Seattle Public Utilities

 

Helping residential households conserve water

Our team received a brief from Seattle Public Utilities looking for a solution to their residential water consumption problem. Residential water consumers are not decreasing their usage enough to satisfy Seattle city planners in the face of a steadily growing population and limited resources. SPU is implementing new technology that will allow for real-time access to household water usage data. 

 
 
 

Team

Ally Tom, Eric Chow, Gabrielle Greenblatt, Helen Han

Role

UX/UI Designer & Content Strategist

Sprint Length

2 weeks

Tools

  • Sketch
  • Invision
  • User Interviews
  • Surveys
  • Empathy Map
  • Personas
  • Journey Maps
  • Affinity Map
  • User Flows
  • Site Maps
  • Competitive Analysis
 
 
 

The challenge

Seattle Public Utilities (SPU) needs residential water consumers to reduce their usage in the face of a growing population and fixed water resources but the voluntary restrictions announced in the past have not be effective. How might we utilize smart meters (which allow for real-time access to data) to encourage households to conserve more?

 
 
 

Research: Identifying our user's needs

Why don't households save more water?

 
 

We conducted research on a broad range of water utilities customers and learned that most customers don’t understand their water usage. "I feel good about how I save water" was a common answer interviewees gave us when asked what they thought about their own water usage. But when probed about how much water they use no one was able to give a confident answer.

 
 
 

Key Insights:

1. Interactions with utilities company were dry and confusing. 

2. Users found it hard to track their water usage & didn't understand their individual usage

3. Priority is for Comfort over Conservation

4. 2 sets of consumers were identified according to their actions and behaviors - Reactive & Proactive

 
 
 

We determined that our solution needed to be targeted towards the Reactive Consumer, who only participated in conservation when an emergency like a drought or higher water rates are implemented. If we could create a solution for the reactive consumer, it would lead to bigger impact towards reducing the overall water usage of the city as proactive consumers are already actively participating. 

 

USER PROBLEM

Reactive Residential Water Consumers don't fully understand their own water usage and become indifferent towards conservation efforts

 

Design Strategy: Creating Compassion

Targeting the reactive consumer

My initial approach was to design a UI that could visualize data as well as ignite a desire for restraint. 

Left: My 1st design sketch. When more water is used, the less water there is in the tank and the more distressed the animals in the tank become. This was more of a gamified approach to the problem.

Right: A more data driven visualization where as water is used, the tank fills up

 

More than just designing an emotional data visualization, we needed to design for CLARITY and EMPATHY

From here, we were able to determine 3 experiences our app needed to provide

Identifying these 3 directions helped us determine our app's features and UI's

 

Our Solution

 

MONITOR - WATER USAGE

 

LEARN & ACT

Explore the App Here

Next Steps

- Our MVP was to help users understand their water usage and encourage conservation habits but the overall experience is still disjointed in some areas. My next steps will be to do more research and prototyping to tie in all three directions (Monitor, Learn and Act) into a more seamless and connected experience.