Environmental Protection Agency, Compair
Product Manager & Product Designer
Air Quality Mobile Application Capabilities POC
Tasked to build a product while demoing the product and engineering process with one main requirement of using a public data source maintained by the Environmental Protection Agency.
Starting with a small research team of two, we set out maintain a lean process cycle and worked in one-week sprints for the purposes of having a working, validated product in under one month. With a requirement of using EPA data we first had to find an interesting source and settled on Air Quality Data. Through guerrilla style discovery research we learned that 'there is a misperception about quality of air and the weather', so we made Compair.
After the first week a rolling team of 4 engineers, 2 designers and a product manager joined the project and maintained sprints through product lifecycle for launch. Compair was optimized for mobile as an MVP release.
Update:
While Compair is no longer hosted, this demo led to a project with the EPA for HiveScience.
Top Skills: Qualitative Research, Service Design, Persona Development, Design Strategy, Product Design, Product Development, IA/UX/UI, Agile Practices, Project Management
Project Goal
The primary goal of this project was to demo our process.
We had no product direction other than the endless EPA databases which we used to discover a problem to solve.
This took place over Christmas holiday and we had one week and three days to define a product strategy.
Exploratory Research & Product Strategy
We set an ambitious schedule with goals have having a product strategy by the end of the first week.
We mapped product ideas against possible databases to help learn a direction for our discovery & product strategy research
Persona Assumed Vs Validated
With the research we were able to validate our persona based on demographics, behaviors and needs.
Our assumptions about the parent persona, Pam
Key insights learned about Pam
Our assertions about the parent persona, Pam
Validated problem statements for Pam
Defining a Product
How might we change Pam's misperception that the weather determines air quality while teaching her about the environment?
We had to find an quick MVP product solution that is easy to implement and met user needs.
Research Analysis & Product Solution
By the end of the first week we were testing a concept and sketching the wireframes of our product, CompAir.
The sketch session was collaborative with several cross-functional team members contributing
Sketching design layouts
Beginning Product Development
Once we had a validated strategy and direction for our product we on-boarded engineers and designers to build out the application.
Discussing our strategy research and mitigating project risks
Product Management
We used Pivotal Tracker to write priroitized user stories for each of the features to build out the app.
Experience Diagraming
We outlined the primary user flow and a site map to help identify a feature roadmap.
This is user flow through our application
This site map allowed us to see an overview of the pages were we building
Usabilitity Testing
To ensure we were collecting continuous feedback from users we conducted usability tests to validate designs.
Design options to test
We were unsure of which design would resonate with users for comparing the air quality to their feelings about it.
Word Association
Grading System
Emotional Connection
MVP App
The product strategy maintained simplicity while providing information from a complex database. The app sought to be friendly and helpful with our core user in mind.
The product launch was shared internally to teams and maintained usage until the web service was not renewed.
Product Launch
Built a responsive web app and prioritized mobile optimization only for launch.
Successful Demo
Ultimately, this demo led to project work with the EPA.
Compair was also an assignment teammates held proudly.