Green charity Global Action Plan hopes DesignIT entrants will be able to revamp its web site and improve the potential of its carbon calculator, writes James Mortleman
Microsoft’s DesignIT competition aims to highlight the creative contribution IT professionals can make to society. Part of the competition is an award for the most innovative and effective solution to a charity’s IT problem. The winner will see their design funded to the tune of £15,000.
This year, Computing has teamed up with Microsoft to highlight some of the charity IT problems seeking solutions in the run-up to the awards, although entrants are also free to suggest their own.
This week we focus on pioneering green charity Global Action Plan (GAP), which is hoping DesignIT entrants can come up with a way to revamp and significantly boost the profile and usage of its groundbreaking – but now rather clunky – online carbon calculator.
‘We are a small but innovative charity that has always looked to be ahead of the game. We are particularly excited about the competition bringing in fresh creativity and generating new ideas for us,’ says the charity’s founder and director Trewin Restorick.
GAP was set up in 1993 to help people take practical, everyday action to protect the environment. Restorick says the charity’s aim is to encourage people to make positive changes at home, at work, in schools and in their wider communities.
‘We are interested in helping them reduce their impact on climate change, but we also support them in things such as recycling, reducing water consumption and being more ethical consumers overall,’ he says.
Nine years ago, GAP was the first UK organisation to introduce a carbon calculator – an interactive online tool to help people understand, assess and reduce the amount of the carbon dioxide (CO2) generated as a result of their own lifestyles.
‘We wanted to show people how much CO2 was produced by their travel choices and by the way they ran their homes,’ says Restorick. ‘It was the first time anyone in the UK had heard of the idea of measuring carbon, and it generated a lot of interest.’
But he believes the site needs a major overhaul. ‘When we established the charity, issues such as carbon footprinting and climate change were way down the agenda – if they were on it at all – so we always struggled for resources. Also, the carbon calculator has never quite achieved the right balance between environmental accuracy and usability,’ says Restorick.
‘People have to type a considerable amount of data into online forms before they can be given a meaningful result. For the calculator to be accurate, people need to have information to hand such as fuel bills and the number of miles they have travelled by various means of transport. When flicking through web sites, most people do not have that information at their fingertips, so they have to go away and come back later. That no doubt puts off some potential users.’
In the past few years, online carbon calculators have become widespread and many look far slicker than GAP’s ageing example. ‘If you Google “carbon calculator” today you will find a whole range, but we were concerned about a number of them – for example, some linked to carbon-offset firms,’ says Restorick.
‘Our view is that if we are to truly solve the environmental problems we are facing, offsets should be a last resort, not a quick fix. People’s first steps should be to reduce emissions and invest in new technologies such as renewables.’
Restorick hopes the competition will produce a design for a revamped carbon calculator that gives GAP’s example a lead in terms of usability, functionality and style.
‘We would like it to represent a quantum leap and we would love to see a carbon calculator that reaches a whole new audience,’ he says. ‘The green issue is becoming more mainstream and we do not think the web sites out there reflect that. They all tend to be a bit clunky. We want something that is sexy.’
But the calculator also needs to be highly functional and easy to use. The ability of today’s communications and rich web technologies to draw on different sources of information and link in to people’s own data, different devices and wider online communities means there is huge potential for someone to design a system that establishes GAP’s carbon calculator as the gold standard – and something that Restorick says could go way beyond the traditional web site.
‘We hope it becomes more like a live tool and we want it to deliver results that are relevant to people,’ he says. ‘I would like to think it could be a true driver for change that inspires people to make a real difference.’
To enter the DesignIT competition, visit: www.microsoft.com/uk/designit
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