Eco+
Apple Watch users love to close their rings. How might we leverage this habit-tracking technology to encourage eco-friendly routines?
Brand:
Apple
Role:
Design strategist
Category
Strategy, product design
Water shortages present immediate economic, security, and societal threats to the United States.
According to the World Bank, demand for freshwater is projected to exceed supply significantly by 2023, leading to limited access to clean drinking water for over 1.6 billion people.
Individually, users waste significant amounts of water every day due to inefficient usage habits.
In fact, the average American uses 80-100 gallons of water per day and 30% of that is unknowingly wasted.
Part of the problem is that most people have no idea how much water they are using, let alone wasting, every day.
For example, we surveyed 111 people about their usage habits and while 72% of people said they showered daily, 50% underestimated the the amount of water that the average shower uses (17 gal).
But, most importantly, habit change is hard.
For most of us, washing our hands, doing the dishes, and flushing the toilet is a mindless part of our daily routine.
The Apple Watch is the most popular smartwatch, largely due to its beloved health and fitness features.
The Activity app uses UI/UX features supported by behavioral science to help users effectively develop positive fitness habits, including goal-setting, visual cues, and gamification.
Users can set daily Move, Exercise, and Stand goals and track their real-time progress throughout the day, visualized in a system of rings. The experience is then gamified, as users work to close their rings by completing their goals.
Apple Watch users love to close their rings.
If you’ve ever seen a co-worker pacing around the office while anxiously looking at their wrist, you've seen this phenomenon in the world.
“Closing your rings” has become both a framework and a motivator for changing habits around health & fitness.
Leverage the familiar, habit-building framework of Apple Watch's Activity app to inspire and affirm eco-conscious behaviors.
We kept the familiar framework and functions of the Activity app, but adapted them to suit eco-conscious behavior tracking.
Select a Water activity to initiate volume tracking. Eco+ calculates the gallons used based on the duration of the activity.
Just like with the Activity app's Move, Exercise, and Stand rings, users have the ability to set their personal goals for water conservation with Eco+.
Water conservation is gamified with Eco+ challenges. Invite your friends or compete solo to earn badges.
Using another familiar iOS framework, users can track their impact through weekly reports, reminiscent of screen time. This feature will lend greater visibility to user's water conservation habits.
Extending Eco+ beyond water conservation.
While we initially formulated Eco+ for water conservation efforts, this framework can be expanded to other areas of individual ecological impact. We see potential for users to also track the footprint of their electricity and transportation use in a full Eco+ suite.
Opportunity also exists for Eco+ to be integrated into Apple's existing and future smart home products, such as the HomePod. Such products might measure and synthesize household water, electricity, and gas use.
What I learned & who I learned with.
The initial ask for this project was to solve a problem pertaining to climate change. The scale of this ask forced us to strategically compartmentalize - creating a list of problems that we believed were not only relevant and pertinent, but solvable with tactful design.
This was a great opportunity to practice breaking an issue into its parts, locating and diagnosing a targetable problem, then working towards a solution.
Furthermore, because of the scale of the issue, we knew that both our strategy and design needed to be palatable to users. Climate change is overwhelming, so our executions needed to always be driven by empowerment, not fear. We knew that by using an existing framework for activity tracking, we could take steps out of the process for our users. We didn't need to ask people to learn a new software and start conserving more water.
Instead, we could ask them to simply continue using the tools they are already using to build a new habit around water conservation.
Derek Martin (ST) | Shanice Aga (XD) | Sarah Gray (ST) | Cam Rogers (XD) | Chynna Napper (ST)
