Overview
This project was to add a carbon module on top of the existing financial solution of the Brixx financial modelling platform.
🎯 The goal was to help business decision makers plan their path to net zero and understand the cost it would take to take them there.
We saw their being great benefits of carbon accounting within a financial platform:
🌱 Emission sources are often identified from financial records
🌱 See the financial and carbon impact of business decisions simultaneously
🌱 See the cost of carbon initiatives, e.g. transitioning to an electric fleet
🌱 Scenario test around initiatives, e.g. fast tracking transition vs delayed transition
🌱 See the financial and environmental benefits of making the business more efficient and less wasteful
Research
Carbon emission reporting is only a regulatory requirement for large enterprises.
So the first question to answer was: why would any other company disclose their emissions?
We found one of our existing users had just been through the process and were able to discuss the challenges they faced. I also had the opportunity to extensively interview the head of ESG at a national UK waste processing company who was an expert in the subject.
We found that many companies seeking B-Corp certification wanted to track and improve their carbon footprint.
Incentives for small and medium businesses:
Pressure from their consumers to disclose the environmental impact
Opportunity to showcase their green credentials for marketing purposes
To win contracts where emission disclosures are required
To achieve better investment terms where emission reduction is a financial incentive
To prepare for future regulation and carbon taxes
We learnt that the correct process was to:
Audit all activities in the business to identify emission sources
Bucket them under the GHG Protocol categories
Find the data, preferably using the most accurate methodology 'Activity-based'
Fill any data gaps through other methodologies, extrapolation or estimation
Report your emissions in the GHG Protocol format, recording your gaps and calculation methodologies
We also learnt that it's unrealistic for a business to immediately and accurately report on their entire carbon footprint. It's reasonable for estimation methods to be used initially and to build on improved tracking and accuracy over time.
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The primary pain point was that it's very difficult for companies to even begin measuring their carbon footprint let alone planning to reduce it.
A small slice of the UK governments emission factor database. Businesses attempting to calculate their emissions would have to parse a database of thousands of emission factors and choose the appropriate ones.
Solution exploration
Given the barrier of measuring carbon footprints, we needed the solution to solve this problem first. The Brixx financial forecasting platform was already capturing all of a businesses activities for the purpose of financial reporting:
✔️ Products & services
✔️ Suppliers
✔️ Employees
✔️ Inventory
✔️ Fixed assets
✔️ Funding
Could we make it so that capturing emission data happened naturally and easily as they were entering financial data? 🤔
So we started two tasks in parallel:
➡️I worked with an engineer to start building emission factors into our backend so that these calculations would be handled automatically for the user
➡️I began looking at the front end methods for capturing emission data along side financial data
High level summary for how we'd layer in carbon calculation to our existing solution
I worked with an engineer to map the data structure required for the new carbon modelling capabilities
Mockup of a set of inputs for one of the carbon categories
New 'materials' section inserted into a product forecast to capture additional activity information that could calculate emissions. Here the 'materials' section could be used to calculate multiple upstream and downstream categories.
In our initial exploration we found that our existing UI did not hold up well to having all these new input types added. It was too much to expect users to understand.
We knew from our existing user research that:
👉 Some inputs were used 10x more than others
👉 Some inputs never changed from the defaults
👉 Some inputs were only used by power users
This led to a new direction of exploration where I started consolidating the most important inputs together. To build the hierarchy we mapped our existing inputs into setup options, primary inputs, variable inputs and global inputs.
Wireframe of the new data input concepts
Less used inputs we're shown with reduced prominence and could be configured on an options menu. That way they wouldn't clutter the screen for the majority of users but were available for the advanced users. New carbon accounting inputs could be introduced in a logical manner.
Modernising the design system
At the same time I partially refreshed our design system, modernised the look and feel and aligning it to the new carbon/financial theme.
Sample of the updated design system components
Outcomes
The final designs are a refreshed version of Brixx with a new focus around the goal of reducing carbon emissions and understanding the cost of carbon initiatives.
The layout and visual design is a clean, minimal and modern look. Yet at the same time handling complex data, inputs and configuration options in an elegant way.
I simplified our component navigation panel to take up less space but at the same time support more UI tree depth. This was another useful UI improvement to accommodate the increased item count from new carbon activities.
The software enables the user to map their complete cradle to grave emission lifecycle for their products. This then adjusts automatically with their sales forecast in their outputs.
Each component form captures all the financial and carbon information for that activity.
The user can map complete cradle to grave emission lifecycle for their products. This then adjusts automatically with their sales forecast in their outputs.
Electricity bills can be linked to kwh usage. Vehicles can be linked to fuel usage and end of life disposal. The software calculates the emission factors in the background to make the product accessible to all users.
The Timeline area can be used to test scenarios around the timing of transitions to new technology, equipment and business practices.
With combined emission and financial data, the platform can provide hotspot information on the company's Profit & Loss. This provides a carbon intensity ratio at every level of the business which can be drilled into to see the source of emissions.
Thanks for reading!
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