Greenmaker
Reforestation and carbon offsetting app for Ukraine
Greenmaker is a startup that is dedicated to promoting sustainable living and reforestation efforts in Eastern Europe, with a particular emphasis on rehabilitating damaged areas in post-war Ukraine.
This app was created as part of the Green4Europe Hackathon in February 2023, and was one of three winning projects. This project is ongoing and currently in incubation with N3xtCoder Berlin.
Project Summary
Challenge
Despite having an existing tree inventory map, Greenmaker has been suffering from low engagement and poor conversion rates. They have a small existing user base who rarely return to the app, and low success in driving new members to sign up.
Solution
To identify causes and possible solutions for these problems we performed a heuristic evaluation of Greenmaker, and mapped user flows and personas for the main userbase. Key user actions were identified including:
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Finding a local project to join in
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Viewing your impact and challenging others
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Logging and tracking your plants
Outcome
In order to increase conversions, I identified that the homepage could be changed so that visitors land on a hero section that clearly states what Greenmaker does and why you should sign up. This combined with streamlining the UX of the signup and onboarding process will help increase conversion rates. For improved engagement, I added competitive elements to encourage users to come back and maintain motivation. These included targets and rewards for planting, league tables between members, and earning levelling up points by participating and interacting with the community.
The Team
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Andriy Rayets - Founder of Greenmaker
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Jenna Edgar - UX/UI Designer
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Georg Broxtermann - CEO GameInfluencer
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Oi Leng Cheong - UX Designer
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Prakrit Sachdeva - Business development
My Role
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UX Design
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UI Design
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Visual Design
Tools
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Miro
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Sketch & Figma
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Pen & paper
Design Process
Discover
The Problem
Greenmaker is a startup that is dedicated to promoting sustainable living and reforestation efforts in Eastern Europe, with a particular emphasis on rehabilitating damaged areas in post-war Ukraine. Despite having an existing tree inventory map, the team realised that the prototype lacked clarity on its target audience, and how it could effectively address the specific needs related to the reforestation efforts.
Define
Users and their Needs
To gain clarity on the essential elements of Greenmaker's tree planting app and better understand the needs of the target users, we utilised a business model canvas. This uncovered that the majority of current users are people who are passionate about environmental causes, such as individuals, volunteers, and green enthusiasts, who wish to contribute to reforestation efforts in post-war Ukraine but lack knowledge on how to do so effectively.
Additionally our analysis highlighted the importance of measuring the impact of tree planting initiatives to ensure sustainable reforestation and provide value to various stakeholders, including organisations and landowners.
Proto Persona
The Volunteer
Our user persona is a 24-year-old urban resident who is enthusiastic about sustainability. She has a strong interest in the environment, which stems from her love for gardening and hiking, and she is eager to make a positive impact in this area. She is actively seeking opportunities to support reforestation initiatives and desires a straightforward, user-friendly platform to facilitate her engagement.
Identifying Key Actions
After analyzing the proto persona and user flow, we identified several key actions to improve engagement and signups that include:
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Finding a local project to join in and invite friends - encourage signups
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Viewing your impact and challenging others - to increase engagement and return visits
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Logging and tracking your plants - fosters ownership and investment in projects
In addition, In order to increase conversions I identified that the homepage could be changed so that visitors land on a hero section that clearly states what Greenmaker does and why you should sign up.
Prototype
Getting more User Friendly
By prioritising user needs and fine-tuning critical features like intuitive navigation, assessing impact through tree inventory, and streamlined project selection and sign-up processes, the user experience of the Greenmaker prototype underwent a significant enhancement.
I was responsible for creating the mid-fidelity prototypes, and then building on these to create the UI for responsive high fidelity final designs.
Final Designs
Landing page redesign
Before
After
Dashboard
My Pins
My Connections
Future Plans
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Series of user surveys and interviews to identify and prioritise the next stages of development for the app.
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Sprints to add new features and further develop existing ones such as information tags for tags, and an education section for the website.
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Launching and optimise the new improved app and make Ukraine greener, and hopefully expand internationally!
Learnings
If I was to do this project again with more time, I would start from much lower fidelity prototypes and perform usability tests so we can fully test our solutions to make sure they solve the problems.
This was my first hackathon and while it was a very intense day, I was amazed at how much can be achieved in such a short time. The team were all very passionate about what they were doing and we all discovered we could work very well together, so I volunteered my services for helping the Greenmaker mission move forward.
Thank you for reading my case study!
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