DATE
2020 November-June
MY ROLE
Product Designer
METHODOLOGY
Design Thinking, Interview, UserFlow
TOOLS
Paper/Pencil, Adobe XD
2020 November-June
Product Designer
Design Thinking, Interview, UserFlow
Paper/Pencil, Adobe XD
Nauxi is an application involving the general public not only in scientific research , but also in reforestation by collecting data about clouds to act in the face of climate change.
Being very sensitive to the issue of global warming, I naturally wanted to tackle this subject during this project carried out as part of my Bachelor project atL'École de design Nantes Atlantique.
Global warming is at the heart of today's issues, and what can better understand it and try to limit its impacts than science? Personally, I have always been drawn to science, biodiversity, and the protection of the environment. This is why I got interested in participatory science.
- 50.6 billion euros is the amount of domestic expenditure on research and development (GERD) in 2017 in France.
- This represents 2.2% of the French GDP.
Are French citizens up to date with current scientific research?
To have more information about this subject, I decided to carry out a survey.
This survey was carried out on 78 people (from 19 to 78 years) of various and varied professional activities. We will call this sample of people, "the general public".
Also, according to an IPSOS survey (May 2016), carried out on 1,009 people constituting a representative sample of the French population aged 15 and over. (with many possible responses). 38% and 33% of these people would like to participate in research concerning biodiversity and climatology.
We can conclude from this survey that the general public has a certain infatuation with scientific research.
By having defined the framework of my project, I was able to define my problematic.
While doing research, I quickly converged on citizen science.
" Citizen science can be defined as the participatory and combined effort of research, analysis and public education which strictly pursues, as a basic principle, the objective of collective well-being of present and future generations of human beings on the planet and the biosphere. "
Participatory science makes it possible to directly create a "bridge" or an interaction between citizens and scientific researchers . So by accumulating data collected by a large public, scientists can use it to advance their research.
By taking an interest in one of the conferences of Kate Marvel, a renowned climatologist. I quickly understood that the study of clouds was essential to fully understand the climatological changes that have been occurring in recent years.
"Better understand clouds to better understand global warming."
Current climate models hardly take clouds into account in their simulations.
"Clouds double the temperature change: by keeping the targets and removing them from the equation, the rise at the end of the century would only be 1 ° C. This is one of our greatest uncertainties and the climate negotiations do not even mention it."
As we have seen, biodiversity is of great interest in France. As we know biodiversity is in danger. And one of the main causes of this endangerment is deforestation.
"Forest area increased from 31.9 to 31.2 percent of the world's land area between 2000 and 2020, a net loss of almost 100 million hectares of forests globally."
Then, I create 2 personae. Both, allowed me to determine the goals and desires of future users.
Considering the user's needs, I could imagine Nauxi and the different key features I needed to create.
A low fidelity prototype allowed me to clean my ideation and my first hand-drawn sketches. Therefore, I was able to determine the user's main interactions.
I decided to choose colours referring to nature and sharing. That's why I chose a green and a pastel blue.
We can imagine that with the data collected concerning the clouds, the objective, in the long term, would be to create an AI capable of detecting the types of clouds, and, perhaps, able to predict their formation in the atmosphere. We can also imagine applying this service to several other scientific fields.
This project allowed me to put into practice a fairly complete methodology. Tools such as surveys, personae, userflow and wireframes help to achieve a coherent service by meeting user needs.
Nauxi contributes to climate research through the participation of the general public. This solution does not solve the entire problem of global warming. But it solves a part of it.
I think that Design can't solve a global problem. On the other hand, he can use Design to make sure to get as close as possible to the ultimate goal by solving more precise problems.