Projects
Nature Counter
Project Overview:
Nature Counter is a mobile app designed to educate users about the benefits of nature by tracking their time spent in parks and forests. Developed by Crowd-doing.org, the app aimed for cost-efficient maintenance and user engagement without a budget for extensive research. The project was expected to be done in four-month timeline, including stages such as empathizing with users and conducting user research.
My impact was to be part of the Design and conduct and own the research process end to end. From recruitment to implementation of the research.
Timeline:
Empathize (Market Research, Competitive Analysis, User Persona): 1-2 weeks
Survey Creation: 3-5 weeks
User Research (Interviews): 3+ weeks (delayed due to volunteer availability)
Research Solutions Development: 1 week
Research Process:
Empathizing with Users: Three main areas were explored:
Business Needs:
The app’s primary goal was to track and educate users about the health benefits of nature.
Focused on low-cost maintenance.
No budget was allocated for formal user research.
Competitive Analysis: Nature Counter's competition includes apps like Go Paddling, AllTrails, and iNaturalist. Although each app fulfilled parts of Nature Counter’s goals, none covered all aspects.
Key lessons learned:
Include weather features.
Avoid using satellite maps.
Provide a scheduling feature.
Focus on icons over images for faster loading times.
Feedback sourced from Reddit, YouTube, and Quora revealed that users preferred apps that focused on engagement and avoided treating nature exploration as a chore.
User Personas:
Targeted working-class adults (ages 18-35) living in urban or suburban areas.
User motivations were further explored through app reviews and social media engagement.
Survey and Insights:
A survey was created to gather insights from potential users. Below is the key content and structure of the survey:
2-Minute Health App Survey:
Key Questions:
Age range, phone usage in parks, interest in reading health-related articles, notification preferences, and location tracking concerns.
From the survey responses, key insights were gathered:
Age Range: The primary audience was between 18-30 years old.
Phone Usage: Most users brought their phones with them when visiting parks.
Notification Preferences: Many preferred receiving notifications about health benefits in nature weekly, with morning and afternoon being the favored times for updates.
Location Tracking: Users were generally open to allowing location tracking but preferred it to be active only when using the app. Data privacy concerns were prominent.
Expanded Research Findings:
Additional research highlighted the specific health benefits of time spent in nature:
Health Benefits: Studies show spending time in natural spaces lowers blood pressure and cortisol levels, reduces stress, and enhances cognitive restoration(CrowdDoing Presentation).
Variation of Natural Spaces: Different natural spaces offer unique health benefits. Forests and woodlands were consistently noted as beneficial for overall health(CrowdDoing Presentation).
These findings informed the app's focus on providing personalized and location-based recommendations based on the type of natural environment visited.
User Research (Recruiting and Interviews):
From the initial pool of 236 survey respondents, only six completed app testing due to availability challenges. However, key feedback was collected:
Privacy: Users expressed concerns about data privacy, emphasizing they did not want their data sold to third parties.
Awareness: Many users were unaware of the health benefits of nature and requested more educational resources.
Engagement Preferences: Users preferred receiving educational articles via email instead of through in-app notifications.
Customization: Users wanted the ability to opt out of certain notifications, such as location tracking and in-app achievement badges.
Pricing Sensitivity: Most users indicated they would not pay more than $5 for the app.
Solutions:
A “Did You Know?” feature was introduced to educate users about the health benefits of nature.
Articles were placed on the home page without aggressive promotion, allowing users to explore information at their own pace.
Users were given the ability to customize their experience by opting out of location tracking and notifications.
The app’s pricing was set between $2-3 to ensure affordability and cover maintenance costs.
Institutional Marketing Insights:
In addition to targeting individual users, the app could also appeal to institutions by promoting its potential to improve mental and physical health within workplaces:
Institutional Benefits: Reduced sick days, increased productivity, and improved employee retention were highlighted as potential advantages for businesses(CrowdDoing Presentation).
Partnership Opportunities: Partnerships with universities, student unions, and employee wellness programs could expand the app’s user base(CrowdDoing Presentation).
Information Architecture
The app's Information Architecture was designed to be intuitive and user-friendly, ensuring a seamless and efficient user experience. Moreover, the architecture was built to support features such as the “Did You Know?” section, where users can explore the health benefits of nature, as well as settings for turning off notifications and opting out of location tracking—both critical features derived from user feedback.
Testing:
An unmoderated testing platform, Maze, was used to evaluate the high-fidelity prototype. Usability tests showed positive results, with users successfully navigating the app.
Redesign:
Home page
we wanted the main home page to have the quick feature with half of the screen focusing on the tracker. Here are the following
Tracker:
Edit Log History
Log History
Benefits Gained
Did you Know?
Articles
One of the main challenges on the Home page is to separate the content space from user navigation. We aim to give priority to the tracker and educational content. How did we prioritize the flow? How did we manage to educate the user while maintaining the app's tracking aspect?
Location Map
Location Map allows users to find maps to their nearest park, but we couldn't afford this feature for the MVP because of cost and longevity of use.
Find Park
Recent Parks
Favorite Parks
So how do we afford maps in our MVP version of the Nature Counter Mobile App?
Report Page
The Report page educates users about the nature-related benefits they've gained, but we were unsure about the specific metrics to measure. We wanted to avoid measurements similar to benefit tracker apps.
Metrics that we wanted to measure:
Stress
Energy
Calmness
Positivity
Conclusion:
The research conducted for the Nature Counter app provided valuable insights into how users engage with nature-focused apps. Despite challenges due to a limited budget, critical features like privacy controls, educational content, and notification customization were successfully integrated based on user feedback. Moving forward, further testing, particularly on concept features like activities and business promotions, would be beneficial. Additionally, personal growth opportunities for the research team include enhancing quantitative research capabilities, using heat maps, and increasing recruitment efforts.
2.0 —Design Improvements
When I joined Nature Counter, The product was still in the infant stage, so after the product was built from 0-1. the team hopes to work on the following aspects:
Working on the Time logging Feature
Working on the Data Analytics Reporting
Improving and pursuing new way to educate the users.