Research Phase Kick-Off

Getting to know our
users better

Rather than just giving us a simple score related to customer loyalty, our NPS was associated  with closed-ended questions regarding specific topics of the product and an open-ended question allowing users to express their opinions.

I first focused on regrouping insightful feedbacks about our maps and started filtering and classifying them into groups of common subjects. I managed to order them in terms of priority based on the amount of requests made.

Our users' feedbacks were majorly pointing towards the same direction. What I call "Actionable data" are ways that can help the users act on the data we provide to improve their exposure to pollution: predictions, pollutant breakdown, "decision making" tools.

I had my initial hypothesis regarding their objectives that I had to confirm during user interviews. It was also interesting to see how engaged they were when it came to contribute their data to the community.

Discovery through user interview

Thanks to the NPS study, we reached out to the list of users who provided us their feedbacks regarding our maps. We also sent out a survey to recruit potential users to interview.

Surprisingly, users were most of the time talking about having a crowdsourced map with the possibility to see other users' data like we have on the Waze application. Most importantly, they were really eager to have access to shared data from others.

The main reason is that they are looking to anticipate, optimize and therefore improve their health by lowering their exposure to pollution.
To conclude, our users are looking to get ahead of pollution and hoped our maps could help in achieving these goals.

Our mobile application was pretty simple to use. In terms of flow I wanted to situate where the "global" friction points were happening during the use of it.

The interviews also helped me unveiling further insights regarding how we could improve our users' experience with the personal data they track.

I composed these 'jobs to be done' based on the interviewees' feedbacks. Most of these statements will help in estimating if the solutions proposed are leaning towards the right direction.

• Help our users achieve their jobs.
  From a design perspective, this would be defined by bringing forecast capabilities into our maps. 
  
  
• Help our users read our air quality measures easier.
  This can be achieved by presenting air quality values in an intuitive way.

• Display more information and hints.
  Our users want to be educated to adopt better behaviors. Including more informational content can be a huge plus.
  
  
• Make our users an active contributor of the community.
  Simply allow our users to trigger the sharing of their Flow data to other in the communities.

Competitive Research

Conducting a functional benchmark

I have established a benchmark of all our competitors on the market based on the functionnalities they would offer regarding their pollution map. The idea behind is to first assess what we offer and how our data is being used versus others. What was pretty clear here is that the whole competition was more or less offering the same value. 

The only difference is that some might have more precise data or offer better forecasts for instance. In our case it was getting clearer for me to keep building our engagement around the Street Level Maps.

I narrowed down my benchmark to a few main actors that had high quality maps product and a great presence on the market. These were competitors with an important amount of engaged and active users.

I went into testing their products and managed to discern two main issues and opportunities we could work on.

Solution & Conception

Designing a new flow
and structure

From sketches to initial wireframes, I started to picture what the flow would look like and what elements on the interface we wished to integrate. Based on that, I started to collaborate closely with the partner teams to make sure everyone was aligned with the initial objectives set earlier. 

• Low-fi wireframes to validate the initial flow internally

• Visual research and inspiration for Street Level designs and heatmap

• Street Level Redesign and implementation

• Mobile design with newly integrated Street Levels

Visual Research And Map Design

Creating The Maps Guidelines And Design

Gathering inspiration over the web was the first step. Thanks to these, I started to elaborate my design of our maps and began redesigning our Street Levels based on specific elements such as the width, color, opacity, the zoom level and other parameters on Mapbox.

They were many iterations made on the map design in general, by the end we have had two types of modes for our maps: one light mode and one dark mode. It took some time to design and iterate on the Street Level maps as we needed it to be coherent through every city we had data for.

Map design inspiration moodboard (Street Levels & Heatmaps)

Designing the base of our maps: colors (cities, sea, countries, borders, labels..)

Designing the core of our maps: the Street Levels (Zoom levels, Width, Color scale, Opacity..)