CarbonScribe
CarbonScribe is a climate tech start-up based in Australia, offering tailored carbon management solutions for food manufacturing companies.
Overview
CarbonScribe helps businesses leverage AI to effectively measure, reduce, and report carbon emissions, achieving measurable reductions in emissions while enhancing profitability. This case study outlines the UX design process for creating an intuitive and efficient platform that enables users to monitor their carbon footprint, set reduction targets, and make informed decisions to mitigate climate change.
UX Team Leader
As the UX Team Leader, my responsibilities included all those of the other UX/UI Designers, as well as managing all deadlines and serving as the primary contact for the CarbonScribe team.
The Goal
The primary objective of this project is to develop a user-friendly interface that simplifies the complex process of carbon tracking and encourages businesses to adopt sustainable practices. The platform aims to empower users with actionable insights and tools to drive meaningful reductions in their carbon emissions.
Problem Statement
Develop a web-based application to help businesses track, manage, and reduce their carbon emissions.
Tools
Figma
Figjam
Riipen
Adobe Creative Suite
Team
1 Team Leader
3 UX Designers
Founder/CEO
1 Environmental Advisor
Timeline
Overall: 10+ weeks
Discovery & Research: 2+ weeks
Design & Development: 4 weeks
Testing & Iterating: 4 weeks
My Role
Team Leader
UX Researcher
Sketches & Design Concept
UI Kit Designer
My Design Process
Research
Secondary Research
After the project kickoff, we defined our research strategy and objectives. Understanding the target audience and their challenges were our priority. This included formative research on the overarching regulations and classifications that comprise the Greenhouse Gas Protocol in Australia.
From this research, we discovered that emissions are categorized into three scopes:
Scope 1 includes all direct emissions from sources owned or controlled by the organization.
Scope 2 includes all indirect emissions from the generation of purchased electricity, heating, and cooling consumed by the organization.
Scope 3 includes all indirect emissions from activities outside the organization's own operations but related to the organization's activities.
Of these three scopes and their respective inclusions, Scope 3 emissions account for 80% of emissions from large companies.
Competitive Research
To familiarize ourselves with current carbon accounting solutions available in the market, we conducted a competitive analysis of the five major Climate-Tech companies that dominate the marketplace. Our analysis focused on evaluating strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities for differentiation within existing carbon accounting platforms and sustainability software. These products significantly influenced the design of our solution.
Sustain Life, Unravel Carbon and Net 0
Among the numerous carbon accounting software options available, we frequently referenced three companies known for their modern and user-friendly approaches. These benchmarks guided our design process, particularly as we integrated the unique AI functionality offered by CarbonScribe.
Interviews
During the Empathize Phase of the project, we reviewed user interviews previously conducted by CarbonScribe earlier that year. The insights gathered were essential for developing new personas and informing the design solution. As a team, we analyzed the user data, extracting crucial details about our target audiences’ values, motivations, and daily routines. For more information, please refer to the next section to view the archetypes generated from the interview data.
Analysis
Personas
To deepen our understanding of users' goals, needs, experiences, and behaviors, our team created three personas for each user segment identified in the affinity map exercise and from user data provided by CarbonScribe. These personas represented categories derived from our research and analysis, making it crucial to prioritize them in all design decisions and updates as more data became available.
Understanding our target audience was essential for designing a seamless and user-friendly solution to alleviate their pain points in the challenging process of reporting carbon emissions.
HMW
As a team, we generated 'How Might We' statements to reframe our problem statements, facilitating efficient, targeted, and innovative Ideation Sessions to tackle our design challenges. It became evident from these statements that simplifying the reporting process for Scopes 1 and 2 was crucial to enhancing the user experience.
Design
Sketches
We initiated our design process with low-fidelity sketches and wireframes, enabling rapid decision-making through clear visual representation. Our sketches were informed by initial user interviews, business goals, and a heuristic evaluation, all of which highlighted excessive distractions in the workflow.
Throughout the design process, we continuously referred back to these sketches, ensuring we stayed aligned with our primary objectives and original concepts.
Wireframes
Using Figma, we transformed our initial sketches into detailed wireframes. We enhanced these wireframes by incorporating relevant stock images and content provided by the CarbonScribe marketing team. At this stage, the wireframes were well-defined enough for preliminary user testing. After conducting four user tests, we made necessary adjustments and moved to creating low-fidelity prototypes.
We created wireframes for:
Reporting tools for Scope 1, 2
Supplier Management screens for scope 3
An analytics insight page
An analytics and home page
We brought these sketches and wireframes to our client and with his approval, we moved on to create Low-Fidelity designs.
Prototype
Low & Mid Fidelity Prototypes
Due to the vast amount of complicated information required for users to navigate, we focused the design of the Low/Mid-fidelity on readability and creating a more accessible breakdown of the information mandated by Australian municipalities.
Our primary target users were small companies who may not have experience reporting emissions and defining scopes. Thus, our prototypes were designed to provide a seamless experience, allowing users to easily upload invoices, conduct outreach, understand their emissions, and get on the right track.
UI Design
Validate
Collaborate
We then brought this design to our client, who provided feedback on accessibility, AI integration, and the user experience of sending, receiving, and processing emissions information.
With this feedback, we felt prepared to create the final prototype that our client will continue building and testing with potential users.
To ensure alignment, we held weekly meetings with the client, keeping our design direction on track.
High Fidelity Prototypes
We conducted another round of user tests with the initial group who evaluated Realtor.com's product at the start of the project. This was to validate design decisions, identify usability issues, and gather suggestions for improvement.
Analytics Dashboard
Real Time Monitoring By Scope
Scope 1 Reporting Interface
Scope 2 Reporting Interface
Scope 3 New Request
Scope 3 Report Request - Mail Interface
Scope 3 Supplier Dashboard
Analytics - Emissions Factor
Next Steps
AI Implementation
This platform is built around the idea that AI will do the heavy lifting when it comes to reporting your businesses emissions. With this platform created to report emissions, the next step would be to implement solutions via AI for businesses to lower their carbon footprint.
Continued Growth
With the UI kit that we provided to the client, they will be able to continue building this platform and enabling businesses, environmental consultants and more to control their emissions.
Learn
Challenges
One of the biggest challenges of this project was understanding the carbon accounting industry. Unfamiliar with its terminology, systems, and units, we dedicated significant time to research and learning about the industry's complexities and difficulties. This foundational knowledge was crucial in shaping our approach and ensuring our solutions were both relevant and effective.
Outcomes
We developed and designed a user-friendly, and great looking prototype for businesses and consultants to not only report their emissions, but eventually offer solutions for large companies to lower their emissions and save the earth.
