Challenge
The MHCI+D program at UW kicked off with a five-day immersive design workshop where teams were challenged to develop a design response to promote harmonious cohabitation. We were required a shift in thinking from traditional design practices that focus on human wellbeing, to more inclusive practices that emphasize a multiplicity of perspectives, especially the nonhuman agents.
After brainstorming our ideas, our team found that our interests centered around outdoor activities and realized what inhibited us fundamentally from building affinity with animals and plants around us was the little knowledge we know about them. Thus, we decided to tackle this challenge from the lens of developing people’s knowledge about animals and plants while doing outdoor activities such as hiking.
Formative Research
To understand people’s attitudes and behaviors when engaging in outdoor activities and how they view and interact with the environments, we conducted a survey, literature review, and competitive analysis. Three insights were synthesized from our findings:
Informed by the insights above, we reframed our problem space as a How Might We question to turn those challenges into design opportunities and guided us in the ideation process:
“How might we help plants and animals be better understood and cared for by people who engage in outdoor activities?”
Ideation
From this point, we diverged again to seek design responses. We used braiding as our ideation method, where we first spent 2 minutes independently sketching our idea and 1 minute to share in a group. After 10 interactions, we collected 30 ideas. After affinitizing our ideas, we decided to move forward with the four concepts that resonated with us the most and further developed those ideas.
Reverse Zoo Experience is a concept we were excited about. It allows people to immersively learn about animals and plants by playing their roles with animals and plants being humans. It was desirable but technologically infeasible since it is hard to simulate these experiences.
EcoBox are boxes designed to support plant propagation and animal survival in areas where human activities have affected the balance of nature. However, there were still many issues that needed to be thought through before being put into the market. For example, how can we deliver seeds and fertilizers to target animals and plants? Who should maintain these boxes?
Animal Crossing is a VR-based video game focusing on learning and interacting with animals and plants. Compared with the other three concepts, we found this idea least intriguing since there is already a similar and mature solution in the market.
We chose to move forward with NatureGO! because it best responds to our research insights :
- Learning on the go: It encourages people to engage in outdoor recreation while learning more about animals and plants.
- Accessible to all: It provides different modes and tasks for people of different interests and abilities.
- Love & care from humans: It helps people build an emotional attachment to and empathy for the environment
Key Features
Here are the key features of NatureGO!
1. Befriend plants/animals for your ecosystem
2. Take care of your virtual animal and plant friends
3. Complete real-word environmental missions
4. Interact with other NatureGo players to earn EcoBoost
Testing and Iteration
In order to refine our ideas, we sketched them out and tested them with two other teams.
Two concerns came into sight:
First, how could we ensure people’s safety while using the product when they were doing outdoor activities, like hiking? To solve this problem, we simplified our interface and activity flow, increased the visibility of the visual elements, and reduced the intrusion to make using the product safer while outdoors.
Second, was gamifying the learning process a good long-term strategy to promote harmonious cohabitation? How could our solution help transform people’s extrinsic motivation boosted by the game elements into intrinsic motivation where people build up a deep affinity with nature and take care of animals and plants instinctively and naturally? To help elicit people’s intrinsic motivation, we developed a community where people can verify and discuss other community members’ pro-environmental activities. Through effective and high-quality communication, we hope to spark people’s empathy and affection for animals and plants.
Key Takeaways
- Ideation, ideation, ideation! The climax of the five-day sprint is the ideation day, when each team member needed to brainstorm an idea in 2 minutes with 10 ideas in total. It sounded impossible at the beginning but once I started it, I found it inspiring and rewarding. You never know what is the best solution until you generate enough of them. In addition, the following braiding process where all team members come together to share ideas can help surface patterns and spark new directions.
- Embrace ambiguity! There is never enough time for research and product refinement. What really matters is how we can leverage the resources available and make decisions based on it. Design is an iterative process, so keep designing, testing, and refining!
