IMPAKt

OVERVIEW

Consumers often buy products without thinking of how their support encourages companies to continue their current business practices, some of which could be considered unethical by the consumer. Understanding how these companies are spending their money and how they're supporting other organizations is critical in ensuring that consumers are supporting brands that share their same values.

IMPAKt is a mobile application that enables users to discover whether or not the companies that they support with their business also support the same values as they do. With the information gleaned from IMPAKt, users can decide to continue supporting a particular company or stop all business with them. Users also have the opportunity to further explore and learn about issues and values that may be unfamiliar to them, which equips them with the knowledge they need to make informed decisions.

THE PROBLEM

Companies don't always make it transparent to the public what other organizations they support or the impacts they are making within certain communities. Without this knowledge, the general public can become misinformed about important issues or might even have misconceptions about a company due to inaccurate information. Failure in understanding what companies are doing outside of the products they sell can leave consumers feeling betrayed and misled.

USER RESEARCH

How are consumers able to discover what impacts companies are currently making or have made in the past?

Due to the unique nature of this project, our team only had 9 hours to fully design IMAPKt within the timeline provided by the WINFO hackathon. This made it impossible to interview potential target users, so we had to resort to online research and what the four of us thought that we would like to see for ourselves in this kind of mobile application.

In order to gain more insight into how consumers are currently discovering the impacts that companies are making within the world, we first began our research online to discover how difficult it is to find this kind of information in the first place. We discovered that this information was relatively easy to find most companies, especially if the impacts were positive. However, if the company had made a negative impact, even if done accidentally, this information was much harder to find and required several more searches to pinpoint the exact facts that were of interest.

We identified the following problems:

• Discovering how each company is making either a positive or negative impact can be difficult to find.
• Consumers aren't always certain that the articles they are reading are factual.

As a result, consumers may avoid trying to find this information all together or not look deep enough to find out all of the impacts a company is making in the world. All of this can lead to consumers giving money to businesses that they may feel uncomfortable supporting if they had known that these companies do not share the same values as they do.

IDEATION

After identifying our potential users and their needs, we began designing the core features of our mobile application. Due to the limited time frame that we were given (9 hours), we couldn't devote much time to sketching, so we instead we wrote down and described all of the features that we wanted our application to include. These features included:

• Company profiles where users can view company practices, discover current news articles about that company, and see what organizations they are supporting.
• Camera that recognizes company logos and bring up the relevant company profile when a picture of a product is taken.
• Forum for discussing both trending and controversial topics.
• Resources to educate users on certain impacts are good and the difference these are making.

All of these features aim to solve misconceptions, education consumers why supporting particular companies is beneficial, and to facilitate discussion. Once we had these features outlined, we decided to create all of our designs for a mobile phone because we believed that the information contained within IMPAKt would be most useful while a person is out shopping, as this is when a consumer is most likely to question how a business is impacting their local community and even the entire world.

Although, before we could begin work on creating the actual high fidelity mockups that we would present later that night to several judges, we gathered together applications that inspired us and created a mood board with them. This mood board allowed us to decide on the overall color scheme that we wanted our mobile app to have. We went with a cool toned color theme consisting of purples and blues because these colors have a relaxing feel and they also do not distract users from what they are reading.

HIGH FIDELITY MOCKUPS

IMPAKt was designed and prototyped with Adobe XD because it let us easily share assets back and forth and create a product that met all of our goals and expectations. Since our entire team was already familiar with the Adobe Creative Suite, choosing this program was ideal for us be cause we it let us work at the fast pace required by the hackathon. This program also allowed us to create a mobile app that looked consistent throughout and it also provided us with the necessary tools to create the UI components that we required.

SIGN IN & SIGN UP

Upon opening IMPAKt on a phone, a consumer is prompted to either sign in or sign up. Each of the forms uses both icons and labels for all text fields in order to ensure that users know what kind of information to type into each field. All text fields show a user's input in plain text, except for the password and password confirmation fields that are displayed in asterisks in order to protect a user's privacy.

Once a user successfully signs up for an account, they are asked to complete a small survey about which values are the most important to them, such as sustainability, the environment, gender equality, or diversity. Consumers are free to select as many or as few of the values that are shown. Each selected value determines how well a company is a good match for the user and helps the user determine if they're comfortable with supporting a particular business.

TRENDING NEWS

Once logged in, users are brought to the trending news screen where they can see the current news of any company that has caught the public's attention for either making a positive or negative impact. Users can view more about the article or they can either support or combat the impact depending on whether or not its positive or negative. Supporting an impact gives users the ability to donate or find ways to support current efforts towards a designated cause. On the other hand, combating an impact allows users to find relevant organizations where they can donate or support in trying to mitigate the harmful effects of a particular company's decision.

Users can also see in the news section whether or not a company aligns with their values by looking at the percentage next to each of their names, which lets them know how much a company is a current value match. This percentage can also be helpful in determining if a company is keeping its promises, breaking them, or even recovering from setbacks in the past.

COMPANY PROFILES

A company's profile can be accessed from either clicking on its name from a news article or from searching for it. Within each company's profile a consumer can discover close of a match this particular company is to their chosen values. Supporting or opposing a company from their profile works in a similar way to how the buttons found in the trending news section work. With support users can find ways to make similar impacts to those that the company is making, while opposing a company gives consumers suggestions on what things they can do to combat the changes the company is making. Users are also given suggestions for topics that they might be interested in based on the types of commitments and impacts that a company is currently making, which helps expose users to new topics that they didn't already know about before.

Each profile also includes scores, which would be determined by a built in algorithm, that alert consumers how well that a company is working towards meeting and achieving each of those values. Below this are the current commitments and partnerships that the company has, which informs users about the organizations that they are providing ongoing support for. Lastly, consumers can also view the recent news that involves the company if they didn't already see the article in the trending news section.

SEARCH

Users that wish to find a particular company's profile can simply tap the magnifying glass icon in the upper right hand side of the navigation bar in order to bring up the built in search. From here, users can either type in the name of the company, or if they're not sure of the name of a particular company, they can hold up the product to their phone's camera. The camera will then detect the company's logo and bring up the relevant profile. With this feature, users can familiarize themselves with a company before they buy one of their products or do business with them, even if they've never heard of them before.

EXPLORATION

From the side navigation drawer, users can also access IMPAKt's forums, where users are free to discuss topics in a respective manner. Within the forum, users can learn new things about topics, such as discrimination or implicit bias, that they may not have known before. This is also an area where questions can be asked about sensitive topics that may be hard to find answers for online. Users are free to share their own experiences, which help to make the forum feel personal because all of the content is created by IMPAKt's users.

Throughout the entire app are links that take users to pages that provide additional details about particular topics, such as racial equality. Here users learn about the efforts that have improved the problems associated with the specific topic and the organizations that are dedicated to ensuring that people impacted negatively are given the support that they need to thrive. At the bottom of each of these topics are ways that a user can find local events that they can participate in and different ways that they can donate to support the cause.

REFLECTION

The WINFO Hackathon was the very first hackathon that I participated in, so it was definitely challenging to learn how to work within such a limited time frame. In order to come up with an idea quickly, we couldn't be afraid to give each other ideas, even if they seemed crazy at first. To ensure that everyone felt safe to share their ideas, we created an environment where every idea was considered equally, regardless of whatever it was. Each time a team member came up with an idea, we went through both the positives and the negatives of designing an application to support such an idea. This exercise made sure that each idea was given the same amount of thought and consideration, which made each team member feel like they were contributing meaningfully.

Although, unfortunately due to the limited time frame, we were unable to conduct actual usability testing with potential users. This made it difficult for us to truly know if we were creating a product that would be helpful and create a meaningful experience for the user. Despite this, we adapted to the circumstances and instead used each other to test out the prototype since we all technically could be considered potential users. From this experience we learned to frequently ask for each other for feedback, something we wouldn't have normally done. Not only was this very effective for speeding up the design process, but it also made sure that the entire team was on the same page throughout the entire hackathon.