airPALS
A service educating Pittsburgh families on air quality and its impact on asthma.
Role
UX Designer
Team
Katherine Diaz, Zaki Harris,
Xiang (Olivia) Li, Sommer Schnelle
Duration
Fall 2019
8 Weeks
— Problem
How might we educate families in Pittsburgh with children who have asthma on the impact of air quality?
Air pollution strongly influences childhood asthma. But, there is a general lack of knowledge on the impact of poor air quality on asthma conditions among parents. There is also no sufficient method for monitoring realtime air quality data.
— SOLUTION
Introduce airPALS
Our end-product is a friendly smart educational app and a portable air quality meter in the form of a smart watch.
airPALS allows for children to interact with Penny the Penguin to learn about how air quality impacts their bodies and their day-to-day activities.
Parents use the devices together with their children, building a method for communication on air quality related information.
— Context
Poor air quality in Pittsburgh correlates with high rate of childhood asthma.
Guided by United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal #13 Climate Action, our project started from examining climate-related issues in Pittsburgh, PA.
Today, adults in Pittsburgh are largely skeptical of the poor air quality in Pittsburgh, as they had experienced Pittsburgh with worse air quality and are not fully aware of its harmful effects. However, Pittsburgh continues to rank among the poorest air quality rankings. It is ranked the 7th worth in year-round particle pollution across the nation.
In addition, Pittsburgh has a high rate of childhood asthma - 10% in average and 22% in areas with particularly poor air quality - while the national average is 7.5%.
In Pittsburgh, the Children’s Hospital sees 300-400% more asthma-related hospital visits in a year than the national average.
— Research
The Relationship between Air and Asthma
Based on the statistics, it is evident that children with asthma living in the Pittsburgh area experience the consequences of unhealthy air. However, it was unclear what caused the prevailing problem of high asthma rate and poor air quality.
To uncover the why, we conducted series of interviews with members of the Pittsburgh community, medical professionals and environmentalists from local organizations.
Examining the inconsistency in air quality data
Although there exist a number of platforms where the public can access the air quality index (AQI) reading, two prevalent sources, PurpleAir and AirNow.gov present mismatching data for real time AQI. These sources only give a general idea of the air quality and are inadequate in describing how it fluctuates throughout the day.
As depicted in the above comparison, taken at the same moment on the same day, the AQI in Pittsburgh is yellow according to AirNow.gov and mostly red based on Purple Air.
— Define
Design Challenge
How might we design an accessible product for children with asthma and their parents to better understand the harmful effects of poor air quality on asthma, while helping parents with managing their kid’s asthma on an everyday basis?
Key Insights
01 Large communication gap
02 Lack of awareness of the severity/ No strong motivation
03 Lack of knowledge/ Inaccurate information
Personas
User Journey
— Ideate
Paper Prototypes
Wireframes
— Solution
Illustration
Portable Air Quality Meter
To effectively communicate about live air quality data with kids and share the data with parents, we have a portable air quality sensor and GPS functionality in the form of a watch. The watch ensures that it is easy for kids to have on them at all times. The data collected by the watch will be fed to a data page on our app that parents can easily access.
Mobile Application
01 Penny the Penguin
Penny, a penguin from Pittsburgh who also has asthma, makes our solution more appealing to children. Penny’s activity changes based on the air quality at the moment.
02 Display AQI Reading
The main screen provides easy AQI reading with both as a numeric value and a scale indicated by color. There is a detailed description of the AQI number for people who do not know what AQI is and do not understand the scale of the index.
03 Interact with Penny
By playing with Penny together, parents and their children can learn important air quality-related information. They can find out what particles are in the air for that day and directly observe their harmful effects on Penny’s asthma conditions.
To better incentivize children to use the app, we introduced a reward system. The more often users open the app and interact with it, the more stickers are given to users to personalize Penny.
04 View Live Air Quality Data
In the app, parents can see the varying AQ data collected for a day by the wearable based on time and location. The app also shows the information specifically for a child’s common locations like school and home.
05 Air Quality Community
Users can also report the air quality in their neighborhood, allowing other users to see which areas of the city
Parents and children can view the air quality of nearby app users, educating them about how air quality can drastically change depending on the precise location. For privacy concerns, the app will not allow for the page to be zoomed in to protect the location of the app and watch users.
— Reflection
According to usability testing results with parents who have children with asthma, the feature of tracking air quality data with a portable device is well-received and desired.
If I were to develop the project further, I would conduct more research on the feasibility and practicality of the wearable, looking specifically at how accurately it can reflect the real time air quality as well as the production cost. It is important to make the solution available to those who lack access to adequate healthcare. Therefore, creating a business model and cost analysis would be crucial to the further development of the project.