The Litterati App
Product Onboarding, UX Copywriting, Wire Framing & Hi-fi Prototyping
Case Study:
How Can We Make Picking Up Litter As Easy As Creating Litter?
Litterati is a new app focused on cleaning the planet one piece of litter at a time.
Users are instructed to take and upload “litter pics” that are then tagged and sorted into a massive machine-learning database that is in turn used to influence the behaviors of corporations and governments alike. Users are rewarded for uploading and throwing away litter with rewards, badges, and in time financial incentives.
In December 2019, Litterati’s Head of Product, Steve Daar, approached me to improve the app’s onboarding flows.
A Lack Of Onboarding
The prior build of the app failed to educate new users on the app’s core functionality — taking litter pics & uploading them to the database. Additionally, different user cases all needed to be streamlined into a single onboarding process.
By utilizing a UX design processes, I worked with the team’s to build out a hi-fidelity prototype that solved multiple onboarding issues and is ready for usability testing.
What Was Delivered - A Hi-Fi Prototype
My work on the app led to the creation of a hi-fidelity prototype that models screen flow for new and returning users alike and provides tutorials via onscreen microcopy to facilitate use of the app’s core functionality — uploading litter pics.
Below is a video walk through of the screens and onboarding flows that were presented to the Litterati team.
Research & Design Process Step Thru
Initial Research
Our ultimate outcome was reached through an in-depth research and design process that included pen and paper sketches, user flows, research interviews, affinity mapping, persona creation, a mid-fi wireframe and finally our hi-fi prototype that’s ready for usability testing.
Select Sketches
A few shots oh drawings in my notebook as I scripted out the step-by-step process of using Litterati and brainstormed some alternative solutions the core team should consider in regards to the app’s raison d'être.
Interviews & Affinity Mapping
I conducted 7 interviews with potential users who fit Litterati’s core user demographic and discussed the challenge of litter in urban and suburban communities.
The interviews and subsequent affinity mapping reveal that time was a significant friction in engaging in litter pickups in user’s daily lives and it strongly suggested we create a model of that app that could be used with almost zero onboarding compared to other apps.
Problem Statement
I drafted the following problem statement to responded to our core investigation around what frictions and motivators affects the act of cleaning litter and what level of support and incentive structures would be best suited to optimizing the behavior among our target user groups.
Persona
This persona was constructed following my research and portrays a member of our targeted user group.
User Cases
When beginning to sketch out the new onboarding flow I had to consider 3 different user cases.
Returning Litterati users who are downloading the app onto a new device for the first time.
Users who are being onboarded through a special promotion and have an unclaimed “dummy account” which already has uploaded photos. These users need to claim their accounts via SMS code and have a different level of knowledge than total newbie users.
Total newbie users who have never downloaded or used Litterati before.
User Flows
This user flow was developed to map out an onboarding flow that could accommodate all user groups as frictionless a process as possible.
Competitor Analysis
I studied Litterati’s current top competitors in the litter-pickup app space. The competitive landscape is overall quite favorable to Litterati. None of the competitors seen here have a UI strong or brand. Only Rubbish.Love (not listed below) is competitive in this regard, however they are not available on Android devices which is a current limiter to their growth. No competitor is currently engaging in much marketing and there is an opportunity for Litterati to cement itself as the category owner for this space.
Best Practices Study
We made a study of apps we deemed to have “best practices” regarding onboarding. Both Pigeon and Duolingo deal with needing new users to submit a fair amount of initial data in order to user the app successfully. We looked to these apps as models when building out the new Litterati user flows.
Wireframe
The wireframe which evolved into our hi-fidelity prototype.
Clickable Prototype
The finished clickable prototype.
Takeaways & Recommendations
— The act of a “litter pickup” is already friction-heavy, streamlining the app’s onboarding and adding incentives balances the perceived time/energy costs and thus should raise daily & monthly active users.
— Allowing for multiple paths to onboarding and successful usage covers the spectrum of user cases and needs.
— Continued innovation in the incentive structure is a clear next step. Creation of an in-app badge system and marketplace will further increase user retention.
— Litterati would be served well to grow offline communities in large cities to support the in-app social networking opportunities.
— There is currently no category leader in this space, Litterati should maintain the focus on creating a strong marketable, and sticky brand.