According to the World Health Organization’s factsheet, over 4 million people die prematurely from illness attributable to household air pollution from cooking with solid fuels, and more than 50% of premature deaths due to pneumonia among children under 5 years are caused by particulate matter(soot) inhaled. This is a major problem affecting the ecosystem so I and my team took the challenge to look for a way we can help solve or create awareness around the effects of soots in Port Harcourt with our design skills.

Hi, my name is Yves Vonsaata, a User Experience designer currently living in Port Harcourt, Nigeria. I recently worked on a digital solution regarding the problem of Environmental Pollution with a team at Productsio a community for digital product makers.

Duration: 12 Weeks

Role: User Experience Design(User research, Empathy Mapping, Personas, Journey Mapping, Information Architecture, Wireframing, Making Design Systems, Testing, and Iterating on Everything).

Tools: Figma, Balsamiq, Adobe Illustrator, After Effects, Protopie, and Google Docs.

Outcome: A UX and UI design of an MVP and an Interactive Prototype.

The Creek is a digital product designed to help solve the issue of Environmental Pollution in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria, Users get the air quality of the user’s environment in real-time, Users can check their health status, Users get free tips on how to stay safe, Users get direct access to recyclable wastes buyers.

The team wanted to learn more about the environmental challenges and specific problems faced by people individually. We wanted to determine ways, opportunities, and needs that might be in existence, so we can use these findings in shaping a possible solution. In April 2018, Port Harcourt Nigeria was ranked the worst polluted city in the world with an Air index of 188 followed by Beijing China with 182, and Delhi India with 181.

Gain insights from Users and validate areas of high interest through research.

Create an MVP.

Conduct User testing and improve for development.

Design Process

User Research: We did some interviews to get in-depth insight from the people living in these environments and got various insights from these people.

Pain Points and Complaints we got from the interview

People are willing to sacrifice long-term environmental health for short-run financial gains.

Most people are aware of the dangers of environmental pollution but they feel they’re in no position to do anything about it.

Those involved in the act of production are not internet-savvy people.

We made an empathy map to help us understand the users' needs and also understand the exact things that are going on in the head of the users.

We created personas to model and sum up the research about the people who have been observed.

Using Crazy 8 we brainstormed on some possible solutions.

Having the end-user in mind, we made a journey map to help streamline the user’s action right from hearing about the product.

To reduce the possibility of usability and navigation problems we created an IA.

Low Fidelity: After we’ve brainstormed on some possible solutions we moved to design a low-fidelity of our solution.

High Fidelity: We refined our lo-fi and designed the high fidelity with some improvements.

Usability Testing: During the usability testing session, our team asked a few open-ended questions to gain insights into the usability and accessibility of our prototype, users were given two tasks each.

The users were finding it difficult to accomplish the task given to them, we asked a couple of questions to find out what their difficulties were. After the session, we got more insights and improved the design we tested again and looped between testing, Ideating, and designing. And then we validated our solution.

Environmental pollution is becoming a threat to the life of our planet and the living on it. The goal of this product is to help curb the issue of environmental pollution and increase awareness about the effects of environmental pollution on us as humans and the earth itself.

I am a designer in the Tech space, my skills range from User Experience Design, Motion Design, and Brand identity design, I am currently open to full-time and contract opportunities! Check out my portfolio on Behance and reach out to me via Twitter, or LinkedIn.