Web apps with sustainability goals
For the last 15 years I have worked for software consultancies, design agencies, and product companies designing web and mobile applications. My primary focus the last few years has been design for sustainability. In software this translates to science-driven products that harness big data for good. Through this work I have researched sustainability concerns across diverse industries, including maritime shipping, agriculture, retail, and the building sector. Below is a sampling of these projects.
Starbucks
Several years ago I worked for a company called Green River that helped Starbucks implement their Coffee and Farmer Equity (C.A.F.E.) Practices, a set of ethical sourcing standards. Over time, Starbucks had a warehouse of data on their farms' environmental, social, and economic impact. However, the information was siloed and not being analyzed as a whole. We pitched them on a business intelligence application that would consolidate all of this data, allowing them to see it in aggregate and extract learnings from it.
Starbucks green lit the project and I designed this tool in conversation with members of their Agronomy team. We provided them with valuable insights that were previously not visible, like outbreaks of rust and pests that could now be viewed over time and across geography. This became a critical tool for internal decision making, and one they were overjoyed to have at their disposal.
US Green Building Council
The US Green Building Council had an existing website called GBIG, the Green Building Information Gateway which served as a directory for green building professionals. Guilty of low customer retention, I was asked to conduct research and interviews to tease out how to make the product more successful. We saw that users set up a profile but didn't have a hugely compelling reason to return. At the same time, the site's blog had regularly updating content which they were not highlighting. My recommendation was to invert the Information Architecture, pulling content from deeper in the site to surface on the homepage, and make GBIG into a resource for important news, networking, and professional development. GBIG already had valuable content, they just weren't showcasing it. In addition, I audited their UX/UI, making the site more modular, flexible, and clean. Finally, I updated their brand to have a more design-forward aesthetic to appeal to architects and other creative professionals.
GoodGuide
GoodGuide is a sustainability data company providing scientific ratings to consumers on the health, environmental, and social impacts of consumer packaged goods. When I joined GoodGuide they had an existing product that wasn't performing well. User research we conducted revealed that our customers cared most about the ingredients and health effects of the products they and their family use on a daily basis. This research then informed more streamlined products focused exclusively on these very human concerns. A refreshed visual design targets their primary audience of new moms and is designed to play well with the health-conscious products you'd typically see on the shelves at Target.
