Small changes make bigger IMPACTR — UX case study that has shifted my paradigm

12 min readJul 2, 2021

I never considered myself a sustainable person. I brought cotton bags to a supermarket because it would be weird not to do so in Canberra, one of the world’s most sustainable cities. I used a reusable straw at home but I wouldn’t mind grabbing a plastic straw from my favourite bubble tea shop because it was hard to find a bigger stanless steel straw for the pearls. I would have continued my way putting convenience over sustainability if I hadn’t got to know Impactr.

Impactr was a mobile app, which encouraged people to make and show their daily sustainable actions through VDO creation. They believed that one small action could lead to another, and small actions multiplied by millions of people could transform the world.

MY ROLE

The 2.5 weeks project took place in May 2021 when the app was in a beta testing stage. I worked on this client project as a UX Researcher and a Project Manager, being part of a small team alongside Oscar Bitton, Alice Hargraves, and Eden Taylor-Wineera. I was responsible for the industry research, user recruiting and interviewing, research synthesis, persona and problem statement development, and strategic recommendations.

As a Project Manager, I planned and organised our works and agreed on a realistic timeline with the team. I was using Trello to keep myself and the team on track.

THE CHALLENGE

The Impactr team approached us to help them improve the current app in two key areas. Improving the current app to be intuitive for new users, and reaching out to young target users.

How do we help people reach the AHA moment faster?

Based on the initial feedback from current users, the app had many cool and unique features, but it was hard to understand them at the first use.The “AHA moment,” mentioned by the client, referred to the minute a user understands how the app works thoroughly (AHA, this is cool!).

Since the app already existed, we downloaded the beta testing version and had a play with it. It took us a while to get to the AHA moment. The team and I agreed that at this stage, with no instructions provided, new users could be confused and just walked away. This became our first assumption which we would have to validate it at a later stage.

How could we encourage Gen Z to save the world?

The other area involved their target users. The Impactr team wanted to attract people in Gen Z (those who were born between 1997–2012), who they believed would be the next generation changing the world.

Sustainability wasn’t something in young people’s interest, so they hoped we could do the research to find out and suggest designs and features that would draw more young users.

THE APPROACH

Understand what problem we were trying to solve

To begin with, we gained more knowledge in sustainability through the book called, “How to Save the World,” written by Katie Patrick. This book had been mentioned by our client in the first meeting, so we believed studying the book would help us understand our client and how Impactr has been influenced.

One of its main takeaways was that we don’t need to educate people in order to change the world, but we do need to get people to change their actions and their habits. This was a reason why Impactr was trying to encourage people to take VDO of their sustainable actions rather than providing knowledge like other eco-concerned organisations.

This point of view was similar to what I discovered from a couple of behaviour change studies, particularly in sustainability context. Another interesting piece of research was the 6 stages of behavior change theory. I shared it with the team so that we all understood how one could change from unaware to sustainable person. This also allowed us to think about how Impactr could have a role in triggering, encouraging and supporting the sustainable behaviours.

“Rather than trying to change a person’s mind with presenting the facts, we need to make it easier for behaviours to occur.”

Since Impactr was using a social media way to spread out sustainability trend, the team and I agreed that we needed to research social media industry. We also conducted a competitive analysis with popular video creation apps such as Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat.

Learn more about the target users

After going through these studies, we became to understand that people had different perspectives and issues that they held important. Taking a deep dive into user research, we began with a survey to get a better understanding of who our target users would be. The survey was posted across Facebook, Reddit and LinkedIn to reach a wide range of people.

It was a good opportunity to test one of the assumptions — would Gen Z want to save the world? An age limit was not put in the survey so that we could see if there was a boarder range of people who were interested in sustainability.

The demographic data of 29 respondents showed that a large group of 17 respondents was Millenniums while only 5 of them were Gen Z. This could be translated that, either Gen Z were not active on those platforms, or Millenlials were also interested in sustainability. I believed the number was significant enough to convince our team not to limit our research to just Gen Z.

“What insights could I draw from these?”

The results also showed people’s current actions and their hopes to do more in the future (see a below image). I looked at the data and asked myself, “What are they trying to tell me?”

People’s current sustainable actions and their future plans

I read between lines, and discovered that most of the people were doing small changes by taking actions around their homes in their dailiy lives. Their future plans about sustainability also showed me that they wanted to dream and act bigger. For example, solar power was a green source of renewable energy, but it would require a high upfront cost. While doing small actions everyday, the people also worked their way forward to make the bigger plan happen.

Get to know the users

It was agreed by the team that we would interview a similar number of people from Gen Z, Millennials and Gen X so that the research wouldn’t be biased by one big group. User interview was a process I enjoyed, but recruiting users was hard, especially this case. We needed to find people at a specific range of ages, with an interest in sustainability.

Reaching out to many sustainable groups in Facebook and Instragram as well as people in our networks, myself and the team finally interviewed 26 users who had their own views toward sustainability.

THE DISCOVERY

Transform the data to meaningful insights

Affinity maps were created on Miro board so that the team and I could work together remotely to discover the hidden insights. Hundreds of notes were put on the board, and categorised based on user motivation. Finally, we were able to come up with key insights.

While some people felt responsble or felt good to contribute; others made actions because they cared about the next generations.

Another motivation we found was, “Smaller changes make bigger impact.” These people believed that their small actions would lead to bigger impact. For some reason, I personally felt moved by their will power. That was a trigger moment for myself getting the true meaning of sustainability.

However, being sustainable was not always convenient: some mentioned extra time and costs. The information was all over the media but it seemed conflicting, that made them confused and lost.

Why a concept of mindset was used instead of persona?

Two personas were created based on the insights from the affinity maps, which I would rather call them the mindsets. The team and I recognised that we couldn’t limit ourselves to only demographics like Gen Z being the “target audience” because from our research that wasn’t being reflected. Instead we found a trend that people with different lifestyles and demographics were sharing the same feelings and attitudes towards sustainability —in other words, they shared the same mindset.

“What do a student and a working mum have in common?”

I would raise two user interviews as an example. A was 23 years old student in Melborne; while D was a mother of three kids, and part-time admin officer in in Canberra. Based on demographics, there two would be put in separate groups. However, looking from a mindset perspective, they showed similar behaviours and attitudes toward sustainability — they both wanted to make an impact to the world by taking actions consistently and educating or motivating others to make small changes.

This was how the insights from our user research were used to create our primary mindset called, the Advocator.

The secondary mindset was called, the Passionate Pupil, as they were learning to do more and looked for a source of truth.

THE FRAMEWORK

Our direction was set by the Diffusion of Innovation theory or the Adoption Curve. The theory explained that the adoption rate of new products was based on the particular characteristics of certain groups of people.Every product had to go through this product life cycle.

In order to get to the mass, a new product must reach to the early majority, which was a third of users. Getting this group on board was a sign that there was a place for the product in the market. But reaching this phase wasn’t so easy. Consequently, prior to the mass, every new product had to win the Innovators and the Early Adopters first. These two groups would then spread the words to the mass.

How was this related to our framework?

The two mindsets were placed in the Adoption Curve, based on their characteristics.

The Advocator was identified as Early Adopters as they had been on their sustainability journey for a while, and were consistent in their actions. They tended to be opinion leaders as they loved to educate and motivate others.

While the Passionate Pupil was in the Early Majority, they wanted to do better, and were likely to follow and seek knowledge from the Advocator.

The Advocator, as our priority, was focused in order to generate a problem statement. Having the focus was important for Impactr because they must solve problems for this primary user group in order to have a good chance at getting to the mass.

“The Advocator needs a way to connect with likeminded people so that they can motivate others to take small sustainable actions.”

Before moving forward, I would love to go back and revisit our challenges stated in the beginning.

How do we help people reach the AHA moment faster?
How could we encourage Gen Z to save the world?

The answers to these questions would lead to our strategic recommendations.

THE REDESIGN

HOW DO WE HELP PEOPLE REACH THE AHA MOMENT FASTER?

To begin with, the team and I decided to conduct usability testing on the current Impactr app, to understand why users were not getting to their AHA moment. We tested with people who never used the app before. The results were as follows.

4/5 users took over 5 minutes to join an Action from the feed and create a Ripple
5/5 users found it confusing to navigate the feed
5/5 users didn’t understand what a ripple was
3/5 users liked the Trusted Brands but wanted more clarification

Once the users started to play around with the app they understood the features; however, they wanted to understand this sooner so it didn’t discourage them from using the app.

Introduce the user onboarding

User onboarding was a designed series of interactions and instructions that helped the user ease into the product. Facebook used to display their onboarding to introduce the Like button. TikTok also had their onboarding video for first time users.

Onboarding also boosted long-term retention. Intranet software platform Twine cut their drop-off rate of 65% by more than half from by incorporating meaningful onboarding into their experience.

An onboarding prototype was put together in a short time because our team wanted to see if the onboarding would really help Impactr. With the video, we conducted another usability testing with 5 users.

Some captured screens of the onboarding VDO prototype

The second iteration, the results showed great improvement.

5/5 users were able to able complete the task in under 2 minutes.

Clearly, the onboarding helped the users navigate the and reach the AHA moment in a shorter time. However, further work would be required to educate users of Action and Ripple meanings, as 4 of 5 users were still confused about the terms.

THE REPOSITION

HOW COULD WE ENCOURAGE GEN Z TO SAVE THE WORLD?

Based on the user research and analysis, the target users of Impactr were not demographic-based, instead they were mindset-driven. People from different ages and places seemed to shared the one mindset. Therefore, targeting only the young people would lead Impactr to a wrong direction. We wouldn’t be able to make Impactr go mass if we did not get the users with the Advocator mindset first (as they were the Early Adopters in the curve).

We came up with these strategies, which we believed would help Impactr get to the early adopters and the majority of users.

Getting the early adopters which are not only Gen Z

Focusing on mindset rather than demographics.
Don’t limit yourself to Gen Z as many different people are ready to make an impact.

Moving toward a tool, rather than social media

Repositioning and emphasizing how you use Impactr. People should use Impactr as a tool rather than a social media
Impactr can be a place to connect, learn and take action in real life. The Avocator uses it to connect with likeminds and empower others. The Passionate Pupil which represents the mass people, can learn and find the source of truth.

THE PARADIGM SHIFT

Discovery

I have just discovered the mindset creation method from this project. A persona was originally designed to have an age, profession and lifestyle, to make it realistic and easily resonated. A mindset was another way to look at the insights though.

Our team would have hit the dead end by creating a persona on their demographics. Thanks to our amazing mentors from General Assembly, they introduced the mindset development to me and the team while we were struggling. Applying the mindset method became the last jigsaw, completing our research.

Honesty and teamwork

Even though our recommendations in terms of target users would be slightly different from their expectations. I was fortunate that my amazing team and I shared one belief that we had to trust the UX process and be honest with the client. We would follow the human-centric research and design as we believed it would lead us to the right destination.

Surprising changes

One thing I had not expected was myself turning more sustainable. Actually, during the time I worked on this project, without knowing, I have been through the behaviour change process myself . By gaining a lot of knowledge through research and interviews, meeting many interesting people and working with Impactr team, I have changed my views toward sustainability.

I became to realise this on the day I went to a supermarket and I decided to take a plastic-free toothbrush instead of Colgate toothbrush (I had always picked Colgate because I used to work there!). It was quite a big change for me, as the way I looked at things was different now. Finally, I was glad that I was able to prove it myself that the behaviour change theory was true!