Mini Minimalist

Inspiration

Consumers over consume resources such as food, water and fashion as a means to fit the social norm. They do not understand what they actually need to be satisfied and happy and because many fast produced products are cheap, highly advertised and easily accessible - and they are not intentional about their consumption. This is a problem because it leads to waste (in our oceans and environment), creates pollution and violates human rights in cheap, fast paced supply chain manufacturing processes.As we’ve said, we believe we’re consuming, and using resources on earth at an unsustainable rate. People turn to cheap, fast, and advertised as ‘easily accessible’ solutions - without understanding (a) the impact of those choices (b) the actual cheap and easy alternatives. We believe this problem stems from habits formed throughout our formative years. Research has shown that children, equipped with the right information can be a huge influence on each other, and also their parents and other adults around them too. We also know that:

10% of 6yr olds have a smart phone Over 50% of children in the UK have their own phone by the time they reach 10/11yrs 49% of children in the UK that do not have access to their own phone, do have access to a family device by the time they read 10/11yrs

What it does

Through play, we can help the next generation become acutely aware of how their actions and decisions affect the environment around them, helping them become more mindful and content in the process. We're empowering young people to take control of our planet’s future - by bringing education, gamification and technology together. To make this a reality, we've created (a prototype of) an app that helps children to be playful, mindful and empowered to become advocates - opening the conversation about saving the planet, for everyone

How we built it

We researched, brainstormed and brainstormed some more. Then we worked together to build our an initial user flow. We mocked things up really quickly in a powerpoint deck, so that we could quickly, and collaboratively move our ideas around and test our initial thoughts and assumptions. Once we were clear on the overall onboarding journey - we started to search for icons and images, and bringing our ideas to life in Figma. We also refined our proposition and positioning too.

Challenges we ran into

At first we ran into a few challenges with our ideas - our aspirations and impact were just too huge - we found ourselves constantly going back in circles are we hit stumbling blocks with mapping out a simple onboarding flow. We worked through this until we actually changed our core audience and refined our focus. We decided not to develop the app as a functional prototype (coded) because we wanted to make sure that we were really clear on the problem that we were trying to solve for, and who we wanted to build a product for. This was less of a ‘challenge’ across the weekend, and more of an early decision to be smart with our time, based on the initial challenge of refining our idea (As mentioned earlier)

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We have landed on an idea that we wouldn’t have even considered initially, but that stayed true to the initial aspects that we knew we wanted to focus on (regardless of application) 1- Education 2- Awareness 3 - Impact (and a sense of activism/advocacy). As a team, we’ve all brought completely different skills and perspectives together - and worked to complement each other and really worked as a team to question, push and drive ideas forward - we’ve challenged ourselves at every stage, in a really collaborative way. Even when we changed direction, or didn’t take on someone’s idea, everyone has been kept happy, engaged and excited because we were so clear on the impact we wanted to make, and the bigger picture. Oh, and having an actually living, breathing prototype that seamlessly mimics the user experience.

What we learned

We can’t get stuck on our first ideas, it’s important to keep trying, and take breaks when you hit a bit of a wall! You can work through to find solutions by asking questions that don’t challenge the person or specific idea, but instead the methods or links to the bigger goals. We learnt to let go of things along the way, and to pause on some of the bigger pieces in order to make the functional, and foundational aspects of our design work - so that we would have 100% of a full initial prototype, rather than 50% of some bigger vision. We also learnt that there’s a lot to consider, when it comes to ironing out all of the little fiddly connections and redirect screens for a final prototype.

What's next for Mini Minimalist

We would love to build out: Storage of audio recordings, and photos. More missions, and a way to create active checklists and ways to really measure progress and gamify engagement. The full mini minimalist community, for in-app sharing and connections Links to schools and creation of a ‘team aspect’ so that this can really be a tool where children empowered to speak up and share facts and actions with the adults around them Build partnerships with charities, or non-profits to build out data-led insights and missions Developing and deploying as a realy app! Creating campaigns to bring local communities together (events / moments to come together) Kids actually taking up actions and challenges to their parents - and having a feedback loop to know what they’ve been up to