project type
grad school thesis project turned startup
role
project lead
digital product designer
digital product designer
Headlines about droughts, floods, and aging infrastructure reveal an unsettling truth: we’re running out of water. Yet, the problem feels distant, making it challenging to engage people in conservation efforts.
The majority of Californians need to reduce their water use by 10-20% by 2030 to meet the minimum required water allotment for health and safety standards.1
This 10-20% is not very much. It equates to about 2 mins less in the shower and 1 min less running water while doing dishes each day.
But the challenge remains -- how can we reach this amount of water use reduction? We did research behind the science of how to influence change in individuals and communities and developed a suite of products to help.
Ripple's smart home water conservation system aims to revolutionize the way consumers interact with water and alleviate pressures on water supply, paving a sustainable way forward for the generations to come. We leverage behavior-science backed strategies to inspire care for the environment and ignite action.
Ripple offers a suite of products, including a physical water use sensor, a visual water use indicator, and a digital engagement platform. In this project, I showcase the work I led on the digital engagement platform.
Ripple guides users through an onboarding and sensor pairing process that employs behavior change tactics, including environmental visual cues and social reinforcement. Users are benchmarked by comparing their water usage to that of their peers, encouraging engagement and accountability.
Users are required to set a water conservation goal that drives many of the change agents that were designed. During the goal setting process we wanted to aide the decision making process without limiting choice.
After completing the onboarding process, users are brought to the home screen where they are able to view their water usage metrics. Each of the charts and visualizations were tested and iterated on with our users to identify which aspects would influence the largest change in water savings across appliances and time frames.
Ripple plans to partner with local and state municipalities to integrate into existing water conservation rebate programs, which offer cash incentives for water-efficient appliances. Ripple will leverage these rebates to provide users with immediate cash rewards for meeting weekly water-saving goals, reinforcing the behavior change tactic of positive rewards.
The most effective change agent we found was social reinforcement, where users compared their water usage to community members and state-recommended shower times. Users were motivated to save water and feel good about their efforts, especially when featured on a water use leaderboard.
We discovered that while Ripple's potential users have strong intentions to conserve water, our testing revealed a clear gap between their intentions and actions.
Regardless of how much they intended to save water, this intention rarely translated into water conservation action. At Ripple, we wanted to understand this gap so we could design a product that would link our users intentions to their actions.
We did this by diving deep into user actions (or behaviors and habits) and how we could change them.
We conducted user research with users across the U.S., representing diverse water constraints and climates.
Home dwellers consume 3X more water than they think they use
The cost and impact of wastage is invisible, water is perceived to be unlimited and free
Everyone believes they are doing the best they can - there is a lack of ownership in individual responsibility
Competition and/or public opinion amongst community members are great motivators for springing into action
Leveraging user insights and cognitive science research, we employed a range of habit and behavior change strategies to guide the ideation process, focusing on bridging the gap between users' intentions and actions.
We tested both digital and physical low fidelity prototypes that were rooted in these habit and behavior change tactics to see which had the most impact when attempting to shift our users behaviors towards water conservation.
We did this by placing water use sensors on our tester’s appliances and tracking their water usage over one month. We manually entered their usage metrics into the low fidelity prototypes that was checked daily.
A subset of the testing group was compared against the broader group to evaluate the impact of community-driven engagement.
Another subset of the testing group selected a reward for meeting their goals, allowing us to assess the effectiveness of positive reinforcement.
We also tested an intervention leveraging water usage text messages, that combined both behavior and habit change tactics.
A subset of the group could view their water usage metrics and their implications in various formats, which we used to test different approaches to shifting behavior through data visualization.
Through the testing process, we also found that change is attainable!
i didn’t expect to be influenced by others’ usage, but once i saw it, i was ignited and competitive.
Based on user and cognitive science research, we developed a suite of three products to promote household water conservation: a sensor, a digital engagement platform, and a physical indicator. The sensor serves as the foundation, the physical indicator provides a gentle nudge by indicating usage levels, and the digital platform leverages behavioral science to encourage sustained participation and action.
Ripple has evolved into a side project for our team, now backed by the Wharton Venture Lab. As we move forward, the product team is actively exploring ways to scale user testing and expand our reach. Our focus remains on validating and refining our suite of water conservation products by engaging a broader user base, ensuring that the solutions are both effective and impactful at a larger scale.
