Meifeng Wang
User Experience and Service Design
A UX designer who believes that an innovative and real-world solution comes from comprehensive and insightful understanding of users.
Major project
Increasing Children's Engagement with Nature
NatureQuest is a nature exploring service for families, aiming to reconnect children with nature.
Today, children’s ‘nature deficit disorder’ has become an issue.
NatureQuest is a service for busy parents with children (3-7) that desire stress-free and refreshing weekends as a family, BUT are struggling with time restriction, organising plans and children’s interests. NatureQuest will help families visit nature in a regular and meaningful way, thus boosting wellbeing and build family bonds.
It can achieve a balance between children’s and parents’ needs and interests: It helps parents manage family time efficiently, reduce their stress and effort of entertaining children, and easily make a plan which matches children’s interests. The real-life interactive stories can equip children with nature knowledge, attracting them to go through certain navigational challenges and nature events. The service also involves local businesses/farmers, who can provide outdoor plans and venues, and organise events for families.
User Research
I made a set of assumptions from secondary sources to find out the cause of children’s ‘nature deficit disorder’. Unanswered questions drove the research process, and a series of creative research methods were conducted to uncover underlying problems as well as overcame the ethics issues for a project relating to children. The research methods included survey, cultural probe, semi-structured interview with card sorting and behavioural mapping.
Key insights statement:
Busy parents of young children (around 3 to 7) want refreshing and relaxing weekends as a family,
BUT there’s time restriction due to things they have to do as adults.
BUT It’s an extra effort for them to think about how to spend weekends and make an actionable plan.
BUT they are struggling with organising activities that match their child’s interests.
BUT they find it difficult in balancing parents' and children's interests.
BUT children's lack of experience and knowledge limit their choices.
Business Model & Backstage Story
The partnership with local businesses means we will run a B2B2C business model.
Parents need to pay the annual subscription to access our service. For local farmers and businesses, we’ll fund resources and provide expertise on children’s play and safety check to enable a better user experience.
The Landlord's Perspective Storyboard:
① Farmer Tom sees the poster and visit the NatureQuest website. He logs in as a local landlord, read the Terms & Conditions and decides to join NatureQuest. He fills the information form: safety, suitable ages of kids, seasonal events, accessibility, and potential risks, etc., and submit it to the website.
② A few days later, Tom receives the messages and then selects a time slot in the timetable.
③ NatureQuest staff come to Tom’s farm to have a safety check and assessment on the activities Tom can provide.
④ After signing a contract, Tom would pay the registration fee to NatureQuest, and invest in some equipment and costumes. Finally, Tom can plan the route in the NatureQuest website so that parents can see it from the APP.
CoPup - Dog Sharing Service
The tagline of CoPup service is “part-time pets, full-time love”, which represents the primary aim of Co-Pup of allowing people who are unable to own a dog on their own, to share one. Co-Pup will contribute to a 15-minute neighbourhood by creating new social links within developing community as well as providing all the services required to care for a dog in one place, so that people can access the many benefits of dog ownership.
Story Cup Recycler - Design for Cup Recycling
This service aims to increase the disposable cup recycling rate, utilising a novel cup disposal bin alongside gamification of story making: each paper cup corresponds to a word or phrase, and by recycling cups users can randomly compose a sentence with a meaning, which is often absurd and funny.
eneGo - Energy Saving UX Project
eneGo is an APP designed for overwhelmed and indecisive newcomers in the UK, encouraging them to make a right decision from random options, and complete personalised AR photo challenge to explore the local, so as to enrich their new lives in the UK and save domestic energy.
Reparting - Design for Long-distance Relationships & People Departing
This project aims to identity key pain points and barriers during a long-distance relationship, and a service was developed to help people better express their love and ice-break the awkwardness of their reunion.
GrowUp - Design against Sedentary Lifestyle
This project was my Undergraduate Final Year Project of Industrial Design. It intended to design a product system for sedentary people, with the aims of relieving the ailments caused by a sedentary lifestyle, while directing them to get up regularly and change their sedentary habits, as well as providing personalised exercise guidance through an online service platform, hence promoting a healthy lifestyle.
Meifeng Wang
Major project
Increasing Children's Engagement with Nature
Awards
Ford Fund Smart Mobility Challenge Winner, 2022
Coordinated the dog sharing service project to promote dog ownership equality and delivered the final presentation.