EcoMind
Lock into earth
A campaign aimed at encouraging students to reconnect with nature and 'give back'- a conservation project.
Background
The Woodland Trust is a non-profit organisation located in England and Wales. Three-quarters of funding stem from donations, legacies, raffles their branded shop and memberships, with a primary objective to conserve, restore and re-establish trees (broad leafed in particular). With 85% of people believing government agencies should be responsible for protecting ancient trees, Woodland trust care for 100 Welsh woods and over 800 sites in England.
The Problem
Although Woodland Trust have been successful in protecting trees, due to their target audience being young families where parents are aged 30-40, the brief aimed to address issues relating to students aged 14-18.
Scope of work produced
Role
All outcomes of the project.
Identified key reasons why younger audiences should appreciate nature.
​
Discovered opportunities on how an application could be integrated within the campaign to further connect with the target audience.
​
Designed a UX/UI prototype and campaign outcomes to develop an engaging strategy to encourage change.
Timeline
October - November 2024
6 week project.
01 Research
The starting point
Initial research was to explore Woodland Trust as a brand, regarding their missions, goals values and brand voice, as due to the collaborative nature of the campaign, this would be highly relevant with designs.
Missions & Goals
​
Primary objective is to conserve, restore and re-establish trees. This is ultimately driven by the aim to amplify the public's enjoyment regarding their experiences at the protected woodlands.
​
​​
Values
Protect
Prevent the loss of significant habitats which also act as carbon stores, for a healthier, more sustainable future.
Restore
Restore damages ancient woods, aiding the reproduction of its habitats, and improving the resilience of the landscape.
Create
Planting native trees to create quality native woods to benefit the environment and thus the climate.
Care
Care for over 1,000 woods, aiming to inspire a love for nature among the public.
Pain points
Exploring some relevant pain points within the selected target audience, and exploring how the environment interacts with this.
Much research related to the prevalence of mental health issues among the selected demographic, inspiring further exploration into how the environment can improve wellbeing.
Mental health foundation:
​
70% of UK adults agreed that close proximity to nature improves their mood.
Mental health foundation:
​
45% of individuals would contest that green spaces, such as woodlands, helped them through the pandemic.
Jayde Loeuy (2022):
​
Expressive arts, through communication tends to harbour a deep emotional resonance with its viewers, fostering great personal development. It is proven through visual agencies that depression and anxiety, can be improved
02 Define
Meet our target user
Like other projects, in order to aid the defining process of the project to inspire outcomes, based on reserach, a persona was created to represent the target user.
Stakeholders
Due to the time provided to complete the project, an in-depth competitive analysis was not able to be done, however research into competition to find a gap was completed.
Projects tend to be led by sketches and infographics to simplify information, as well as aiding development of a visual language.
Brainstorming ideas
How might we...
Convey the importance of the environment on human well-being and health?
How might we...
Target and attract attention from a younger audience?
How might we...
Create engaging and emotive visuals to enrich the Woodland Trust Charity's existing features?
03 Ideate
Initial ideation sketches exploring compositional styles for a campaign poster to 'spring board' ideas.
Colour palette was heavily inspired by the Don Norman's theory of 'Emotional Design', where colour theory inspired the use of cool, subdued hues to enhance senses of calm and tranquility.
04 Design
Final poster aimed to convey Woodlands to be the 'key' to resolution and happiness. The typeface and visual language aimed to introduce a somewhat informal aspect to designs in order to connect with the target users, whilst also advertising the EcoMind meditation app.
The campaign is also proposed to be promoted through Woodland Trust sites across England and Wales, promoting the application as well as further communicating the importance of the environment on human well-being.
05 Final UI
The application, speculatively designed in collaboration with the Woodland Trust charity, aims to encourage younger audiences to turn to nature for a new found peace and tranquility, aiming to encourage progressive transformations towards woodland conservation among this target user group.
An overview of the interfaces
06 Learnings
Engaging a new audience
A key challenge within this project was working to engage a different demographic to who the 'Woodland Trust' typically market towards, whilst also incorporating their existing brand scheme and sustaining their brand 'Tone of Voice'.
To tackle this, the concept direction is what was redirected, creating a campaign which engages with the target population through depicting the significance nature has in improving such a prevalent issue among this demographic.