Offshoot: an app that builds a greener future through small daily actions.
Case study summary
Busy young adults living in New York City, want to discover environmentally sustainable opportunities that they can easily adopt into their daily lives. This project asks how we can make adopting environmentally sustainable habits in a busy city simple, social, and rewarding.
My role
As the sole designer on the accessibility school project, I utilized empathy and research to best understand the Deaf and Hard of Hearing (DHH) community and how a redesign of Google Maps could better their subway riding experience.
Teammates
May Kim
Keertana Gunnam
Project Type
0-to-1 Product design
UX research
Student project
Tools
Figma
Figjam
Timeline
September- December 2025 (14 weeks)
Defining the problem
Problem statement
Our team was interested in uplifting a social cause, reducing waste, and on a larger scale, motivate the larger public in practicing environmental sustainability
How might we
How might we make adopting environmentally sustainable habits in a busy city simple, social, and rewarding?
The process
To undertake this project, I followed the design thinking framework to empathize with users before defining a problem to design for. User testing was not included in this project as later discussed in this case study.
Empathize
What's the real challenge?
Barriers to entry: uncertainty, influence, and motivation
We interviewed 7 urban residents across the US in their 20's-30's. All users had little to somewhat previous experience with practicing environmental sustainability. We found that:
As one user put it:
I fall off my healthy habits pretty quickly. But, when I compare my step count or exercise activity with my friends, it gets fun!
What competitors are doing
Industry standards
Deliver familiar habit-formation through gamification
The utilization of gamification or a reward system is a standard practice for encouraging users to return to the app. Competitors leverage reward systems through features such as reward inventories and progress bars to promote instant gratification and positive reinforcement.
Opportunity
Promoting motivation through community
Many of these products limit the community to being offered either fully online or in-person. Our product bridges this gap by blending both to encourage sustainable habits.
From these insights, we wanted our app to feel approachable, ensuring that the path towards environmental sustainability felt achievable, approachable, and fun.
Define
The audience
Meet Tom, a persona
Tom is a busy and social salesman who recently moved to NYC. Tom would like to be more environmentally sustainable, but needs clear guidance and structure to fully begin.
Mapping Tom’s journey
Tom is a busy and social salesman who recently moved to NYC. Tom would like to be more environmentally sustainable, but needs clear guidance and structure to fully begin.
Tom’s journey revealed three key needs to design for: clear guidance, accountability, and ongoing motivation.
Ideation
Ideating towards a solution
Brainstorming ideas
We leveraged multiple brainstorming methods to develop Offshoot. Through mind mapping, we developed our concept of using different resources (such as water, electricity, and gas) to define how users would earn resource-related plants.
Lightning demos visually summarized what we liked in other apps, and the SCAMPER method helped us consider substituting water drinking from Water Llama with sustainable habits.
Lastly, we utilized the MSCW method to begin defining the features we wanted to prioritize in our final product. For example, we made sure our app would allow users to add, manage, and track their actions.
Visualizing Offshoot’s brand
To begin visually building Offshoot, we first defined our values:
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sustainability
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supported
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community/empathy
We pulled reference images to best encapsulate these values into a mood board.To differentiate ourselves from other environmental brands, we brought in some vibrant shades of fuchsia and orange to bring in energy and excitement.
A style guide was developed based on our brand to provide consistency across colors, illustrations (drawn by my teammate), and icons.
Wireframing
Initial sketches of the habit feature revolved around how to best create new habits and organize habits that users are working towards.
Mid-Fi designs: iterating on feedback
We initially centered around different time frames (daily, weekly or monthly).
Multiple discussions among our team, as well as design critique from our class peers led us to consider alternative design options.
We ultimately moved forward with the last design which simplified the organization of habits into two categories: active and completed habits. Habits would appear in the active screen automatically depending on the frequency set to complete the habit, and would move to the completed tab when users mark them done.
From wireframe to Hi-Fi
In our Hi-Fi’s, we finalized the best way to convey our reward system for completing tasks, as well as how best to create habits. Given the variety of features Offshoot has to offer, creating habits was removed as a floating action button and moved to the habits page instead. A floating action button was instead used to highlight our reward cache so that users may keep track of resources for feeding their plants at all time.
Introducing Offshoot
An offshoot is a small new plant that sprouts from the base of a bigger one.
Like an offshoot, we see Sustainable habits as starting from small actions and growing into something meaningful over time. Offshoot provides a warm and welcoming space where neighbors and city dwellers can build community and personal habits around consuming less.
Final product features
FEATURE 1
Greenhouse
Defined
Visualize user growth through the maintenance of virtual plants. Get rewarded with plants to collect and earn resources to feed them by completing habits and challenges.
Impact
Users are rewarded for making progress and staying motivated. Users also get inspiration by visiting their friends' greenhouses for habits they can adopt.
FEATURE 2
Habits
Defined
Track, manage, and get rewarded on your journey to building sustainability habits over time. Create your own or select from one of Offshoot's personalized recommendations.
Impact
Support users who may need a push to get started, or who don't know where to begin their environmental sustainability journey.
FEATURE 3
Community Challenges
Defined
Earn rewards for getting outside, building sustainable habits, and connecting with your community. Offshoot recommends local events tailored to your interests — because good habits are better together.
Impact
Users find community offline and gain motivation and suggestions for how to get started.
User testing insights
To validate our designs, we tested our prototypes with 6 users over Zoom. Each user received four tasks to complete.
Findings highlighted that although we had a high completion rate and users rated tasks on the easier end, challenges with our workflows and designs could be improved (reference the stoplight chart below for further details). Of the eight identified issues, we addressed four based on the number of participants who mentioned them and the timeframe we had.
User insights
Insight 1
Users wanted quick discoverability of plants they didn't have
Our app affords inspiration for further action by showing the plants and app activities of their friends. If a user wants a plant that their friend has, they can visit their greenhouse to check. Initially, this would have relied on users navigating back and forth between the two greenhouses, creating cognitive overload.
By adding labels to a friend's plant, users know right away where to focus.
Insight 2
Users seek a clear navigation
Testing also highlighted the confusion of overly relying on icons for navigation in our tabs and navigation bar. To address this challenge, we used labels for our tabs and added in labels to our navigation bar. This adjustment also offers greater accessibility for individuals relying on a screen reader.
Insight 3
Misunderstanding arose over cache icons
Our original reward cache for feeding greenhouse plants was made up by a sun and water droplet. Unfortunately, many of our users viewed our cache icons as representing a weather widget. To address this finding, we reselected icons that better represented the purpose of the cache - resources for feeding collected plants. Additionally, by changing the container of the cache, we hoped to better convey the idea of a resource bank or cache.
Insight 4
User confusion in redeeming rewardssers seek a clear navigation
Lastly, our testing found that users could not determine how to collect rewards after joining and then attending a community event. To address this challenge, our team decided to allow users to be rewarded right away for joining an event and provide an instant, flash notification of earned rewards for immediate user feedback.
What the users say so far
Our project was presented to our professor, class, and two industry professionals. Reactions were overwhelmingly positive, with audience members highlighting the warmth and humanity our product brings.
As two users put it:
I like being rewarded with virtual plants for doing good things. I like the positive reinforcement.
Two disability models for understanding a person’s ability to function
Researcher, Marno Retief (2018) defines the two as:
Medical Model
Highlights the limitations of a person’s disability and aims to fix it. A common "treatment" is the cochlear earplant.
Social Model
Societal changes improve the conditions or environments that contribute to a person’s ability to function.
Applying the Social Model
Looking to technology and travel apps to level the playing field for DHH travelers.
In conclusion
Next steps
Expanding our scope
In the long run, we'd like to broaden our product to ensure that even the most seasoned practitioners can grow. We'd like to diversify our habit recommendations to include high-impact, advanced lifestyle shifts, so that Offshoot provides the right 'resources' for both the first-timer and the lifelong practitioner.
Feedback from our presentation highlighted an opportunity at looking at indirect competitors such as Facebook running groups, Reddit, and community gardens for inspiration.
Integration with real-world impact
We recognize that a large motivator to become environmentally sustainable is an awareness of the impact that one's actions make. With the limitation in time for this project, a future expansion of Offshoot would prioritize this design of this feature.
A safer community
Lastly, with our emphasis on building community in-app and in the real world, we understand that a sense of safety will need to be addressed. Particularly for in-person community challenges, safety measures must be considered for both hosts and participants. If in-app messaging is pursued, security and reporting measures will need to be incorporated as well.