My Sustainable UW

A personalized recommendation tool for all things sustainability at UW-Madison.

Collaborated with other students in the student organization Design Interactive while partnering with the UW-Madison Office of Sustainability to design an app that helps students personalize their campus sustainability journey. Conducted user research through interviews and usability testing to improve engagement. Created several low and high-fidelity prototypes in Figma to ensure usability. Presented the final project to the Office of Sustainability at the end of the Fall 2024 semester.

Role: UX Designer

Year: 2024

Problem

Users struggle to navigate the Office of Sustainability’s website due to overwhelming information and lack of personalized guidance, limiting engagement with resources and initiatives.

Consequences of Problem

  1. Missed opportunities to engage with sustainability initiatives

  2. Frustration with navigating the website to find specific information

  3. Reduced accessibility for students who might otherwise get involved

Solution

Design a tool for personalized campus sustainability experience.

Information Flows

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Information Flows -

Storyboarding
Our goal was to answer the following questions to guide our approach:

  • How students would use and benefit from this tool?

  • What key information could this quiz give them to aid in their sustainability journey on campus?

  • We developed storyboards to visualize students’ journeys and better understand their needs.


    This helped us see real-life challenges in finding sustainability involvement on campus and how our tool could help students find these.

Question Flows

Question Flows

  • Developed question flows that were key to making the tool interactive and personalized.

  • Covered students majors, level of understanding of sustainability, and their interest level in being involved with different aspects of it on campus.

  • Students would be guided to resources and activities that matched their goals, supporting them in exploring and engaging with campus life.

Low Fidelity

Option 1: Filtered recommendations

  • Filtered Recommendations modeled after UW Madison's course catalog search feature

  • Designed to align with existing functionality for a seamless user experience

  • Users can enter keywords to filter through recommendations

  • Matching recommendations are highlighted for easy identification

  • Helps streamline the search process, making it more intuitive and efficient

Low Fidelity

Option 2: Summarized Recommendations

  • Gives out bite sized information for the recommendations

  • Combined summarized results page and filtering tool for streamlined delivery of information

  • Interactive, bite-sized recommendations on the summary page, with detailed options available on a separate page

  • Added "Graduate Student" as an option for personalization


High Fidelity

This slide from our Design Interactive presentation, highlights the user flow students will go through while navigating My Sustainable Future’s quiz function.

Iteration 1

Revised categories to provide more personalized and valuable user information.

Categories of Personalization:

  • Academics & Involvement: Courses, Student Organizations

  • News & Events

  • Opportunities & More Resources: Internships, Research, How to Be Sustainable

  • General Resources

This slide from our Design Interactive presentation, highlights the My Sustainable Future design in a mobile app version and how it optimizes navigation for users.

Iteration 2

Revisions to the results page were made based off of the Office of Sustainability’s feedback, we added a Bookmarked Resources section for users to save certain results to one section of the app. Additionally, the mobile version had detailed course descriptions added.