Welcome to the
Interface Design: Microsoft Silverlight Challenge
Imagine a world where technology enables a sustainable environment. Imagine a world where technology is an ally of the planet, not an adversary. A world where software enables us to interpret environmental indicators, predict the outcomes of our actions, improve our consumption of precious resources, and live more in balance with our environment.
For some, a sustainable environment means something as simple as breathing fresh air each time they open their window. For others it means making significant changes in key environmental indicators. Any way you look at it, you get to decide how technology can help solve this problem for yourself, your country, and yeah…even the planet.
Situation
You have been selected as a finalist by a leading philanthropic foundation that focuses on global environmental issues. This foundation has just received a significant endowment from three leading billionaires:
- The (now retired) founder of a large, multinational software company;
- A pioneer in the social media space; and
- A retired real estate mogul focused on green business.
Each has decided to invest a portion of their considerable wealth in developing an effort they call “Greening of the Environment”. This effort is underpinned by a few beliefs, which are:
- Technology can be a key enabler in creating a more environmentally informed populace and a greener, more accountable, and transparent private and public sector entities.
- Creativity and design can illuminate new ways to leverage technology we use today and craft experiences and interactions to better leverage all of the content and information that is available to us.
- That the social media phenomenon is a critical factor in ensuring the success of this effort.
- How can we use technology to help people collect, measure, and evaluate information in the home, in the work place, and in public? Where can and should these interactions occur—in a browser, on the TV, on a mobile device? Are there group or shared experience that can be enabled by technology?
- How can we use the power of community opinion and social media to help people measure and evaluate green messages and initiatives? Are there ways to improve how this occurs now? (The benefactors are intrigued, inspired, and troubled by things like Facebook, Bebo, Technorati, Techmeme, Digg, and Slashdot for example).
- What role does identity and privacy need to play in this solution? Do we need to explore blowing up the conventions that surround issues around personal and private information, multiple roles or personas in identity, and the ability to be digitally and technically anonymous in some activities?
Your challenge is the following:
Design an interface that excites and creates desire for knowledge of environmental issues and involvement in communities, events, parties, or news (as they relate to environmental issues).
The endowers are inspired by the enabling power and excitement they see in both digital and social media to make these issues and topics more relevant and exciting to the entire population. How can we extend this thinking into solving our challenge and sharing successes? How can our efforts be a beacon and an inspiration for other private and public sector institutions?
Choose a single environmental problem of importance to you or a broader environmental theme. Assume you can aggregate content from many different sources - be it TV, radio, or print. The goal is to facilitate focused and forward-thinking conversations around environmental issues and motivate individuals into action.
Research:
You should feel free to use as much or as little of the research to provide context to your design solution
Possible Users of Your Interface:
1: High-School Social Studies Teacher
Name: David
Age: 47
Primary Computer: 3 year old HP running Windows XP
SP2
Devices: 4-year old Samsung cell phone, 1st
Generation iPod Shuffle
Overview: David has taught 9th grade social studies for the last 15 years after leaving behind a 10 year career with the EPA. He likes to think he’s a good teacher – he’s incredibly dedicated to it, often getting to school before anyone else, and leaving after. He’s truly passionate about teaching students, and thinks it shows. He always tries to get his class interested and following current events, especially ones around environmental policies, regulations, and events. Usually he has to make it an assignment, but every once in a while the kids get really excited.
Over the last several years, he’s run into a new challenge when he’s asked his students to watch or read the news, bring in their findings, and give a report on a given topic. Many of his students often use the internet as a primary research source. The reports they give are often “interesting” to say the least. One student gave a report about how people can expect better tans once the ozone layer disappeared. David has had to resort to providing students with a list of ‘approved’ sites. This may work for the assignment, but he worries about the amount of junk news out there distorting issues. Beyond content issues, however, David has yet to find engaging interfaces online that capture the essence of environmental problems and successes in such a way that his students want to learn more.
David blogs a little, mostly to keep his sister and mother up to date on what’s going on in his life. He lives with his wife, Leigh and is on Facebook; mostly because his students kept inviting him to their page. If nothing else, he’s gotten a chance to reconnect with people from high school and college. He’s joined a couple of environmental “causes” on Facebook too, but isn’t sure what kind of impact that has.
2: Distracted College Senior
Name: Erica
Age: 22
Primary Computer: MacBook
Devices: iPhone, Zune
Overview: Erica is 15 weeks from completing her college degree. She’s in her last semester for a BA in Marketing, with a minor in Literature. She’s really enjoyed her college career (I mean *really*, if you know what I mean), but she’s ready to get out!
She knows she should care more about the environment and well, her carbon footprint, but right now, she just doesn’t. She tries to recycle. More often than not she forgets to turn off the lights in her dorm room. Oops. She’s just in a hurry – a lot.
Recently, she’s been really focused on getting interviews lined up for her life after school. She really wants to move to Chicago, and has had some success with some of the agencies there. Still, it takes a lot of effort to look for a job, and between the schoolwork and everything else, she never feels like she has any downtime. She knows “the ozone is depleting” and that there’s some “ozone hole” people talk about, but since when does that apply to her? After all, she’s only looking for an *entry* job.
At the end of the day, she doesn’t think too much about the environment. She sees some fellow students waving signs about saving the planet; but they’re not her crowd. She hasn’t heard any issues that have her very excited, not that she’s really listened either.
The one bit of ‘news’ she does read is US Weekly. She knows she has to use the word “news” lightly in this case – she just can’t help herself. Every time she goes to the store, there’s always a new issue waiting to tempt her at checkout. If only George Clooney covered the news, maybe she’d care then!
Erica is on Facebook, and blogs a lot. She’s always on IM or writing on someone’s wall via either her Macbook, or her iPhone. The new iPhone version of Facebook makes it really easy! She just recently joined the “Remembering Heath” group on Facebook.
Persona 3:Urban Yuppie
Name: Jennifer
Age: 30
Primary Computer: Work ThinkPad x61
Devices: Windows Mobile Device, iPod Touch,
SlingBox HD, Tivo Series 3, HTC 8725
Overview: Jennifer thinks her life rocks. She graduated a Baker Scholar from Harvard Business School three years ago with her MBA and lives in a spacious apartment in the Upper Westside of Manhattan. She joined one of the top firms on Wall Street, and has advanced quickly. Last year, she was in the top 10% of all employees and pulled home a very, very nice bonus.
She watches CNBC all the time, and just recently bought a SlingBox so she can watch it on her phone during lunch. She also has a service through work that emails her with top news snippets – great reading for the subway. She’s focused on business news, but occasionally will tune in when CNBC does a snippet on green investments and short segments on businesses becoming LEED compliant in the building of new offices. She thinks it’s cool that some new buildings have solar panels on their roofs to generate office lighting.
She’s a voracious reader (she has to be in order to stay on top of the market), and reads the NYTimes, WSJ, and Financial Times. Or at the very least, she scans the front page, and business pages.
She knows she should care more about the environment, and she does, to the extent that she’ll see the melting glaciers this August during her Alaskan cruise. She knows that while cool, there’s something weird about glaciers melting in Alaska. She wishes she could get a better sense from experts of what that was though.
4: Suburban Mom
Name: Sandy
Age: 42
Primary Computer: Macbook, iMac
Devices: Motorola Razor
Overview: Sandy is always on the run. With three children aged 10, 8, and 6 she often feels like a limo driver. Her husband, Don, frequently travels on business and she often finds herself doing everything by herself during the week when he is out of town. Before Sandy stopped working full-time she was a partner at an environmental law firm. Four years ago she accomplished a bit of milestone, making partner as a part-time working mother. But the accomplishment didn’t translate into a great work-life balance despite the part-time hours and a few years ago as a family the decision was made that Sandy would step out of the workforce. Sandy doesn’t miss her career hours but she does miss the social contact and discourse on environmental issues.
She’s found an outlet for that through social media and has started news writing pieces. Last year she consulted for a piece with NPR on global warming and recently she’s decided to pen a guest editorial for the Washington Post on ozone depletion to include the ozone hole growth and general layer depletion. She’s flirted with the idea of trying to do more writing and maybe even starting a blog. She’s recently started using Facebook and has been experimenting with messaging. She’s thinking there must be a way to get younger and older generations engaged with these issues. After all, global warming and the state of our oceans and forests should concern us all.
She’s not sure how to make people care about environmental issues. She has a tough time illustrating the issues in a dynamic way to get her three kids to understand and want to know more. Strangely, she misses writing briefs and debating issues with colleagues and in a court against “big bad businesses”. Frequently these thoughts come to Sandy as she sits in her minivan—which feels more and more like her second home, her computer time these days seems to be limited to late at night during the week after the children are asleep.