To build awareness of the environmental impacts of fishing, we will provide Western Washington consumers buying in their local grocery store with a web-hosted article, infographic, and wireflow for a fish/shellfish recommendation application so they can make choices that align with their values.
Each individual deliverable serves our audience, but together, they lead the user through a larger journey of understanding and action. Both our article and infographic emphasize the importance of consumer awareness while encouraging our audience to make better seafood choices using the app. One quick read reveals multiple variables involved in the environmental impact of seafood harvesting, organized by section. The infographic enhances visual interest and reinforces information with additional facts. At the end, a direct call to action encourages users to take the next step by downloading the app. Once they do, our users already have appropriate context, as the headers in the article correspond directly to the information users find and enter from seafood labels.
With all group members involved, we were able to research our topic and audience, build our product principles and voice strategy, and write and produce our final deliverables in about nine weeks. In addition to the work we spent on production, we met regularly outside of class each week. We limited ourselves to programs we had free, inexpensive, and existing access to. These included Canva, WordPress, the Google Suite, Photoshop, and Figma.
The scope proved to be manageable due to our division of labor. Alec and Tony focused on researching and writing the article. Aimee and Kenzi created production-heavy deliverables: audience analysis worksheets, wireflow, infographic, and website. Anya edited all deliverables for correctness, style, and cohesion.
Our project deliverables deviated only slightly from our initial conception. We floated several ideas during the planning phase and slightly adjusted our scope throughout the project to account for feedback.
In the beginning, rather than an app, we had intended to devise a seafood sustainability grading system for consumer use. During our first week of research, we concluded that the number of and frequency of change in the variables involved would make such a system nigh-impossible to apply consistently. Additionally, our in-store and audience research indicated that it would be difficult to make a table that consumers could quickly and easily use while shopping. Imagine printing a sheet of paper or pulling up a spreadsheet to input factors, remembering the product and score, and then repeating that process however many times to compare additional products. Now imagine trying to do that while pushing a cart and vying for space in front of the seafood counter. Instead, we decided to use the opportunity to explore UX writing. The challenge was to make a simple, user-friendly app for time-pressed consumers operating in a chaotic environment.
Before the submission of our project plan, we had already cut our audience down to Washington state consumers with the understanding that a region as big as the Pacific Northwest would be far too large. The project plan feedback indicated that even Washington state was too great a scope, and we should consider cutting back. As a result, we narrowed our primary audience to Western Washington consumers, most of whom fall into our primary and secondary audience buckets. Our primary audience persona focuses on a Seattle resident. Secondary audience members in Western Washington are largely aware of the environmental impact of fishing and could, theoretically, be exposed to the deliverables.
The foundational project work, such as research, audience analysis, and creating product principles and voice traits, can take as long as writing and production, if not longer. That being said, such foundational work makes everything afterward more efficient. We spent at least half of our time constraint on documents full of audience analysis, charts, and environmental and fishery resources. Whenever we had a question about our approach, we were able to reference those and find the best way forward. Narrowing the audience was a shift in thinking for many of us. In a globalized, highly-connected world, we’re often used to accessing content and using apps that are available across wide areas. It was much more manageable to write and design for an audience we’re all more familiar with. The voice and style we used was specific and enjoyable to create.
Since we created multiple deliverables with a larger group, we had to spend more time considering cohesion than in some of our previous projects. This included time spent adjusting the voice to sound like one writer, organizing the content with consistency, and making sure we included the right balance of facts and encouragement.