Aqua Saver is a campaign to bring awareness and encourage kids to use water wisely, including an iPad app that provides water-saving info with kids-friendly content and interface, with a gamification feature to prompt the user to take action in real life.
UI/UX Designer
Researcher
Illustrator
Figma
Adobe CC
Sept–Dec 2021
•Tablet App
•Campaign posters and swag
California has been experiencing record droughts in recent years, prompting officials to warn of dire water conditions ahead. The information provided usually targets adult residents. However, educating and encouraging young residents to participate in water conservation is also essential.
How to encourage and educate young residents in Californians to understand the situation and encourage them to conserve water when possible?
Design and create a microsite and campaign to bring awareness and education to kids who live in California to learn about the drought situation in a kid-friendly way and encourage them to take part in conserving water in daily life.
Water conservation still lags in California
In November 2021, a dry month, saw only 6.8% reduction in water use–down from 13.3% in October
Santa Clara Valley (San Jose area) is the most affected major urban area, seeking 30% water use reductions.
The state officials called for Californians to voluntarily cut water use by 15%. But only 6% statewide savings from July to November compared to 2020.
• Water conservation program catered for Californians. The goal is to make water conservation a daily habit among Californians.
• It is very informative and tailored to California residents
• Its target audience is adults, and the interface and the content are not kids friendly
• It’s a water conservation program started in the late 90’s in Arizona, and the target audience is Arizona desert dwellers.
• It is very informative and has lots of tips.
• It has a specific program for kids and teachers, even with a mascot— Wayne Drop.
Kids
Age: between 6-9 years old,
Gender: Both
Household background: middle-class suburban household in the Bay Area
Parents with kindergarten or elementary school-age kids
Age: between 25-45 years old
Household income: 120K+ annually
Residential area: Suburban Area in the Bay Area
I chose to design the microsite as a Tablet App because it's easier for kids at that age to use. The touchscreen feature and a larger screen size put them in advance than a mobile phone or a laptop.
Tips Page
I created the wireframe and went through 2 iterations before moved onto the hi-fi mockup. The major changes were the navigation, the ‘Tips’ and ‘Tracker’ pages. Changed the ‘Tips’ page from a long scrolling page with a card design to show the information in a more accessible to the target audience. For the 'Tracker' page, I separated the task lists and progress into two pages for better clarification without the need to scroll.
Tips Page
For the final version, to make sure it's a kid-friendly UI, I utilized a bright color palette and illustrations to help gain their interest and attention. I tried to use a larger size of text and buttons. Make sure the hint for the CTA is clear to the user.
For the final version, to make sure it's a kid-friendly UI, I utilized a bright color palette and illustrations to help gain their interest and attention. I tried to use a larger size of text and buttons. Make sure the hint for the CTA is clear to the user.
Decided to feature the character–Droplet in the Ad campaign. Droplet is doing different tasks on each poster, which are easy enough that our target audience can do themselves. Keep the wording simple and easy for the kids to understand the message.
If I have more time to work on the next version of this microsite, I would like to improve the app with the following:
• add more animations and videos for the content. I tried to simplify the content in writing but I think using animations and videos can help the users (especially the younger ones) to understand the content better
• update the tracker, user can add new tasks and customize the list.
• apply gamification on the tracker section, there could be awards once the user has done a certain number of tasks to encourage the user to conserve water more often
• create a mobile version to reach more users
