Introduction
After my success in delivering an app redesign and new collection flow for the charity Plastic Patrol (now re-branded to Planet Patrol), I was asked to work on a new brief. The stakeholders asked for a new group leaderboard for the application, which would allow users to compete with other groups, and more importantly, work together on future clean-ups.
Stakeholder interviews
I was approached by the project stakeholders to add a new feature to the app - a "teams leaderboard" feature, which would help groups of workplaces or schools compete to clean up the most amount of litter in a competition, therefore driving both uptake of the app and ultimately more litter being picked up and logged worldwide. I had some reservations about this idea, but created a mockup to show the stakeholders. We discussed the goals of this project - which were to increase cleanups and to get groups working together.
Early wireframes
Some early potential mockups of the feature I created to aid further conversation.
Competitor review
After discussing the initial requirements with the stakeholders for this project, I conducted a competitor review. There are a number of competitors to Planet Patrol who have implemented co-operative cleanup features, with many of these taking the form of 'Challenges' or 'Competitions' rather than group ranked leaderboards. This was very eye-opening and led me to dig deeper with the stakeholders around the purpose of the initial brief.
Initial concepts
I sketched out a number of early concepts for this feature, but mostly worked digitally for this project as I had previously created a design system for the app which allowed me to iterate quickly.
Wireframes
Using the design system that I had previously created for Planet Patrol, I was able to quickly create designs and wireframes for the challenges feature, based on my previous sketches and stakeholder feedback.
The flows that I designed for searching/joining a challenge.
The flow I designed for viewing a challenge from a user's profile.
The flows I designed for creating a challenge.
The flows I designed for sharing a challenge with other users, including explanationary text for less technical stakeholders.
Outcomes
The work I delivered to the client was well received, and was implemented in the Planet Patrol app. The feature proved to be a success, with the first missions very soon after the app was uploaded to the app store, and it has since become popular with users of the app, with regular cleanup events every month. The fact that the feature I designed here has increased cleanups around the country makes me very proud.
For my part, this project taught me many lessons. I learnt to challenge my (and the client's) assumptions at the start of a project, rather than to blindly accept a brief and to follow it with immediate designs.
The live app, implementing the feature I designed.