Group: Joshua Feldman, Samra Lakew, Neil PendseAir Quality Dataset: https://aqicn.org/here/
For our sketch, we imagined we were members of GreenPeace trying to develop a campaign to build support for an international air pollution treaty. Our intended audience is under 40 because they will have to live with the effects of poor air quality. This campaign is part of a larger strategy at GreenPeace to engage gen Z in the fight for a greener earth. To generate as much support as possible, we knew our campaign needed to fulfill a few criteria. It had to be:
- Understood quickly
- Simple for our audience to sign the petition
- Shared easily
- Engaging
Since our audience was comfortable with social media and video calls, to meet these criteria we designed a series of video filters that can be used on platforms like Snapchat, Zoom, and FaceTime. The filter illustrates the current air quality in a user’s location and has a link to the petition where users can also share the campaign with friends. We show the air quality in two ways. At the top of the screen, we have a bar which fills up as the air pollution gets worse and changes from green to yellow to red. Above the bar, we show the user their current location so they know that this is specific to them.
Additionally, the filters make the pollution in the air visible. As the air pollution in a region gets worse, an increasing number of icons will float around the user and obscure them. We also cover the user with a smog-like haze, which gets thicker and more red when the air is more polluted.
At the bottom of the screen, we have a button that links to the online petition and users can share the campaign from there. When they sign the petition, they can also sign up for future GreenPeace communications.
When users click on the screen, they can change the icons. When users first turn on the filter, the text “tap on the screen to change the icons” will appear on the screen, so users know about the feature and are immediately pulled into the story.
We also wanted the campaign to be timely. Isolation measures due to the COVID-19 pandemic have improved air quality around the world. Users can see this effect by scrolling back and forwards through time and see how air quality has changed since a shelter-in-place order was put in place in their location.
As the user scrolls back in time, they can see the air quality get worse. There are more icons on the screen and the smog is thicker and more red.
When the user scrolls forward in time, they are able to see the effect of the action they’re taking. Instead of showing a date, we tell the user that this is “tomorrow, if they take action today”. The smog disappears, the PM measure drops down, and the icons change to green jewels.
We feel like this filter meets our 4 original criteria. We hope that users will very quickly be able to see the pollution in the air around them and understand that something needs to be done. To emphasize this point, we tried to communicate the air quality in many different ways: through symbols like the bar, through text, and through video via the filter.
To make it easy for users to sign the petition, we tried to feature the button prominently and make it link directly to the petition.
We want users to share this campaign broadly. To achieve this goal, we chose a digital medium because sending a link is easier than sharing a physical object.
Finally, to make the campaign engaging, we used a number of techniques to make the user feel part of the story. The video filter literally puts them into data. We also have opportunities for the user to engage with the campaign by tapping to change the icons and scrolling back and forward through time. We also wanted to make a serious topic seem more approachable by taking a more playful approach. We made air pollution seem gross, not dangerous, and the clean air screen looks like the user just won a video game. Hopefully, by seeing themselves in the data story, engaging with the campaign, and feeling like the issue is approachable, users will pay more attention to our message and be more willing to take action.
I like how alternative this approach is, and very much in line with the current trends. This makes it especially suited to target a Gen-Z audience who is more comfortable with Social Media. The call to action is very clear and in line with the goal with GreenPeace. A more active interaction with the user might benefit engagement even more though. In this moment, the user is yes able to sign up for the petition, but she/he is not highly active in the interaction. The user is passively receiving a red to green value depending on the environment they are, not entirely on their actions. Making the filter for instance become better if the user moves for instance, might lead to a higher engagement. A user might be prompted to “change her/his environment” by changing her/his habits (running/walking rather than using a car), through the symmetry of changing the filter from red to gree by moving.
I enjoy this idea. It has a clear audience and uses a medium that ensures that the target audience will be reached. I can see how a filter can result in lots of people seeing it as if people post the pictures it is likely another person will hop onto the trend. Also, the minimal instructions on the screen make for a nice interface and are made possible by selecting an audience that doesn’t require much instruction to use digital devices.
The only hesitance is people sharing the photo without taking action. While the filter directs them to the petition, maybe the user should only be able to unlock the “green” filter once they have signed the petition as a reward.
Feedback
Overall a night approach, with good mappings and invitations, that could use with some more thinking about details.
Centrality of participation:
Making it a lens for social media is a nice invitation in and of itself. A solid invitation to this audience and very timely. The click to sign the petition is another invitation. The scroll up/down to move through time is confusing though> WHile it is a nice idea, it doesn’t look very discoverable in the interface you’ve laid out.
Rationale for design choices:
Your design criteria is well rationalized based on the audience. The poop emoji is a fun nod to the playfulness of the medium.
Layers of reading:
The bar chart is slightly off to me because I didn’t immediately understand what the x-axis was. Additionally, when they are scrolling through time I would have liked to see some indication of where in time we are as we move. Perhaps a small line chart of the overall AQI with an indication that moves about where we are in time? Another opportunity to include a deeper layer reading would be to include some light information about *why* the air quality decreases in the future (if they’ve taken action) when they scroll into the future.
Appropriate data use:
I’m curious what your endpoints were for least vs. most polluted. Ie. How many poop emoji show up if you are the worst day ever recorded in Delhi? Is the image of yourself unseeable? I like the mapping of PMM2.5 to particles and red overlay to AGI – it is a nice way to capture multiple metrics of evaluating air quality. How do you propose to compute the future impact based on the change you are getting the participants to support?
Suitability for audience:
Doing a filter for the younger audience is totally reasonable. It is playful and informative in design.
Narrative:
Setting yourself up as Greenpeace is a smart way to narrow your goals/audience and context. However, how come it doesn’t say Greenpeace on the filter anywhere? And does this match their brand styling? Another point is the scrolling through time it seems hard to see the differences. This might be an artifact of the way you have shown us the mock-up… perhaps in real-time it might be obvious. Another approach would have been to do a split-screen – where the left is one date and the right is today or something like that.
Call to action:
Getting them to sign the petition is nice, but I didn’t understand what the petition is for. I like the idea that when you scroll forward you can see the impact of the change, but this seems hard to predict and model – how do you propose to do this? I’d spend more time thinking about various calls to action and how/when you surface them.
I liked how you tailored your goals to the medium and the audience, focusing on making the video filter simple and engaging. This campaign makes the topic of air pollution more approachable and shareable.
The connection to COVID-19 and the reduced air pollution from shelter-in-place restrictions does make this video filter more relevant to the current time period. I wonder if this might lull users into a false sense of security and thinking that everything is fine now that we’ve reduced pollution a bit,even though pollution will likely get worse again once restrictions are lifted. And since the future is modeled based on taking action today, it feels like the users just have to go along with the default option to get that better future with less air pollution. It would be nice to be able to see the future if we don’t change anything, then give a way for users to “unlock” the green filter, as other people have suggested.
I think this idea is so much fun. I love the playful aspect to air pollution as I think it will draw more people in. I think maybe to launch the filter you could team up with organizations that are youth/young people based for climate action, such as school climate action strikes or college based divest organizations
This is great – my favorite feature is that it is tailored to an individual’s location, I think many would be interested in local air quality and drawn to the game because of that. I do think this format would be appealing to a young audience.
I’m not sure that I would label it as a game, more as interactive data. I think that the link to a specific action is great – although the action itself may need to be something more convincingly effective in addressing air pollution.
I really like how you took a really relevant medium (filters) and added important information to it. I’ve never thought about filters in a positive light like this, and I think using filters for advocacy is actually a great idea. One suggestion I would have would be to modify the call to action to make it more clear to the user.