Nout
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Fourth year
Professional collaboration with Newcastle City Council
UX and research design
Brief
For this project a group of three of us were tasked by Newcastle City Council to design a digital concept to help the city of Newcastle become a net zero contributor by 2030.
What we had to take into consideration
The key themes we explored in this project were…
- Energy
- Transport
- Adaption and Sustainability
It was outlined in the brief that the product had to support and create positive behaviours and business models that promoted the net zero vision. It was also essential that the overall project cost was reasonable along with the timeframe. When we dissected the brief we found the following examples helpful…
- Encouraging the use of low emission transport e.g. cycling
- Creating new consumer patterns that are carbon neutral
- Limiting the use of energy to transport goods
Chosen location
We wanted to focus on the Ouseburn Valley as our location as we believed it appealed to a variety of audiences such as students, families and the older generation. It also gave us a wide choice of who we would like to have as our target audience. Furthermore, appealing to as many people as possible would allow our concept to reach a diverse range of target audiences and increase awareness of the Net Zero 2030 scheme.
The Ouseburn is also home to a lot of independent businesses and by targeting this area we would also support them which in turn would help the environment.
Chosen audience
Even though we identified a wide range of age groups in the Ouseburn area we decided that students would be the best target audience to focus on.
There is a wide range of student accommodation and student housing areas within a 10 minute walk of the Ouseburn Valley and with a selection of bars and pubs in the area it can be a magnet for students living and visiting the area.
From this we developed user scenarios to gain further insight into how to move the project forward.
Our final concept
The Final Concept we created is called ‘NOUT’, an App that encourages and rewards users for walking instead of taking a taxi. It works like Uber, just without all the emissions. The user chooses from one of the many independent Breweries, Cafes and Eateries in the Ouseburn area. They also set their starting location. Nout then tracks the user’s steps, carbon savings and calories burned as they walk to the venue. Once they arrive they can scan a QR code and receive a reward, this could be a discount or freebie.
Why we called our product 'nout'
We brainstormed a selection of potential names for the product including…
- Alwalk
- Yard
- Soul
- Tread
However we decided to name our product ‘Nout’ which is a play on Geordie slang.
Nout means nothing or zero around Newcastle so we thought this was a great name to use as it has a personal feel to it and will really appeal to our target audience of students.
My role in the project
My responsibilities for the development of NOUT was to…
- Conduct competitor research of products we could take inspiration from
- Work to develop a marketing campaign to advertise our product
- Creation of low fidelity wireframes
- Storyboard our video production
Marketing the product
One of the my main roles was advertise the product both with advertising campaigns in Newcastle and on social media.
After concluding our scouting research we mocked up a billboard for our product on the A186 roundabout.
One the main reasons we chose this location is because a vast amount of cars pass the billboard in order to gain access to Newcastle city centre. There is also a large amount of student accommodation to the east of the roundabout and students will see the billboard either walking into the city centre or in taxis heading to the Diamond strip where there are several nightclubs.
Social media
We mocked up Instagram and Twitter pages to understand how this could kickstart our social media campaign.
As part of our short term promotional gain we developed the hashtag ‘NOUTANDABOUT’ which can be used on a social media post as well as displayed on posters and flyers. The overall idea behind the hashtag is that the user has the ability to share shots of their walk throughout the Ouseburn Valley on major social media platforms mainly Twitter and Instagram.
Final video
When it came to present our product to Newcastle City Council we decided to put together a video to show how our product would work. It was my role in this final segment of the project to storyboard and film how the user would interact with the application before another member of our team would put the footage into After Effects to finalise the video.
In the video the user is using the Nout application to walk to the Brinkburn Brewery in Ouesburn to support the independent business by buying one of their products. In doing so he earns a discount as he contributed to reducing emissions in the area by not driving or taking a taxi.
See below to watch the video and view the research and design document.
