Ehope — Ecological Initiatives Platform
A community platform for ecological action in France, with discovery-first navigation, real-value rewards, and an 8-bit hedgehog for empty states.
How do you make a brand-new platform feel alive before it actually is? Ehope connects people across France with local environmental initiatives, events, and actions. The team brought me in with one question: how do you get people to come back and participate when the platform is new and there's barely any content? The job wasn't 'make it look good' — it was build engagement from zero. I proposed the direction: product logic, visual system, and the engagement mechanics that make it feel alive before it is.
Ecological platforms have a tone problem — and Ehope had an empty-shelf problem on top.
They either read like a green NGO brochure nobody opens on a Saturday, or a clean startup page you forget in five minutes. And Ehope had almost no content: a handful of events, a few initiatives — nothing that fills a page convincingly.
So I reframed the question: what if environmental action felt like a community experience, not an obligation? Less 'you should care about the planet,' more 'look what's happening near you — come join.' That question shaped every decision.
Discovery instead of search
Search sounds obvious — until the catalogue is small. Type 'beach cleanup in Marseille', get zero results, and you're gone for good. So I removed it and built guided discovery instead: browse events by date, filter by category, distance and impact, land on curated collections like 'popular this month'. A map view (the PO's idea) shows what's happening nearby. Whatever you click, you always find something — never a dead end.
Two entry points for two users
Logged out, the home page sells: real photos of real people, live proof (32,560 citizens engaged, 1,248 initiatives, 8,940 kg of waste collected), then rewards, calendar, actions, partners — each block pulling you deeper. Logged in, it turns personal: 'Explore what's happening near you, Léa.' Calendar first, then Top Contributors in Your Region — so you see other humans making an impact and think 'I want to be on that list.'
The hedgehog and the emotional layer
The brief had a hedgehog mascot; I redesigned it as an 8-bit pixel character with a matching pixel logo — the only two 8-bit elements in an otherwise clean system. The contrast is the point: a handmade personality inside a polished product. Why pixel? The ecological topic is heavy, and I didn't want another app that makes you feel bad about not recycling. So when a search comes up empty, he appears — 'It's pretty quiet here…' — and points you to popular missions. Even the 404 becomes a moment of warmth ('Console the hedgehog'). Not decoration; the reason you remember the platform.
Rewards that actually mean something
Empty badges retain no one — 'you earned 10 points' with no context does nothing. So I tied participation to real value: partner discounts, exclusive workshops, leaderboard visibility. The motivation shifts from 'I should help the planet' to 'I want to grow my impact and see where I stand.' Duty exhausts; habit brings people back — and turns goodwill into a predictable, growing user base.
Navy blue as the foundation. Blue gives stability and trust — and for a platform asking people to give their time, trust is everything.
Orange for action. Blue alone feels distant, so every call-to-action is high-saturation orange. Blue is where you learn; orange is where you act.
Real human imagery. Real faces, real events — no stock illustration. When you see actual people doing actual things, the gap between "I could do this" and "I want to do this" gets smaller.
Bold type, soft geometry. Large bold headlines create urgency; rounded shapes keep it welcoming — a movement that still feels safe for people who don't already care about ecology.
I was brought in for one thing: to show how a brand-new ecological platform earns participation before it has a community. Every decision answered that — discovery over search, a two-tier home page, the emotional layer, rewards tied to real value.
The discipline was designing around what the platform doesn't have yet. Removing search felt wrong on paper and right in practice: the honest constraint was an empty catalogue, not a missing feature. You design for the content you actually have — and for an ecological cause, you make it feel like a movement people want to join, not a duty they should.
What I'd validate next: the reward system carries the most assumptions. The signals I'd watch — sign-up to first-event conversion, 30-day return visits, and empty-state recovery (how many who meet the hedgehog keep browsing). The one that matters most: whether someone who came for one cleanup comes back for a second — the moment participation turns into belonging.