Rising sea levels affect small businesses by decreasing the amount of in-person customers they get due to flooding.
SeaTrack is a user experience focused on helping small businesses combat rising sea levels. SeaTrack provides businesses with resources, allows them to contribute to causes, track business analytics, and learn about rising sea levels.
Conducting interviews, secondary research, brainstorming, personas, empathy mapping, research synthesis, insights, brainstorming, re-framing the problem, problem statement, user journey mapping, app flow, task flow, user flow, competitive analysis, features, visual branding, low fidelity prototype, and high fidelity prototype.
SeaTrack aims to provide businesses with resources, learnings, causes, and analytical tracking to help them thrive against rising sea levels.
Sole UX Designer leading the app and responsive website from conception to delivery.
August 2022 - September 2022
Adobe XD, Google Workspace, Paper
Learning more about rising sea levels and how exactly it impacts small businesses. With my understanding I can start to create a solution that solves issues that rising sea levels cause.
I learned about the impact rising sea levels have on small businesses through interviewing students and business owners. I also conducted secondary research, looking at news articles and beginning to understand the core issue. The flooding gave small businesses less customers and a decrease in sales.
The interviews and secondary research conducted allowed me to create realistic personas of what small businesses face during rising sea levels.
To figure out potential solutions to how I will help small business owners combat the challenges of rising sea levels, I did a Crazy 8s ideation exercise where I would draw one idea per minute eight times. Crazy 8s helped me to come up with many different solutions that I could eventually narrow down based on what was most effective.
After understanding small business owners and narrowing down their core issue of losing customers, I began to draft my solution to help their business continue to thrive despite the conditions.
I transformed my ideas for the solution into a digital wireframe on Adobe XD. The purpose of the wireframe was to generate the structure of the solution, mobile first. I made sure to make the most important features the most prominent on the homepage with simple navigation.
View Prototype
Problem Solving Features:
My tests gave me insights into where users were going wrong in my wireframes. I used this information to refine the design before I began my high-fidelity prototype. Now, I was getting closer to giving small businesses a solution to combat rising sea levels.
The revisions were made based on the users input. Some were confused on what to do with the app, so I added a small “About Us” section to inform them at the bottom of the app. That way, they would be able to know what the app is about.
Revision: About Us
Link to Revised PrototypeRevision: Contact Information
The final mobile-first solution generated to help small businesses with rising sea levels!
View Mobile Prototype
Made sure to use multiple methods of navigation so that people can navigate through their preferred method.
Ensured various ways to get in contact with the service if people don’t have certain methods of contact.
Labeled navigation icons so that screen readers can identify them easily.
After designing my mobile-first solution, I expanded to tablet and website versions to make sure my app is accessible on multiple platforms. Businesses will be able to access SeaTrack on any device.
Organizing all the most important information in the website into a simple navigation structure.
Creating corresponding tablet and website versions of SeaTrack.
View Desktop PrototypeWorking on SeaTrack strengthened my ability to meet people’s needs by listening to their concerns and developing solutions. SeaTrack directly overcomes the problem small businesses face during rising sea levels of lacking customers by providing them with the most advantageous resources. Designing SeaTrack has allowed me to develop my understanding of business practices and apply my skills in Adobe XD.
babarf@sheridancollege.ca
