CarbonCulture

The CarbonCulture platform was developed with the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) and tested in a closed research pilot from July 2011 to January 2012 achieving a phenomenal 32% uptake across the department.

CarbonCulture is a project by More Associates, a startup which saves energy in workplaces through visualising energy patterns and creating interventions of behavioural change. CarbonCulture's basic product line is energy graphs and widgets to display the organisation's energy consumption. The CarbonCulture platform combines a research phase and the development of web applications, targeting specific actions to reduce energy through gamification elements and the application of behavioural change theory.

In 2011 the CarbonCulture platform was developed and piloted together with DECC, during which four web applications were tested. Scrunch - saving energy when working late by encouraging employees to move to one part of the building. Foodprints - helping people to eat more healthily whilst eating food with less carbon. OK commuter - a game allowing people to record and tag their journeys to work, and lastly Go2 - a business travel app showing the carbon intensity of business travel of the organisation. All of these interventions are part of a service system of and communication to gain engagement and uptake.

"One of the most empathy-driven user-centred behaviour change projects out there: a fascinating, blend of contextual user research, rapid iterations of new features and approaches, adapting to the needs and interests of a whole range of stakeholders."

Dan Lockton, Research by Intent.

My Role

Process from start to finish

When I joined the team the design research phase at the Department of Energy and Climate change was about to start. This allowed me to see the entire process through: giving input in the design of the engagement process, conducting interviews, synthesising findings, designing materials and planning codesign workshops, creating prototypes, planning wireframes and user flows, doing usability testing, refining the visual identity of apps; and detailing the service experience on- and offline. As part of this entire process I worked closely together with developers for build, test and iterated the applications and was involved in the detailing and execution of the pilot.

Main Responsibility

The biggest chunk of work was detailing the Scrunch app and planning its roll out. For this I learnt the user experience process from writing user specifications, to wireframing, creating user flows, paper prototyping to testing and finally coordinating with developers the build and with visual designers to refine the visual identity.

Scrunch

From about 6 o'clock the number of employees drop to less than 5% which means all the lights remain on, but the sensors recognise too little movement requiring employees to wave at light ever so often if they don't want to sit in darkness.

As a solution, Scrunch addresses both issues. It's a comfortable evening work space, a quiet, bright cafe-like area for employees to move to after hours with free tea, coffee and cold fresh lemonade on hot days. The Scrunch app records who's there and gives the option of 'going home on time' to also reward the people who finished on time and thus help to save carbon. The Scrunch integrates elements of social proof, records actions and subtle elements of gamification.

Community Blog & Management

I'm fascinated by processes and think it's essential to capture learning and documenting decisions. For CarbonCulture I ran the closed community blog, published findings and informed about progress. I also did quite a bit of community management, responding to emails with questions or suggestions, and spoke to employees to raise awareness of the CarbonCulture app.

Official Report

In Sept 12 (TSC) an official report will be published reflecting on the process and showing of the successes of the pilot, consisting of a short PDF and a full length web report. For this I coordinated the visual designer to create a teaser PDF and researched and picked a wordpress theme, curated the visual and structural content and coordinated changes to structure and layout with our front-end developer.

CoDesign Workshops

I planned the codesign workshops, prepared all required materials and co-facilitated one of the brainstorm groups visualising their ideas in storyboards and prompting questions on how to overcome barriers.

The workshops agenda included introduction, sharing key findings and a short presentation by Dan Lockton in behavioural change aspects to feed into the brainstorm process. Six fantastic ideas were generated by the thirty participants.

Synthesis

I assimilated all the findings from postcards, arrows and conversations into four categories of opportunities: Attitudes/Behaviour, Well-being/Comfort, Social Structures/Pressures and Building/ Technology opportunities. From these I drafted nine design opportunities to prompt the codesign brainstorms. These prompts were phrased as future visions rather than questions to have a positive starting point for ideas.

Achievements

• Working on many different aspects of the projects under a tight time schedule on unfamiliar topics
• Interdisciplinary team working - working with game and visual designers, front and backend developers and researchers
• Coordinating an R&D project branch of Empower, a TSB (Design and Strategy Board) funded project
• Planning, implementing and tweaking the pilot roll out and that of individual interventions and services
• Communicating purpose and conducting interviews across the organisation

The Team

UX designers: Alice Tyler, Fee Schmidt-Soltau | Visual Designers: Adam Dudd, Lex Sommer | Developers: Andy Kilner, Alecs Geuder, Jon Smith, Alex Kelly | Researcher: Dan Lockton, Alice Tyler, Fee Schmidt-Soltau | Project Management: Tim Barrow Williams, Alice Tyler | Copy Mistress: Sonya Devine | Director: Luke Nicolson