FINN Miljøbidrag
Summer project 2020
The Team
We are a team of six students who have been trusted with carrying out this year’s summer project at FINN. On the 15th of June, six optimistic students arrived at FINN’s office in Oslo where we would work for eight weeks. Among us were four developers (Anja Rosvold From, Agnar Martin Bjørnstad, Jenny Strømmen and Julian Eliassen Holth) and two UX designers (Tina Mee Johnsen and Camilla Tandrevold Hermanrud) :
The Problem
We were eager to learn more about this summer’s project. During our first briefing, FINN Torget and Motor told us they wanted to communicate the environmental benefit of buying and selling used items on FINN. We were immediately intrigued.
The previous year, Schibsted and Adevinta had created a report known as the Second Hand Effect report. It addresses how much CO2 emissions users potentially saved in 2019 by buying second hand products. The data is based on the idea that when buying an item second hand, you save the emission of producing a new product. By analysing the material composition of selected items in several categories on FINN, the emissions related to production of items in those categories was calculated.
Our task was to expose this data to the individual users of FINN in an understandable way. With this in mind, we created two problem statements we wanted to solve:
How can we motivate people to buy more second hand products?
How can we make people realise how much they save the environment by shopping second hand on FINN?
The Solution
Throughout the process, the main focus was to create something of value to the user. The UX designers on our team iterated on the current solution according to insights from user tests and interviews. This had a major impact on our final solution, and made us capable of making informed decisions about which direction to pursue.
Our solution is “FINN Miljøbidrag”. The concept consists of two parts: “Miljøboksen (The Emission box)” and “Mitt miljøbidrag (My environmental contribution)”. Miljøboksen is a component on the object page of FINN Torget displaying information about how many kgs CO2 you will save by buying this item used, compared to buying a new one.
“Mitt Miljøbidrag” is a web page that holds information about how many kgs of CO2 you have saved, counting from August 2020. When buying or selling an item on FINN, your CO2 savings are increased according to the emission saved displayed in the Miljøboks in the ad. That is, both the seller’s and the buyer’s environmental contribution is increased after a transaction. The aggregated result of a user’s completed sales is then displayed on Mitt Miljøbidrag.
To make this number more understandable, we have implemented comparisons of how much CO2 this figure corresponds to from other emission sources. We compare the users’ savings to airplane flights, distances travelled by car and production of various items.
At the bottom of page, we have included articles from “FINNspirasjon” with tips for how to take care of items you already own. They are included because we do not want to encourage the user to increase their consumption. The goal is that Mitt miljøbidrag should be a motivation to choose used instead of new when you’re already set on buying something, and not to buy more in general.
Unfortunately, we did not have data for every category on FINN Torget, so the item you are buying or selling may not have information about how much emission its production will correspond to. In that case, you would not increase the CO2 on Mitt Miljøbidrag, and your ad will display a general box about environmental savings, like so:
Future work
In the future we would like to implement functionality for reversing emission increases when unmarking a buyer on FINN, as the user can mark the wrong buyer. To do so, the system needs to get a message that there is a new buyer for this item, and hence delete the savings the seller and the first buyer received. We also propose the savings on Mitt Miljøbidrag should be reset every year to avoid incomprehensible figures as sales aggregate, as well as giving the user an annual history of emissions saved and a “fresh start” every year.
Further improvements include linking Mitt Miljøbidrag to the Utslippsboks on the object page and introducing gamification where you can reach different levels based on how much CO2 you have saved. Finally we would like to redesign Min FINN. Min FINN is currently the sole entry point to Mitt Miljøbidrag, and during our process we discovered that the user experience of our solution heavily depends on this page. We believe it would be easier to navigate Min FINN with our proposed design:
In the image above, the current version of Min FINN is at the very left, and in the middle we have redesigned the links and added icons so that it is easier for the user to navigate. At the right is our ideal Min FINN layout, where Mitt Miljøbidrag has a special design which stands out.
What about home office?
Due to Covid-19 we had to work remote, which has been a great learning experience.
The first week we met in person, and focused on having social events to get to know each other. Subsequently, we only met at the office on Mondays. These days were used to plan the rest of the week and always followed with a social event like board games, Escape room, minigolf, etc. We also had a scheduled coffee break where we played Skribbl.io every Wednesday, which was really fun.
The rest of the week we worked from home, and used different channels like Google Meets, Slack, Discord, etc., to communicate. We especially want to highlight Discord as a great tool for communication, as it allows you to simulate an actual office by using voice-channels to collaborate. All in all, we learnt how to become an effective remote team, and that home office has its perks.
You can see a full presentation of the project here:
Thank you!
We want to thank everyone who has helped us during the project, especially our mentors.
All the best,
Anja Rosvold From
Agnar Martin Bjørnstad
Julian Eliassen Holth
Tina Mee Johnsen
Camilla Tandrevold Hermanrud
Jenny Strømmen
