Eco Mint
Carbon Footprint tracker
UX Design
Introduction
What does Marta, Anneliese and Andrew have in common? They all care about environment and are concerned about people’s carbon footprint.
This sprint’s objective was to choose any subject, apply UX techniques to explore it and see if there are any opportunities there.
Our ideation session brought us couple of ideas: from public parking app to ideation app to giving platform to all artists. Eventually idea of creating an app that would somehow help users be aware of their Carbon Footprint emerged and stayed.
Research
We started the research with market analysis. Anything that we could find about carbon footprint — we did. Major find was the Barkley’s College program called Cool Climate where it calculated personal Carbon Footprint based on the survey a person answered using Life Cycle Assessment. We also looked at companies providing that information and companies that market themselves to be environmentally friendly. We continued with sending out surveys and followed up with interviews. We also talked to an environmental engineer to get a better understanding of this subject.
Our Market Analysis gave us an understanding of who our competitors are and what they offer. We found out that there is a lot of information about Carbon Footprint however it is extremely difficult to understand and digest to regular user. To know their own carbon footprint the users need to enter a lot of manual data in a survey like questions to get a comprehensive number. However, such number does not mean much to the person except knowing that it is good or bad. To get a better understanding what this number means a person would need to find some kind of conversion calculator that would translate the number to something a person can understand. The example is a section at the EPA website where user can enter the data and it shows the usage in understandable and meaningful numbers. For example: how many miles a car would drive to produce such amount of Carbon Footprint. EPA also has a personal Carbon Footprint calculator however, as other websites, it is difficult to understand.
The feature analysis led us to conclusion that there is only one true leader in that market called OroEco. However, after closer look it seemed that the app that was build was not working correctly. OroEco tried to integrate Mint’s (budget app) financial data to calculate personal carbon footprint in a real time. Tried, because it was not successful. The app and website was extremely buggy making completion of any tasks impossible. Even connection to Mint, the company’s stable and primary purpose — was not working.
Other companies like Nest were marketing their products as money savers and environmentally friendly by conserving the energy, however they concentrated mainly on the goal of saving the energy and recording the data and not calculation Carbon Footprint.
The Pitch
The market analysis gave us a good understanding of our competitors and who can help us get our product out to the world. We explored few possibilities. We thought of Tesla because of their constant environmental efforts. Nest was also in the picture because of their popularity among both money savers and environmentally conscious groups.
Eventually we chose Mint, a budget app that brings person’s financial data under one roof and helps create budget. The reason we chose Mint was that it could provide us with financial information that we needed to calculate personal Carbon Footprint. It had customer base of 20 million and growing, and the app had very natural and easy feel to it. Also, Mint’s logo is a leaf. :) We believed that with Mint’s backing we were able to engage their customer base with more environmentally friendly behavior.
Hence, we named our new product:
The Survey & Interviews
We send out the Survey as soon as possible. We wanted to know if people care about the environment, what do they do about it and do they use any environmentally friendly products. Moreover we wanted to know if they track their carbon footprint and if they understand what it means.
Our survey reported that 68% rate the importance of their energy usage as 7 or higher (on a 1 to 10 scale). Also, 90% of survey takers own eco friendly products and 3 in 5 don’t track their energy usage. In addition 45% of users use Mint.
We followed the survey with 8 phone-interviews and did the affinity mapping to synthesize the interviews. The analysis indicated that people were sceptical that their individual actions matters so they didn’t even bother to start. They saw community actions as something very encouraging. People generally liked doing something good for the environment, but they didn’t understand the information about the environment and not seeing the results or impact on the environment right away left them feeling that it is not worth pursuing.
The statements that followed the synthesis were as follow:
“I think my individual actions only matter when others are making them too”
“I like doing things that are good for the environment”
“I think energy is expensive”
“I don’t understand the information around the environment”
“I don’t see my results and impact”
“I like having tools that make accomplishing goals easy.”
The last step was to talk to Ljupka Arsova the environmental engineer who explained a bit more about Life Cycle Analysis. She also suggested for us to visualize the Carbon Footprint data as trees so that it better connects to people. She also gave us a better glimpse at what is currently happening in the world with the pollution. For example, soon, there will be more plastic swimming in the ocean than fish.
The Problem Statement
Our research prepared us to pose our final problem statement:
Increasingly, people want to make better decisions that impact their environmental footprint. Currently available tools lack clarity and proper context for users to fully understand their impact on the environment.
How might we empower the average person with information about their larger environmental impact and make changing their behaviors easy?
The Personas
Our first persona is a typical millennial, who is concerned more about her budget however is increasingly concerned about the environment. She herself doesn’t believe that she can do anything to change it. Her main goals is to reduce her cost of living, keep to her budget and live more sustainably.
Our second persona is middle-aged environmentally friendly Daniel. He loves his children and wants to leave a better world for them. “Sustainability is important to me because I want my children to be able to enjoy what’s left of the natural world.” He appreciates any technology that will help him save on bills (Eg. Next).
The User’s Journey
Our User’s journey is very emotional. Our Anne wants to find out more about her personal carbon footprint. She searches through internet however she does not understand any of the information. She tries to google it and the first item that pops up is OroEco. Anne tries to log in 4 times but the app kicks her out because it is very buggy. Anne sadly gives up her efforts.
The Mint vs EcoMint
Mint and Eco mint have many similarities.
How is it done
EcoMint would connect to it’s sister app — Mint and retrieve relevant information like user’s utility bills, grocery amounts etc…
That amount would first go through calculation using Cool Climate to obtain Carbon Footprint data. That data would be shown to the user with relatable example of what it means using EPA calculations. Next, the user would be able to set and monitor his/her goals and receive tips on how to save the CO2.
We believe that we constant encouragement and motivation and most of all — information — the users would be able to continually do better month over month.
Feature Prioritization
We timeboxed a design studio where we accumulate number of ideas and features we wanted to implement. Since there were more ideas than time to implememt them we had to prioritize them using Moscow metrix
For our current rollout we would only concentrate on Utilities, but with the second rollout transportation, shopping and food bills would be added. The app would also have more of a social impact with Chatrooms, community goals and challenges added.
The iterations
Our prototype went through multiple iterations. As indicated on the pictures below we went back to the drawing board after each usability testing. For the Overview page the information was clunky and confusing. On the second iteration the progress bar was not understood by users. Our last iteration showed clear dashboard what was well received by users.
The Prototype
https://projects.invisionapp.com/share/27DTRY1CQ#/screens
The prototype still needs some work but users already could work on it and do basic tasks like adding goals and tracking it on the next visit.
The Conclusion
I learned from this project that the subject of carbon footprint is a difficult one. The information is confusing and difficult to understand. There is a need though which is encouraging.
The most rewarding quote we received was at our third usability testing. The user said: “This app doesn’t make me feel anxious. It actually makes me feel hopeful”.
