UT Austin Greenspaces
UX Research | Design Thinking | Human-Centered Design
Introduction
Overview: This project was through an introduction to design thinking course at UT Austin. For this specific project, we were tasked with improving greenspaces on the UT campus, bringing a level of familiarity and personal connection to this specific project.
Purpose: The goal of the project was to explore the design thinking model in depth and understand how we can use research and insights to create human-centered design.
Task: Bridge the gap between greenspaces and outdoor areas on the UT Austin campus, and the disconnect between students and these spaces.
Role & Duration: UX Researcher and Product Designer (Spring 2023)
Let’s Start With Defining Some Terms
Secondary Research
We began our project by gathering secondary research. This consisted of articles, websites, charts, and other resources that we found online. From this research, we grouped the research that we felt was most relevant into 3 main categories. The categories we agreed upon were:
Space Activation
Mental Health
Vertical Gardens
Since our target audience for this project was UT Austin students, we made sure that our categories were either applicable to the average UT student or relevant to outdoor greenspaces. Ideally, we wanted to create a solution that addressed both of these criteria, which led us to focusing on courtyards on campus
Defining Our Target Audience
Primary Research
Empathy Interviews
During our empathy interviews, each group member focused on a different courtyard on the UT campus. This allowed us to gather a wider variety of data from which we then synthesized our insights from.
We made sure to only interview students who attended UT as they were our target demographic. In addition to this, we aimed to interview people who had a tie to environmental/outdoor spaces. While this inherently created some bias, we knew that these people would be able to provide valuable information regarding their experiences.
The three interviewees were:
Sophie (Environmental Engineering Major)
Caroline & Taylor (Co-Heads of UT Green Events)
Aarushi (Member of Beevo Beekeeping Org)
Fly On The Wall
For this research method, one of our group members took a couple of her friends to a courtyard on campus and observed how they interacted with the space. The purpose of this method was to observe their behaviors from an outside perspective.
This specific courtyard was a part of the School of Architecture and was a very popular space not only to study, but also an iconic spot for senior graduation photos. While these were two of the primary functions of this space, we wanted to see how students could engage in this space outside of it’s typical use.
Group Walkthrough
During one of our class days, our professor encouraged us to go beyond the classroom and explore campus ourselves. As a group, we decided to begin by exploring the Anna Hiss Gymnasium (AHG) courtyard as this was the building our class was in and there was a sense of familiarity with the space.
After identifying some issues and areas for improvement that we encountered in this space, we began to explore other parts of campus. Overall, we compiled our findings and found three underlying pain points that we wanted to target in our final solution:
Engagement
Accessibility
Awareness
Prototyping: 1st Iterations
Green Bud
Helps integrate native species into courtyards
Manages temperature & shade control
Eco-friendly
Cost-efficient
Fun attraction
E.V.A. Smart Seed
Advanced environmental technology
Creates diverse & beautiful vertical gardens
Brings life to industrial cemented areas
Pre-programmable and automated
Technical hotline for support
Beautification Roomba
Plants native species
Checks for biodiversity in surrounding areas
Built in seed dispenser
Controls outdoor maintenance
Electric powered -> eco-friendly
UTGreen
Digital interactive map app
Highlights courtyards on campus
User-friendly interface
List view shows spaces by proximity or rating
Updates every semester to account for changes
User Feedback + Next Steps
Once we created our first iterations, we asked students what they liked and disliked about our different ideas. We also shared the initial problem that we were trying to solve, and from this we received feedback that led to one underlying issue that people felt could improve our ideas: specificity.
“I wish the solution was more tailored to a specific courtyard on campus”
This helped solidify our plan to focus on one courtyard and eventually led to us choosing the UT Law School courtyard. We specifically picked this courtyard because while exploring courtyards on campus, we found that this courtyard was a hub for students to work and interact with each other. Another reason for picking this courtyard was because the space was for graduate students, which meant that as undergraduate students, we were not as familiar with the area. This was important because it helped eliminate some of our internal bias which allowed us to prioritize the pain points of the user.
Prototyping: 2nd Iteration
After our initial prototypes had fallen short of what we had wanted, we listened to the feedback we had received and went back to the drawing board. Prior to creating our initial prototypes, we discussed the idea of vertical farming and greenery wallscapes, and while the E.V.A. Smart Seed tried to incorporate this, we didn’t really love any of the ideas. But, we decided to revisit the greenery wall idea and took inspiration from the E.V.A. Smart Seed to create our second prototype.
Restructuring Our Idea
When we visited the UT Law courtyard, we immediately noticed that while it was a modern, open space, it felt sterile. While we were in the courtyard, we asked passing students questions about the space and gathered two main insights from which we based our second prototype off of:
Many law students studied in this space between classes as it was convenient, familiar, and centrally located
The law students we talked to also felt that the area was a little bleak and could benefit from some added greenery
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User Feedback
Ultimately, we decided to focus on the arches as it was a focal point in the courtyard. This prototype yielded fairly positive results, and overall we were satisfied with the way it turned out. The main feedback we received from this prototype was regarding the amount of plants that were on the wall. Students felt that there would be even more people in the space if there were more plants on the wall, seeing as this was already a high traffic area for law students.
“I think that I would feel less claustrophobic being surrounded by a lot of plants”
With this in mind, we aimed to improve the current prototype as opposed to creating an entirely new one. This was partly due to time constraints, but also due to the fact that we felt that this prototype effectively conveyed our idea and just needed some minor improvements.
Prototyping: Final Iteration
Our Final Product
Our final prototype was pretty low-fidelity, as this course was primarily about all of the steps involved in creating human-centered design, not the actual product design.
We took into account the feedback from our second iteration and added more post-it notes to represent the addition of plants as well as the addition of colors that we would add to the wall. We also created a lattice design using the hot glue gun so that we could add pots and other planters.
