How we are using Technology to make Greener decisions at work?
As ITV set out it’s Environmental targets in August, I found myself wondering how someone like me could play a part in the Carbon Emission reductions?
I’m currently on a technology secondment working with the Scheduling Tech team in Leeds and luckily for me a discussion took place about what we could work on for our final project. One suggestion was looking at how we could bring in data from the National Grid’s Carbon Intensity API(an API is Application Programming Interface, allowing two applications to talk to each other)
Finally, I thought, a tool that helps people feel in control. If we could use data from the National Grid’s Carbon intensity API, it could aid colleagues around the business to make greener decisions at work. Using the icon or app to help identify when is or isn’t a good time to be charging your Mac, for instance, but also helps people be mindful of the appliances in their homes too, having an effect on colleague’s carbon consumption at home.
All three secondees agreed this was the project we wanted to work on, the main reason being the obvious benefit it could bring to the business.
We had four weeks to come up with an idea, investigate how other areas around the business could feed into the idea, design it, create it and hand it over to a team to maintain it.
Our first discussion as a group was; what can we deliver in this time?
We decided to focus on creating an app, we knew the deadline may not allow for a completed app, so we prepared a Proof of Concept for the app we wanted to create.
We thought a desktop app or a Chrome Extension that brought in the data from the API would be a good product for ITV colleagues. We thought a dynamic app Icon would be useful. Using a traffic light system of Green = low, Amber = ok and Red = high, users of the app can see at a glance what the emissions are like in their area.
We put ourselves into roles that represented the type of skills we’ve been learning during our secondment. My roles were Product Owner, Agile Delivery Manager and Business Analyst, Peter Handley’s roles were Infrastructure, Architect and Business Analyst and Keisha Hunt’s role was Platform Engineer and Developer.
The App
Pete was able to mock up a design that displayed as much of the data from the API as possible.
A) This is where you would enter your region and be able to see the information for your local area. The map also shows the green, amber, and red indicators to provide details for the whole country at a glance.
B) Here is where you come for hints and tips regarding the current usage level. If red, it will advise you to stop charging up your appliances. If green, you will receive advice on using heavier usage type tasks now. The background colour will be representative of the current usage flag.
C) Here is a pie chart showing what type of energy is currently being used, be it coal, wind or another renewable energy source.
D) The forecast section of the app will identify times in the day when emissions are low and bigger usage type task can be scheduled for then.
With this design, it was easy to imagine the app and it’s functionality but now Keisha had the difficult task of creating what we wanted the app to do and look like, no easy feat. Here’s a few words from Keisha on what went into the process;
I was really excited to build a whole application totally from scratch and so I set about beginning to code. Initially I drew up a bunch of tickets on the project Trello Board that needed to be done in order to get to the MVP stage for both the frontend and backend services, giving us an idea of what may be achievable in the four weeks allocated to the project.
I decided to start on the backend service and chose to code in Kotlin — a language I was comfortable writing in. By the end of week 1 I had a working back end service which was calling the carbon intensity api, returning the data I needed and sending that back out ready to be consumed by the frontend services.
Turning to the frontend section, I have only ever worked on web applications so it was exciting and challenging to work on something different! I did an initial spike on how a chrome extension might work for our project and it looked fairly promising. However, after a couple of conversations and meetings, we changed course and decided to pursue a front end UI in the form of a desktop app. As I have never written a desktop app before, I did a bit of investigation into how it all worked and it seemed like it would work well for our project. I was recommended Electron as a starting point and so began using Electron with React to write this UI.
However, as always happens, I realised a couple of days into the frontend development that Electron and React weren’t quite gelling in the way I had hoped they might! Fortunately, since I had already set up a codebase for a chrome extension, it was easy enough to lift out my code and plug it into there to continue the progress.
Our focus was on a Proof of Concept (a realisation of an idea, in order to demonstrate its feasibility), hoping we could partner it with the UI (user interface) Keisha had created to show exactly how the actual app would look and function. We would then handover to a different tech team who could, with some time, develop the app we had designed.
What’s next?
After presenting our proof of concept to the Technology Green team showing what we’ve achieved in 4 weeks. We’ve now been asked to present it to Green Steering Group— hopefully taking our proof of concept to a full app which will help the whole business!
We sincerely hope our app, once developed and deployed, helps colleagues feel like they’re playing their part in contributing towards the company’s environmental targets.
