Crowdsource Tool redesign
90%
+65%
Context
educate, impact, conserve.
TherMOOstat collects temperature feedback to improve comfort and energy efficiency for 45,000 students, faculty, and staff at the University of California Davis. Our team redesigned the site to educate users about energy concepts while demonstrating how their feedback drives real change.
Educate users on energy concepts.
Show real impact of feedback.
Research, content restructure, UI.
Final site delivery.
Proposed map screen.
To validate my assumptions, I observed five students walk through these prototypes and recorded my findings.
initial testing
five students struggle to navigate
This quick test helped validate my initial assumptions. I created a task-based script and observed students as they walked through the experience, noting where the journey felt unclear. I synthesized my observations into these key pain points.
Pain Points
Concept Confusion
"Why are there three cows?"
Redundancy
"Isn't it the same stuff on each map?"
Flow Friction
"I felt stuck on the screen."
Too busy
designs fell short on education and impact
Navigation was confusing, so the interface didn’t read as a coherent journey. As a result, users could not explore educational content or understand how their feedback led to change.
next rendition
I then presented my findings to my team and was asked to create a redesign that dealt with the issues found. I began with an information synthesis.
information synthesis
I evaluated every content piece against our goals of educating and conserving energy and made keep, elevate, or cut decisions so only high-impact content remain.
Information Synthesis Chart
After discussing with my team, we landed on two focus areas for iteration: familiarity and education content.
Elements for success
No learning required
Users can use their prior experience with Google Maps to navigate the map.
education content priority
To increase engagement, educational content had to fit naturally into the experience.
To visualize the holistic experience for different users, I created two experience journeys.
experience journeys for two users
As a student at the university, I was immersed enough to recognize and create journey experiences for two re-emerging personas: the doubtful and potential users.
Experience journey map for the doubtful user persona.
time to ideate
Now that our team had a solid understanding of the high-impact information and ideal user experience, we proceeded to the ideation stage.
early concept
a unified map
A single map hub prioritizes high-impact education and data content.
Early concept of the map screen.
more feedback and improvements
To further reprioritize content for the final design, we had our original five tester students walk through the new journey and identified what stood out most to them.
Feedback submission CTA moved to the top.
Story bubble CTA redesigned as narrative card.
Validation testing
We tested with 20 UC Davis students to validate our designs. Here are the results.
success stories
85% learned about heating and cooling.
Map Markers
85% understood vote size and color.
Vote Breakdown Graph
65% reported improved understanding of temperature trends.
Map Filters
75% found filtering intuitive and useful.
looking back
Lessons Learned
communicate Early
I was hesitant to speak up at first, but voicing and backing my usability concerns with data helped move the project in a stronger direction.
Less can be more
Testing revealed not all of the content supported our key goal of education. Narrowing our focus allowed us to better support our goals.
The Improvement
Final Design
Previous Design
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bringing a game to life
