Overview
Designing a wildfire care-kit packing experience for UW freshman
What is Emberace?
Emberace is an orientation experience for UW freshmen that promotes experiential learning and empathy towards those impacted by wildfires. By packing care kits for Washington natives whose homes have been displaced, students gain a tangible understanding of the systemic environmental factors associated with wildfires.
What was my role?
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As a researcher, I played a key role in the discovery and user research. Additionally, I was responsible for the definition and design of the proposed experience.
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As a service designer, I designed a future state service blueprint to pragmatically think through the holistic system of stakeholders in our final end-to-end experience.
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Additionally, I was responsible for scoping and defining various digital and physical touchpoints aross the target user's experience.
What was the context?
As the first project of our master's program in Seattle, I wanted to take the initiative to do a project that extended past products and considered the end-to-end experience of a user. Therefore, I kept both physical and digital factors in consideration throughout the process.
Teammates
Emily Shu: Researcher, Designer
Gayathri Kasilingam: Visual Designer, Researcher
Timeline
10 weeks (~2.5 months)
UW Master's Project
1 / Research & Discovery
I scoped our problem through research.
Because my teammates and I were shocked by the poor air quality when we arrived in Seattle for the first time, we felt compelled to investigate the issue more critically. We wanted to understand if other new residents were aware of this issue and how they perceived it.
Secondary research to reveal how poor air quality stems from deeper problems
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I performed secondary research to understand how poor air quality stems from deeper issues of wildfire season and climate change. By doing this, it made me wonder how people understood the more systemic "root causes".
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In order to align future stakeholders on a reframing of this issue, I created a fishbone diagram. By doing this, it also led our team to wonder whether people knew about the increasing wildfires in Washington state, which directly contribute to the issue of poor air quality.
Synthesis of interactive portion of survey data. We found that the air quality index on different tools either seemed arbitrary or did not change their understanding over the issue.
Our findings reveal how little people know about the issue and its severity
After I led an affinity diagramming workshop, our team triangulated quantitative secondary research with data from follow-up interviews to learn that many people were not made aware of the issue of poor air quality upon moving to Washington state. Additionally, people who self-identify as "healthy" are still not aware of the detrimental health effects of poor air quality caused by wildfires.
Primary research to understand how new Seattle residents perceive poor air quality and wildfires
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Interactive survey asking people to evaluate their awareness and understanding of the air quality and wildfire season through likert scale and short-answer questions. To also achieve this, I also asked participants to take screenshots of tools they used/would use to evaluate air quality index, and their interpretation of it.
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Follow-up semi-structured interview to probe deeper into their survey responses.
HYPOTHESIS
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People do not understand the poor air quality well, but have a baseline level of knowledge once more experienced peple tell them about it.
RATIONALE FOR METHODS
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A survey provided quantitative data for people to quickly rate their understanding over the issue.
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Semi-structured interviews would help us triangulate that data, and also understand why people had their current level of awareness and understanding.
PARTICIPANTS
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9 Washington state residents
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8 residents (<1 year of residence)
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1 resident (self-proclaimed Washington native)
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A fishbone diagram to understand the systemic cause-and-effects of poor air quality. This gave me a broader perspective on the issue: Everybody knows about climate change , but do people know about the wildfires in Seattle?
Developing a design challenge and success metrics
After we developed a design challenge to address the issue of awareness of air quality and wildfire season, I developed a set of metrics to help us define success.
The following is the design challenge and metrics:
Metric 1: Tangible understanding of "invisible" issues
One thing noted by participants was they find it difficult to keep track of air quality because it's not something that can be easily seen, and wildfires tend to occur in isolated areas that are hard to notice. By providing a solution that can bring this problem to life, we hope to make the issue more real and understandable to participants.
How can we increase awareness among new residents to Seattle about wildfire season and its negative trickle-down effects on themselves and others?
Metric 2: Increased empathy for those affected by wildfires and poor air quality
Our observations suggest that many people don't care about these issues because they're healthy individuals who haven't experienced the negative impacts firsthand. However, our research has shown that there are many people, such as those with asthma or firefighters putting out wildfires, whose lives are greatly affected by wildfire season. By fostering empathy and understanding for those who are struggling, we hope to inspire participants to take action in their own small ways to help the cause.
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Metric 3: Avoiding paranoia about the impacts of poor air quality and wildfire season
I noted that we'd want to avoid negative outcomes. While we want participants to be aware of the issue and take action to help, we don't want them to feel overwhelmed or helpless in the face of these challenges. By providing a positive and engaging experience that focuses on tangible actions that participants can take, we hope to empower them to make a difference while avoiding any negative emotions that could be counterproductive to the cause.
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After creating over 80 ideas using Crazy 8's and downselecting to a single idea based on according to how well they would fulfill our metrics, we spent the next five weeks developing the following solution.
2 / Delivering the solution
I designed the different touchpoints of an envisioned service.
To ensure that the user had a unified and cohesive experience, I designed and iterated on the different user touchpoints across the user's journey.
Emberace
Final Solution
A orientation experience designed for UW freshmen, in which they pack care kits for Washington natives whose homes have been displaced by wildfires.
Why UW freshman?
After considering various options, we decided to target freshman as our primary audience because we believe that they are more open-minded and receptive to new ideas and behaviors as they enter college, which will increase the likelihood of achieving lasting change.
Why carekit packing?
By organizing care kit packing events, I was able to create an immersive experience that engages individuals on both an emotional and practical level. Not only do participants learn about the issue, but they also have the opportunity to directly support those affected by wildfires through donations
Who's receiving the kits?
After mapping out the different possibility of stakeholder recipients, including residents who have lost their homes due to wildfires, I recommended sending out care kits to these individuals. Residents who have lost their homes and belongings are often in need of basic necessities like toiletries and hygiene products, making the care kits more practical and useful for them.
Why during orientation?
As a former orientation counselor, I recognized the potential to reach a large number of people through orientation events. By incorporating the experience into the orientation program, we could utilize an already-existing platform and transform what are typically mundane activities into something memorable and educational.
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Personalizing care-kits with heartfelt letters
To ensure that the care kit feels more personal to the recipient, I included a letter writing activity for the students. Early testing showed that people were unsure how to write letters to people who have experienced such loss, so I created a letter writing guide with prompts to help. This way, students could express their empathy and show their support for the displaced residents in a meaningful way.
I noticed that as we ran these experiential prototyping sessions, the onboarding guide lowered the barrier of entry into the activity, both from a cognitive and emotional standpoint.
While the letter-writing activity was one of the more salient activities that met our success metrics according to users, it was also one of the hardest activities to write to someone whose lost their home. Therefore, my team and I had to iterate on sensitive and appropriate prompts to help the writing process.
An onboarding manual to ease students into the experience
Because of the weighty nature of the topic and the novel nature of the activity, I created a step-by-step onboarding manual that provided a clear and concise guide on how to assemble the kit. This way, students would be able to complete the task with ease and without any confusion.
A "smoke globe" memorabilia for long-term impact
I believed that this care kit experience could easily be forgotten after it was completed, so to ensure that students remember the daily impact, I decided to include a "smoke globe" in the care kit that would turn smokey whenever the air quality was poor in more susceptible areas. This way, students would have a tangible reminder of the impact of wildfires and poor air quality on the environment and people's lives.
Developing a final service blueprint
Because I recognized that designing something solely for the users was not enough, and that it was important to consider the impact on others involved in the experience, I created a final service design blueprint to help visualize and plan out how the activity would be implemented. The blueprint included a detailed outline of each step of the activity, as well as any materials or resources that would be necessary to carry out the experience successfully.
3 / Evaluating Impact
Receiving validation from new Seattle residents
From user testing, we consistently received positive feedback from our participants and our peers related to our metrics for success. After our final presentation, many of the international graduate students, who undergo a separate orientation from freshman, said that they wished they had this activity upon coming to Sattle!
Lessons Learned
I love to design holistic experiences.
Doing this project let me realize how I have an affinity towards designing entire experiences as opposed to just singular interactions with products. I could see myself working CX or service desgn roles, or applying this to product designer roles so we can consider the entire journeys of users, and its impact on other stakeholders as well.
"This would have been much more engaging and useful than all the online training modules I had to do upon coming here."