Blue CoLab

Sammy's design of an app that communicates water quality data to river users.

Overview

Project Dates

September 2024 - December 2024

Role

Project Manager, UX Researcher & Designer

Responsibilities

  • Project Managed 5-person UX Research & Design Team, ensuring successful and timely completion of all deliverables
  • Conducted extensive Generative Research including semi-structured interviews and usability testing
  • Analyzed reseasrch findings to drive design decisions
  • Presented concepts and key screens to stakeholders
  • Crafted a design system and iterated on designs in lo-fi, mid-fi, and high-fi on Figma

The Challenge

In the U.S., an estimated 4 billion water recreation activities (like swimming, kayaking, and fishing) take place each year, and they result in approximately 90 million illnesses, usually due to poor water quality.

While water quality monitoring technology exists, the data is often inaccessible or difficult to interpret for the general public. This creates a major gap between the availability of this critical information and the safety of recreational water users.

To address this issue, I led a 5-person UX Research & Design team on a 3-month project in collaboration with stakeholders at Blue CoLab, a water monitoring research initiative.

We designed a mobile app that makes real-time water quality data accessible, understandable, and actionable for everyday river users, so that they can make safer decisions while enjoying their water activities.

Our Solution

Sammy's design of an app that communicates water quality data to river users.

The Process

Secondary Research

First, we conducted a literature review of research papers on related topics including: annual water reports, communicating water quality emergencies, communicating data creatively, and using analogies to enhance data comprehension.

Our insights helped us identify current gaps in the market, define proven practices for communicating water quality data, and understand key concepts behind successful safety communication and data visualization.  

We also conducted a competitive analysis on 10+ apps and websites to further understand the interaction between water quality data (or similar data) and people.

Documenting information from a literature review and competitive analysis.

Primary Research

Next, we conducted semi-structured interviews with 10 river users, including swimmers, paddlers, and boaters. We reached a diverse group of users, including older adults and immunocompromised individuals.

Our goal of these interviews was to better understand their motivations, wants, needs, and pain points relating to their safety and health while participating in water activities. We also wanted to gauge their interest and general knowledge of water quality parameters, as well as understand their overall relationship with water quality.

Affinity Map of user interviews with 10 river users, uncovering their motivations, wants, needs, and pain points.

Define

Our findings showed that river users needed a clear answer to weather or not the water is safe that they could quickly access and easily interpret. Wanting to access this information themselves was a common theme amongst participants, many of whom mentioned paint points related to having to rely on others, such as coaches or event coordinators, for this crucial information.

In addition to accessible and understandable water quality data, we learned that lack of awareness about water quality (compared to air quality, or UV index for example) was widely lacking. This prompted us to question how we might help keep river users informed, and distill unfamiliar water quality parameters.

One participant expressed his feelings after being sick from poor water quality at a swimming event: "I just wanted a way to report it... also to know if anyone else got sick." This unique finding drove our decision to include a community forum in our solution, so river users could report water poor quality conditions and read reports from other users in their area.

Focusing on these findings, we defined our goals with the MoSCoW method.

The 'Must Have's 'Should Have's and 'Could Have's of the design.

Iterate

Using our research, we designed our first prototype in Figma.

If I had the chance to do this project again, I would have advocated for an extension on our MVP deadline. Rushing to get this initial prototype completed caused us to skip past ideation and iteration, which resulted in a prototype that lacked thoughtful information architecture, and overall visual appeal.

An older iteration of the water quality app.

Test

With our first prototype completed, we conducted 8 usability tests with river users including swimmers and paddlers.

From these usability tests we discovered that while our communication of water quality data was quick and easy to interpret, the app's navigation and organization was difficult to follow.

Post-its showing findings and quotes from usability tests.

Iterate

We iterated on our design to improve navigation and usability issues, and utilized visual design principles to create a more delightful interface.

Sammy's design of an app that communicates water quality data to river users.

The Impact

As the team leader, I learned how to balance encouraging great work and meeting deadlines, with understanding everyone’s different work habits and experience levels. I helped keep us on track with our deliverables and made sure we stayed focused on the user at every stage.

We presented our solution to a key stakeholder from Blue CoLab, who was particularly enthusiastic about our community forum (an idea that originated from a unique user interview finding.)

I loved getting to dive into the research and uncover unique user insights. This project was a big challenge for me because I didn’t have much prior knowledge about water quality, environmental issues, or data visualization. To face this challenge, I leaned into the research, especially the semi-structured interviews with river users. Those conversations helped me empathize with their experiences and understand the real impact of the problem we were trying to solve.

I learned how important it is to spend time upfront ideating, establishing information architecture, and iterating on designs instead of jumping straight into prototyping. Next time, I’ll build in more space for that early thinking, since it helped us create a stronger solution in the end.

Sammy's design of an app that communicates water quality data to river users.