Hydrogen Plant Visitors Center
HMW create a narrative experience about hydrogen production to help Citizens build awareness of the positive impact?
Long story short:
This was a 4 month-long project in which we explored UX design for a public space. The team consisted of myself, and 4 other UX design students. During the project we had some challenges understanding Shell’s perspective on their target group’s opinion about the “greenisation” of Shell. Having overcome all problems, we were able to design a unique experience that would be ideal for realization in real life by Kraaijvanger Acrhitects.
My notes and reflections will go here.
The problem
Our client was an architectural company, “kraaijvanger architects”. The company had the opportunity to design the architecture of the hydrogen plant for their client Shell. Their main focus is designing sustainable and eco-friendly buildings. Shell is planning to build the largest green hydrogen plant in the world near Rotterdam, on the Tweede Maasvlakte. Kraaijvanger asked us to design an interactive and engaging experience for the future visitors center that educates people about the production of hydrogen. The design needs to convey to citizens of Rotterdam and possible investors that Shell has an innovative and leading role for using green hydrogen as part of their energy transition.
During our meeting with the client the question was raised if this is a case of green washing.
What do you think?
Initial explorations & research
We had a month to explore and research our target group. We used the following exploration and research methods:
Kraaijvangers made a visual representation of what the hydrogen plant is going to look like.
The building is designed in such a way that it blends in with its surroundings. In the surrounding area, they want to make it more biodiverse by supporting plants & species. 🍃
Stakeholder analysis
Personas & User journey map
Space map
Empathy map
Synthesis wall
We also visited the NEMO science museum to explore how information can be presented in a playful way.
Desktop research
Semi-structured interviews
Observations
Questionnaires
Visual exploration & collage
Empathy maps
We filled 4 empathy maps with raw data from our interviews and observations.
Take a look inside the heads of Shell, visitors of the science museum, citizens of Rotterdam, and citizens of Maassluis.
Designed personas
User Journey
Our biggest challenge was the lack of trust that citizens have in Shell.
How can Shell gain people’s trust in an honest way without making it seem like green washing?
These are personas of two very different user groups: citizen of Rotterdam & business partner of Shell.
In the end we decided to focus on citizens of Rotterdam. We believe that focusing only on businesspeople is not going to make major changes to society.
After all the research it was very clear to us that citizens didn’t want to learn about the chemical process. They would rather see the impact it has on their lives.
Synthesis wall
With all of our findings we created a synthesis wall. It helped us analyze the data and see connections.
Key insights
Citizens of rotterdam/maasvlakte have heard about hydrogen production but lack knowledge about this.
Public opinion about Shell's new perspective is that Shell is involved in greenwashing.
The experience shouldn't be overwhelming or complex but simple, exciting and fascinating to explore.
Citizens are not eager to learn things by reading. They would rather teach information to someone than be taught.
Citizens are hard to convince to visit the factory. People feel like they are more suitable and interested in learning about art rather than sciences.
Parents visit Nemo with their kids to learn and play en enjoy a nice day off. They enjoy seeing their kids investigate with all their senses.
Playing with their kids makes parent miss the younger years and it makes them want to learn.
Narrowing the scope
After this first round of exploration and research, we started with the ideation phase. First we did brainwriting, then we created 5 concepts each.
During class, we put our concepts on the walls to have an opportunity to get feedback on our ideas. In a way, it was a critique method where we asked more experienced people to give feedback, which helps define the path of future product development.
After the critique session we improved our ideas by doing another round of brain writing.
We were surprised that students liked the idea of an experience in which citizens can have a conversation with Shell and voice their opinion.
Many students said, "yes, it would be fantastic if you, guys, implemented this design. Then it will show that Shell is not scared of its reputation and truly wants to make changes."
In addition, we didn't want to limit ourselves since our tutors inspired us to be more rebellious and think about how we could bring some controversial topics about Shell to the client through the design.
After improving the concepts, we converged with dot-voting to understand what ideas are most promising and which ideas we needed to merge in case they had the same amount of dots.
Our concepts
The first concept is an interactive map on which citizens can see how hydrogen could benefit their daily lives.
Personal opinion can be highly valued. The second concept is an interactive experience that is focused on the citizen’s opinion of Shell. The given insights will be represented throughout the visitors center.
The final concept is based on a strong and meaningful message. The focus is to create a room that shows the damage that we caused to the planet and the need of fast transition to green energies.
To be honest, we ended up in a situation where our client was conservative, our teachers were super rebellious and open-minded, and we were somewhere in the middle. This made it very challenging.
It seemed so wrong and scary to come up with a concept that wasn’t exactly what the client wanted. But what if this is what the user needs?
Feedback & Testing
Our concept pitch to the client was a tough challenge for us as we decided to present them with three completely distinct concepts, two of which were quite controversial. We wanted to take a different approach to see if the client would opt for the standard solution or choose to follow us on a path of creating a design that embraces their difficulties and solve their current reputation by giving the users a voice.
The main feedback that we received was that the client (Shell) was unwilling to take the controversial approach and wanted to avoid focusing on their reputation or fixing it through this visitor experience.
Therefore, they chose our concept with the interactive map as they also liked that the user gets a chance to interact and learn from all of the systems connected in the hydrogen process practically.
We needed to consider both parties before taking a decision. Kraaijvanger is an architect company, and the feedback we received from them was that they loved the concept Red Rooms as we were making use of the entire space.
Because the focus of Kraaijvanger was the architecture, we wanted to use the space and not limit ourselves to something small. That way, we were able to satisfy the needs of both parties, Shell and Kraaijvanger.
I learned that when you want to convince the client, you need to make the direction seem beneficial for them. Choosing the right words is essential.
“We are UX designers. Undoubtedly, we should listen to the client but at the same time find a way that will be beneficial and interesting for our users.”
This is one of the things I realized along the way of this project.
Draft Concept
We created a firtst draft of our concept after the client presentation.
Modeling
To better understand the building or the site that we were designing for, we decided to make a scale model of the hydrogen plant.
We came up with several ideas and things that needed improvement. We decided to remove the second room as we realized that it seemed repetitive and unnecessary.
We came up with the idea of a narrative story following the journey of a koala who tells the story of how he had to flee his habitat due to environmental damage. The koala should be a character that the visitors can relate to and empathize with.
This was the first time we made a scale model.
It helped us look at the experience from the user’s point of view.
Iterate
We decided to improve the interactive map by adding a sensor pad. On this sensor pad, users can place objects that will be provided to them. These objects are a piece of coal, a bag of oil, a windmill toy, etc. Each time a visitors places one of these objects on the sensor pad it will have an effect on the map and make something happen. For example, the visitor applies coal and the factory on the map releases smoke and the wildlife starts to die, the visitor applies a windmill and the room brightens up and more wildlife appears on the map, etc.
The koala will also be present in the third room where a large koala is now holding this interactive map and each decision visitors make on the map has an effect on the koala. The koala changes its facial expressions and moves its ears based on visitors' decisions. For example, if a visitor chooses to use a harmful energy source such as coal, the koala will lower its ears and make an ad face. On the other hand, the use of a good energy source will make it put its ears up and smile.
We were inspired by the forest fires in Australia. We all saw pictures of Koalas being saved from the fires. It is something that most people can empathize with.
Prototype & Testing
Our experience was too significant to test every aspect of it. Therefore, we decided to choose a specific experience feature to try and focus on. We decided to test the interactive map as it is the final part of our design and the most practical and hands-on aspect of our experience.
Overall, our participants enjoyed the experience and understood the message behind the design. They felt engaged and intrigued to see what would happen when they placed one of the objects on the sensor pad.
We actually had a lot of fun using very basic tools to simulate the experience.
We used things like models, drawings of animals and by changing the light and using sounds from our phone we transformed the ambience.
They liked how lively it got after choosing hydrogen. After choosing coal, we played loud sounds from coal generators, and they were annoyed by the loudness.
The participants felt responsible for their choices when they picked the wrong energy sources but somehow wanted to finish the experiment to see what each energy source did to the map.
Some participants felt confused about how they had to place the objects on the sensor pad.
The end goal wasn’t clear to them. They asked us "if the end goal is to fix the world."
Interesting insights from testing
After our first round of testing, we took the feedback from our participants and applied it to the prototype to improve it.
Based on these improvements in the second round of testing, we noticed that participants were asked fewer questions, making it seem like they understood the prototype more. Also, they were more impressed by the increase in effects. This increase also made them show their emotions more, such as laughter and worry.
Because of our lack of “proper” materials we got very creative and even used coffee to represent polluted water. ☕️
Final concept
Our team designed an immersive, fulfilling experience that will significantly change people's minds. The New world concept is a design solution for the problem: the complicated relationship between ordinary people and Shell company.
Space UX team is offering an experience that creates a balance between interactivity, narrative stories, and engagement. It completely immerses the user into the experience where people can learn about different types of energy and why green hydrogen production is so essential for our society.
We didn't give them an obvious solution to the problem - we are allowing them to find the answer themselves.
Citizens don’t like to be informed but rather find a solution them selves.
The experience is adventurous and the user can find out what the positive benefits of hydrogen are by exploring.
Our video shows how the experience works from the user’s perspective.
No one in our design team had experience in 3D modeling software so we decided to use our scale model and show the user journey.
Results and takeaways
We have received positive feedback from test users and our client. I believe the design will have a lot of impact. It shows the visitors how Shell contributed to destroying our planet with the disturbing room. The narrative that we created is easy to emphasise with and will trigger the visitors’ emotions. This is what makes the experience memorable. We also focused on how hydrogen production could benefit society and I think this will give people hope for the future. If I could change something now, I would make the experience simpler, smaller, and more detailed. This would have also benefited our teamwork, because during our process everyone got frustrated by the complexity.
The client wanted us to explain the chemical process in the experience as well but the thing was that the ordinary citizen absolutely had no interest in this. This was tough to explain to our client. 🧪
Did we deliver exactly what the clients expected?
Shell wanted us to create an experience for citizens and business partners only focused on the positive change that hydrogen could bring. Our team decided to go in a different direction. During our research we found out that a lot of regular citizens are not educated about green energy. Therefore, we wanted to create an experience for the citizens of Rotterdam. Before social change can happen, there needs to be awareness about the problems and the current situation. Focusing only on businesspeople is not going to make major changes to society.
We believe that this needs to be acknowledged to get people’s attention. If Shell wouldn’t do this in their experience, people will immediately think they are green washing and they are not going to support Shell. Shell needs to be truthful and transparent to get people’s support. Therefore, we also wanted to include this in the experience (first part of the experience). Furthermore, we also included the interactive map (the client’s favorite concept), because we still wanted to listen to the client while also creating something that would be beneficial and interesting for our users.
Even though, I know we didn’t give the clients what they wanted, I hope we convinced them that our interactive and immersive design is something that their users need.