Reducing the Footprint Behind Your Footprints Around Town

By Beatrix Teng, Priti Das, Krithika Satish, Himani Nijhawan

Problem and Solution Overview

The transportation industry is one of the biggest contributors to global warming. 27% of 2020 greenhouse gas emissions were from the transportation sector, making it the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States (1). Unfortunately, individuals still do not have access to technology in which they can easily monitor their carbon footprint from their transportation. Consequently, it is harder to compare and select more sustainable modes of transportation that work for the individual’s needs.

Our team, Sustainable Slay, wants to create a platform that allows people to monitor the carbon emissions from their transportation, and then provide them greener alternatives to travel to their specific destinations.

Design Research Goals, Stakeholders, and Participants

Our stakeholders are individuals curious about their carbon footprint, how it relates to their daily transportation, and how they can reduce it. For our research, we pursued UW students aged 18–22 who live in the U-District and have access to a car. We chose this group of people because these individuals would often commute, tend to have both consistent and inconsistent elements to their schedule, and have multiple transportation options that include driving.

Our first research method was surveys because we could collect, in a short amount of time, large amounts of quantitative data about individual transportation use, as well as carbon emission tracking wants and needs. Our surveys were administered online through a Google form, shared through a url, spread through word-of-mouth, and were flexible on timing (participants could complete them whenever they wanted).

Our second research method was interviews because we could ask more in-depth and specific questions about the participant’s current daily transportation and how they feel about monitoring their carbon emissions and using technology to make more environmentally-friendly options. We interviewed survey participants that opted to be interviewed.

Summary of Design Research Results

We ended up collecting survey data on 10 individuals and conducting interviews on 4 individuals. Our research shows that most people do not consider environmental impacts of their transportation choices when planning their daily commutes. However, they do agree that they would switch to more environmentally friendly options if those options were just as convenient, cheap, and time-efficient.

Emerging Themes and Implications on Our Design

Activities Outside of U-District
40% of our survey participants and all of our interview participants travel outside of the U-District on a weekly basis. They do this to visit family, to get to their jobs or hobbies, or to eat at restaurants. The light rail is a free option, but it does not go far north or far east, places that our participants indicated they travel to. The King County Metro system also does not cover every area of Seattle. Participants therefore often opt to drive or use Ubers to access the locations outside the U-District. This means that our design solution must consider multiple modes of sustainable transportation that enable commuters to reach places that typical public transportation cannot get to, like bicycles, carpool vehicles, or electric Ubers.

Willingness to be Sustainable, Lack of Action
30% of our survey participants do not try to use environmentally sustainable methods when planning their daily commute. Our interview participants also do not prioritize more environmentally sustainable transportation options, and that considering greener options is often an afterthought. However, they do acknowledge that they are open to more sustainable options provided that solutions come easy to them. This means that our design needs to give users options that either make their lives easier or are just as convenient as what they already use. Our interface design must also have a very low learning curve so as to not be a hindrance in anyone’s attempt to go greener.

Things Considered when Deciding Transportation Method
70% of our survey and interview participants said that weather is a factor in deciding which mode of transportation to take. 60% of our survey and interview participants said that they value ease over speed while 40% said that they value speed more. In the free response section of our survey, 3 people also mentioned that if the distance was too far, they would take a bus as opposed to walking. This shows that there are a variety of transportation methods, and the choice to take any of them depends on a multitude of factors. In our design, we have to account for these factors and enable users to consider carbon emissions as one of the factors.

Proposed Design

Our proposed design is a mobile app that intelligently tracks an individual’s carbon footprint as they travel through the world and quickly offers them a variety of greener alternatives to travel. This will allow people to analyze their own impact on the environment, and then feel empowered to reduce it as they weigh the environmental, monetary, time, and convenience costs of their travel options. We also wanted to create an app because most people between 18–22 would be able to access it easily. Adults within this age range are also mostly studying or working individuals who have autonomy over their transportation options and have the power to change them should they want to.