An interactive app that makes the complex process of analysing business's greenhouse gasses simple.
UX/UI Design
Personal Project
Project brief
More and more businesses are interested in their carbon emissions and how they can practice a more renewable form of business. Doing an extensive carbon emission analysis requires extensive knowledge, time and labour. The questions around this project is how might we design a tool that enables business owners to gain a better insight into their emissions.
Design Process
During this project I aimed to develop my prototypes digitally as it would be easier for me to user test. I also learned Figma to develop the prototypes.
Research
For this project I first did research into conventional GHG emissions calculations. Usually these calculations start with analysing the transportation within the business and its energy use.
These are the so called Scope 1 & 2 emissions following the GHG protocol. Scope 3 emissions cover the remaining emissions that account for the emissions that are generated from suppliers to the emissions that are generated when the goods or services are used and disposed of. Doing a full lifecycle analysis, meaning covering scope 1,2 and 3 emissions, can be cumbersome and sometimes difficult to complete. Several tools and software are available making this complex problem easier. However, none of them seemed to have an app to make it more accessible for businesses to analyse its emissions.
Ideation & user tests
Eventually, I arrived at recycled cork as one of the materials. This first material was chosen as the used corks of wine bottles could ideally be used as source material. This relative unused material in the furniture industry could furthermore highlight this iconic process. Fabric on the other hand is used in various lights. It has the unique characteristics of flexible form and transperancy. Furthermore, currently a lot of fabric is being wasted and ends up in landfills. I wanted to give this fabric a second or even third life.
After winning the competition another round of ideation led to the adjustment of choosing wood as the replacement of cork. The colour of the fabric was also adjusted. To get a good understanding of the different materials, their properties and qualities I requested various samples from local suppliers. These can be seen in the pictures below.
Final concept
To make this process easier the Carbon Calculator aims to simplify calculating business emissions by allowing these calculations to be done via an app instead of extensive web- or desktop applications.
The information you put in in stored in 4 different categories: Energy, Transport, Suppliers and Products.
A progress bar indicates which step you are in during the calculations.
Products from supplies and goods or services that you produce are easy to add and edit.
Information on the data is under the touch of a button.
Carbon Calculator Prototype
Interested? Try it out!
This is an interactive prototype you can use your mouse or finger to navigate the prototype. If you click on the screen and the button lights up blue, you can interact with it. You can use the app in full screen mode.
Note, the function of this prototype is to emulate the user experience, not to do the calculations itself.
Press F for full screen mode, ESC to exit.
Or
Click the button bellow