo as I thought the positive message that Snowball wanted to send was lost. I wanted to make the new logo appear more meaningful and memorable by showcasing the snowballing effect of one individual person’s action turning into a whole community of people doing the same, which symbolises real positive change. In the new logo, the yellow circle represents the user and the hot pink circle represents the community.

Design Solution

New Design Highlights

Next Steps

• Further iterate and test the prototype

• Explore typography

• Create a responsive design that also works on mobile devices

Reflections

I’m really passionate about products that make a positive impact on society, so I felt pretty lucky to work on this project. It was also a privilege due to the fact that Snowball’s approach, to the biggest problem we face as humans today, was so refreshing and on point.

They had underlined the problem -  that individuals don’t feel they can affect any sort of positive change, never mind a big issue like on climate change, when it comes to politics and big businesses.

It excited me that they had a solution that most people would think was achievable - by one person taking climate change action, they’re joining a growing number of others doing the same, and this momentum increase will eventually naturally force politics and big businesses to supply that demand and actually implement global change.

It really pleases me to think that by improving the overall design and usability of Snowball I may have helped empower more people in their pursuit for positive change on a global scale.