The job
Mirai is the title of an app/brand I created for my Major Research Project at university. For the project I was tasked with selecting a topic of interest to me, conducting research on the subject and then creating a design piece. The topic I chose was climate change/the climate crisis, which I chose because it is a subject I’m passionate about and feel it’s something that people acknowledge but still don’t take seriously enough.
Skills
UX/UI design
Branding
Outcome
After conducting research around climate change, both into the subject itself and the creative responses to the issue, I felt that designing something to promote change was the best solution. From this I decided to work on an app that was aimed at young people as they have proven to both be more aware of their environmental impact and also more willing to make changes in their life for the betterment of the planet.
When creating the app it was important that it was easy for people to understand and use so there were many iterations that I had people test to get feedback and alter the design until I had a UI that was easily understandable and users could navigate without issue.
The app helps promote change by asking people what issues matter to them in particular when they create an account then giving them a feed tailored to their preferences of events to take part in, news, as well as links to donate directly to charities creating change in areas that the users feels are important. The user can also add goals to their profile and keep track of them to track their own progress towards building a better world for the future.
The name ‘mirai’ was selected because of the idea of building a better future as it means ‘future’ in Japanese.
It was important to create a strong brand identity around the app to then develop promotional material for the app to ensure it was advertised well to the target audience, I made posters to go along with the app that featured bold figures on our environmental impact and pushed people to ‘join the cause’ in helping fight for change.