Ecoliv - A step towards sustainability
As part of our Design Innovation Project (DIP) course, our group developed Ecoliv, a concept for an application aimed at promoting environmental awareness and action. Using the design thinking process, we created a solution that calculates an individual's carbon footprint through a survey and offers personalized recommendations to reduce it. The app leverages two key motivators—accountability and gamification—to inspire users to adopt sustainable habits and make meaningful lifestyle changes.
Associated with : MIT World Peace University, Pune
Team of 5 designers
Desk research, Wireframing, Prototyping, Usability testing
Duration : 12 weeks
Overview
Climate change is not a problem for the future. It is happening now. It has intensified in recent years because of rising fossil fuel use, which has greatly boosts carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. The main drivers of climate change are how we generate electricity, heat, and transportation, as well as our built environments, industrial activities, land use, and consumption patterns.
What can we do?
Carbon footprint is a valuable tool for measuring the contribution to climate change by an individual, organizations, products and services. We can monitor and measure our carbon footprint at an individual level to address the climate change problem. Some people produce more footprint than others, we need to understand our own contribution and tackle the problem to reduce our emission to attain carbon neutral at individual level.
There is a gap between people’s intentions to make a change and their lack of knowledge on where to start. The product aims to create awareness and motivate everyone to take small steps towards reducing their carbon footprint.
Why is it important?
Calculating carbon footprint helps quantify our impact on the environment. It helps understand our primary source of emission and assists us to make informed decisions toward reducing our footprint. Climate change is a global issue that impacts all sectors of society. We must prioritize addressing it before tackling other challenges. Hence, the principal goal is to fight against climate change and promote sustainability.
Problem statement
“ Despite growing concerns about climate change, there is a significant gap in public understanding and awareness of individual carbon footprints. Many people are unaware of how their daily activities—such as transportation choices, energy consumption, and dietary habits—contribute to carbon emissions. This lack of awareness prevents individuals from taking informed actions to reduce their environmental impact. Additionally, even those who are aware often find it difficult to measure their carbon footprint or access reliable tools and resources to track and reduce it “
Hypothesis
“ Awareness about carbon footprint is often limited due to a lot of factors. It can be complex and difficult to understand, with poor educational resources and its access to the public. Many people prioritise immediate problems over long-term environmental issues. People struggle to understand the importance of individual emissions & connect their personal actions to the betterment of environment “
Increasing carbon footprint awareness among individuals and organizations can lead to a measurable reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and support effective climate change reducing efforts. Awareness can educate people on how their daily activities impact carbon emissions, there can be a change towards more sustainable practices, which in turn can contribute to a decrease in overall emissions and help to minimize climate change.
Research
Going in the research process from left to right increased our confidence in what we were building as we were able to pressure test a few hypothesis (formed by going through the desk research) against the valuable data received from the survey. There are a few questions without hypothesis where the main goal was to collect relevant data (which is backed by evidence and research) and use it for Ecoliv.
Desk Research
Relevant questions based on each of the hypothesis from desk research were added in the survey
questionnaire. The questions were thought-provoking and were designed in such a way that the participants were positively engaged and answered almost unbiasedly. The survey was kept intentionally short to avoid any mid-way frustrations. We compared the desk research hypothesis and survey insights and updated the hypothesis accordingly. These hypothesis were then leveraged to narrow down to research outcomes which will fuel our ideation process.
Personas
We created 5 personas which ideally represented our target age group 18 to 50 years. (Swipe to see all)
Journey maps
Further, we took one scenario each for all our personas and created individual journey maps for all. This helped us in finding the hidden opportunities and understand their expectations. (Swipe to see all)
Finding right solutions is a task
The most frustrating part in the journey of our personas was finding a correct way from a plethora of information to reduce carbon footprint and the amount of time it took. Moreover finding solutions which are tailored as per what they can do was very time-consuming.
Prototypes
Onboarding quiz
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Personalised solution based on report
Take a quiz to get personalised suggestions :​
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Ecoliv suggests personalised solution suggestions based on the responses given in the quiz (consisting of 15 questions) by the individual. If someone chooses to skip the onboarding quiz, they are redirected to a general solution list.
Keeping motivation high with challenges​
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Ecoliv brings interesting challenges to the table for its user based on their answers from the quiz. It keeps them engaged with ranking based on the number of points earned in a challenge they undertook.
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Get to know the details of your tasks​
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After selecting a particular task, users can get all the details like amount of carbon emission, approximate money saved (by doing the task), no. of people who tried the task already in a single place. They can also read reviews posted by other task doers.
Stay updated and accountable using feed​
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Users can stay accountable by posting photos of their tasks and challenges when completed to gain points. Also they can see what other friends from their eco-circle are upto.
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(Full Prototype Ecoliv)
Usability testing
We then tested our prototype with 3 users to find usability problems if any and resolve them
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My Learnings
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The importance of pre-deciding and finalizing wireframes, icons, typography, color scheme and even the feel of the application before hi-fidelity wireframes is what I learned after this project. It was even more trickier to maintain consistency across wireframes since we were 5 members altogether.