Overview

Sustainable living and working is becoming increasingly important due to current climate developments. Just like politicians and individual citizens are trying to take the consequences of climate change into account in their actions, also companies are starting to consciously include sustainable working practices. However, it is not enough to simply work sustainably. A credible demonstration on part of the companies about their practices is necessary, to attract climate-conscious applicants that consider a company’s effort to work sustainably when looking for a job.

Since gridX, a company specialising in dynamic load management and intelligent energy management, also attaches importance to environmentally conscious business practices, it gave students at Hochschule München University of Applied Sciences the task to collect ideas for the integration of a CO2 dashboard on its own website. This challenge was meant to improve the company's image and enable applicant profiling. The participating students came from the fields of business administration and computer science and received support during the challenge from AWS as well as from employees of the DTLab and the Co-Innovation Lab of HM.

Problem

The main problem of the company was its lack of transparency about its own ecological footprint and about its own sustainable measures towards the public. GridX would like to inform its applicants in an attractive and innovative way about the company's commitment to sustainability and encourage them to apply with the help of sustainable benefits. In addition, this could also motivate the company's own employees to engage more with and to identify better with their own company.

Approach

To develop a prototype, the students used Scrum, a project and product management process model that is often used for agile software development and consists of various sprint and review phases. With the help of the "Crazy Eight" method, the students then agreed on their "Big Idea", which they further elaborated within the framework of the "Working Backwards Method". Applying this method, which is also used by Amazon, they created various artefacts, including a storyboard, a fictitious press release and an FAQ.

Apart from the methods already mentioned, the customer needs were also identified with the help of interviews. Through the conducted interviews, the students got a comprehensive understanding of the customer needs - which changed the focus of the project. Instead of the CO2 dashboard planned at the beginning, a sustainability dashboard was to be created on the website. The students agreed on this "Big Idea" after applying the "Crazy Eight Method".

The focus of the dashboard was then no longer exclusively on emissions-related aspects. Instead, the customer wanted greater transparency regarding qualitative measures.

To determine the customer's needs and to be able to specifically address them in product development, the students answered the "5 Customer Questions" and created an empathy map for an example person from the target group as well as a problem statement.

Prototype

The dashboard is divided into six sections. The structure of the dashboard in sections was deliberately chosen to give gridX maximum flexibility about the dashboard content. The design is gridX-specific but can be adapted according to the respective CI. Other advantages of the current setup include flexibility in server usage (e.g. AWS), modern frameworks, customisable content and compatibility with various analytic tools.

Next steps

The design and content of the dashboard can be changed and adapted at any time. For example, various features could be added in the future, such as a like button for microinteraction, a column for live user feedback and various staff videos. Furthermore, the students suggested the integration of a timeline of the implemented measures, as well as a share function for social media channels. After coordination with the client and input of the final data, the implementation of the dashboard could then take place on the gridX website.