DIGITREE 🍃

Educating individuals on the impact of screen time by converting to real-world effects!

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A look-through our prototype: https://www.figma.com/proto/PFf3cSqMh0BdyjoBBY4cjs/Challenge-1?node-id=51-670&t=oQInpmObpt6mCcat-1

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👩🏻‍💻 Introduction to the Fantastic Three 👩🏻‍💻

Aysha

Part time UXD designer, Part time motivational speaker.

Amy

A front-end engineer who dabbles in UX design.

Nadia

A front-end engineer & UX designer.

❓ Problem ❓

As generation Zed-ers, the environment is at the forefront of our minds. We are encouraged as individuals to do our part to reduce the impact on the environment, slow down climate change, and preserve the world we live in.

As a new year's resolution, Aysha aimed to make a more positive impact on the environment. She changed the way she ate, by reducing her meat consumption and buying more local produce. She changed the way she shopped, by leaving fast fashion and moving towards charity shops and Vinted. She even changed her skincare routine, to limit the amount of chemicals she was buying and throwing into the environment.

However, there was one thing missing. Her phone usage.

Aysha's phone usage, like many of our team and other hackers, is a whopping average of 7.5 hours per day. That doesn't include her screen time when working! Whilst many of us focus on the micro impact of that screen time - the impact on her eyes and her overall health, none of us understand or even link it to the macro effects.

The math says that a screen time of 7.5 hours per day equates to 0.009 KG/CO2 per day.

This might not seem a lot, but with an estimated 4.8 BILLION mobile phone users (as of 2021), if we were to make the assumption that every user was to use their phone that much a day, that would be the equivalent CO2 production of walking 14,400,000,000 miles EVERY. SINGLE. YEAR.

To put that into perspective, that's the equivalent of walking around the earth 578, 592 times every year…

We think we are doing better, yet the little object in our pockets that we carry around with us all the time, is having an overall huge impact on our environment.

**We have aimed to create a product that educates individuals on the impact of their screen time on the environment according to the 17 Sustainable Development Goal (SDG)s referenced by the UN. **

💡 Idea 💡

We have built a prototype designed to educate and incentivise individuals about the broader impact of their screen usage through interactive visualisations that highlight environmental effects and promote sustainable habits.

** How? ** The application utilises phone data to display how much screen time the user has amassed each day and week.

This data, along with the type of phone (display screen), brightness, and other factors, gets put through a mathematical formula to output the equivalent C02 production. This is then converted into a sentence (which we have done through an external AI platform) which makes sense and relates better to the individual. This way they can understand their impact on the environment in real terms.

The user can click on insights to get a breakdown of their daily and weekly usage by app, which is ranked by the overall impact that app usage is having on their overall C02 production. So that this makes sense and is accessible to users, this is linked to a tooltip which explains the rating.

To incentivise the user to utilise the application, screen usage is connected to a ** meadow **. The meadow has 1 tree/flower per week. If the user meets their screen time target each day (which will be decided by the user, but is ultimately driven by a recommendation based on their previous weeks data and average CO2 usages), then they will get water, sunlight, and platfood to use on their meadow. If the user does not meet their target for the day, they will not get these provisions, and the tree will start to wilt. This acts as gamification as a type of streak. Whilst 1 bad day will not ruin your meadow, the negative behaviours will add up over time.

Every 4 weeks, the user can exchange their trees for a tree to be planted in real life.

Commercial Viability This platform is tech for good, and so we could fund the app running and the tree planting through company sponsors. Many companies have a goal to become net Zero by 2030 (e.g., Apple), and so each tree that they sponsor could be used as an offset against their CO2 production.

With the extension of the application of an individual and corporate license, the corporate license could fund the application. The company can choose which level of funding they want to provide, which corresponds to an amount of trees to be provided each month.

⏳ Time Usage ⏳

Brainstorming (Day 1) We dedicated the initial two hours to brainstorming, allowing us to freely exchange ideas and inspire each other. This collaborative session helped us explore a wide range of concepts and set a solid foundation for our project.

Idea Finalisation (Day 1) Choosing the final idea was challenging due to the many strong contenders we had. Our turning point came during an insightful discussion with mentors from Softwire and a Crazy 8s ideation session. This process helped us synthesize our diverse ideas into a cohesive and motivating final vision that excited the entire team.

Developing the Prototype (Day 1-2) Our next step was to develop the prototype, which involved fleshing out product requirements and planning our approach. We experienced an afternoon slump but were invigorated by strategies from Sam's presentation on optimizing hackathon performance. We agreed on a clear workload split and began working individually, which suited our team dynamic better. This phase also included some intense overnight work to push our progress forward.

Final Sprint (Day 2) In the final sprint, we regrouped to provide feedback on each section of the project and perform final polishing. We collaboratively organized the document brief and refined our pitch to ensure a coherent and compelling presentation.

✅ Key Challenges and Solutions

Challenge: Balancing diverse ideas and motivations within the team. Solution: Leveraged mentorship and structured ideation sessions to merge our ideas effectively.

Challenge: Overcoming the afternoon productivity slump. Solution: Implemented productivity hacks learned from expert presentations and adjusted our workflow to match individual working styles.

✅ Accomplishments ✅

• Successfully synthesized multiple ideas into a unified project vision.
• Developed a functional prototype within a limited timeframe.
• Enhanced team collaboration through strategic discussions and feedback sessions.

Lessons Learned

• The importance of structured brainstorming and ideation techniques in refining project ideas.
• Adapting working styles to suit team dynamics can significantly boost productivity.
• Regular retrospectives and feedback loops are crucial for continuous improvement.
• Future Improvements
• Allocate more time for initial brainstorming to explore ideas more deeply.
• Incorporate more frequent short breaks during intensive work sessions to maintain high energy levels.
• Enhance early-stage planning to better align individual tasks with the overall project timeline.

🔮 The Future 🔮

In terms of the next steps, the plan is to start developing DigiTree based on the UI designs created, alongside extending the functionality further by leveraging corporate partnerships and a reward-based system. This would incentivise individual and business users to continue making a positive impact on the environment.

Corporate partnership:

• Subscribe to the prototype and retrieve anonymous data from their employees.
• Get a collective weekly usage from all company devices which is converted into real terms
• Show to shareholders to show that they are working towards net zero goals

Reward-based system:

• Users will be able to exchange fruits grown from their trees for cash.
• Either users transfer the cash for food vouchers from corporate sponsorships or be able to donate the cash to charities that align with our app's ethos and make a meaningful difference to the ecosystem.

💻 Potential Tech Stack 💻

Swift Screen Time API SwiftUI XCode