EcoSteps

Project Overview

WHAT: EcoSteps is a mobile app that helps users build consistent sustainable habits through simple daily actions, visual progress tracking, and community-driven challenges. It makes eco-friendly living easy, motivating, and measurable.

WHY: Sustainable living is important, but most people feel overwhelmed by complex choices and lack motivation. While 70% want to act sustainably, few maintain habits because existing tools are too complex or superficial. EcoSteps makes eco-friendly living simple and rewarding with personalized, gamified, and visually engaging daily actions.

HOW: EcoSteps empowers users to build consistent eco-friendly habits through personalized daily challenges, visual progress tracking, community engagement, and gamified rewards.

Success metrics:

• Daily Habit Completion: 60–70% within first two weeks

• Streak Retention: 5+ consecutive days in the first month

• Community Engagement: 30–40% participation in challenges/leaderboards

• Eco-Impact: measurable reductions in carbon, water, or waste

• User Satisfaction: average rating of 4/5 or higher

Target Audience: EcoSteps is designed for young adults, busy urban professionals, and families who want to build consistent, sustainable habits without the overwhelm.
Industry: GreenTech
Timeline: 8 weeks (2022)
My Role: UX Researcher, UX/UI Designer
Tools: Figma Design, FigJam, Notion

DESIGN PROCESS:

Empathize:
During research, I surveyed users and surveyed young adults, professionals, and parents to understand their struggles with sustainable habits. I mapped pain points and emotional triggers—like overwhelm, guilt, and lack of motivation—through personas and journey maps. This empathy-driven approach ensured our design decisions, from daily challenges to gamification, directly addressed real user needs.

Define:
Problem: Individuals want to live sustainably but often fail due to a lack of accessible, actionable, and motivating guidance.
Goal: Design an app that empowers users to develop consistent eco-friendly habits through simple daily actions, visual progress tracking, and community support.

Ideate:
Lo-Fi Wireframes:

Prototyping:
Hi-Fi Mockups:

Testing:
Participants: 6 (3 students, 2 professionals, 1 parent)
Tasks:

• Complete onboarding, accept challenge, check progress

Findings:

• Onboarding quiz was too long → reduced to 3 questions

• Users loved streaks and daily challenges → kept as primary motivators

• Requests for social sharing → added “invite friends” CTA
  
  

Challenges Faced and Reflection:
Designing EcoSteps taught me that sustainability design works best when it encourages progress without shaming users. I discovered that visuals and subtle motion can drive behavior change as much as functional features, and keeping the experience simple—one actionable habit per screen—helps reduce overwhelm and maintain engagement.

Along the way, I faced challenges, like finding the right balance between seriousness and friendliness, visualizing eco-impact without intimidating users, and designing gamification that motivates without adding complexity. I overcame these hurdles by testing multiple design approaches, simplifying dashboards to focus on key metrics, refining gamification to reward small, achievable actions, and using micro-interactions to reinforce positive behavior.

Most importantly, balancing my personal passion for sustainable living with practical product constraints strengthened my strategic UX thinking, teaching me how to create designs that are meaningful, actionable, and engaging for real users.