Smart Carbon | Devpost

Inspiration

Everyone wants to stop climate change and contribute to sustainable development. Everyone wants to know the moral, environmental, and economic value/impact of the things they buy and their carbon footprint. We ideated that an app that would give us this information would be very important for increasing awareness and actually reducing the carbon footprint through awareness. With the help of mentors, research, and brainstorming we were able to narrow down our who, what, and how business models and come up with an app we can extend into the future.

What it does

This app will give a user their carbon footprint emissions over time based on their receipt and banking information. The user will be able to set a goal reduction to their carbon footprint and track their habits to see if they're heading in the right direction. The app will be self-running and will always be updated based on their debit/credit purchases. They can also enter new purchases/changes to their emissions/consumption by entering their receipt information. Smart Carbon aims to use adaptive AI technology to learn a user's habits and begin to recommend smarter, alternative decisions for consumer purchases that lower their carbon emission impact on the planet. With these recommendations, the user is able to make smarter decisions and lower their burden on the planet. Ultimately, this app will also have a social media aspect where you can share your milestones and challenge your friends and the world on a leaderboard. We want to

How we built it

We used a whiteboard to figure out our UI/UX design. We figured that we will put more importance on the look and feel (design) of the UI because that prototype can then be used to make a wireframe and hardcoded to become a real app. These prototype designs were then coded with XML and Java on Android Studio to have a functioning prototype app that a user can click through to have a demo of the experience of using the real app. We looked into companies we can partner with to gain data to set up servers with them on the back-end. We looked into AI models that we can later implement as we continue to develop this app. These models serve to make targetted recommendations/advertisements/sustainable discounts to customers who want to improve their footprint. The AI will also later give pre-consumption recommendations based on what they intend to buy.

Challenges we ran into

We had issues implementing buttons and fade-effects on Android Studio. The Sketch UI design also took a while because it took a while to agree on a design. We took a while to refine our idea and see if it's feasible. Our ideas were all over the place and it was too varied.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We're proud of the design of the app and the pitch idea overall. We were able to get a lot of input on the UI design and business idea and we think it can definitely continue to be implemented in the future. This is a long term app and business idea. We're also proud of the prototype that worked very well in showing our functionality seamlessly.

What we learned

We learned how to create a business pitch and work together in an agile environment. We learned a lot about how to provide a user with a seamless experience which keeps them returning to the app. In addition, we learned how to use Sketch and Android Studio functionalities in depth.

What's next for Smart Carbon

-Pitch Competitions and Grants -Continue to build out our functional prototype and implement our AI solution features -Expanding partnerships for business opportunities (advertisements and offering sustainable discounts to customers who use the app) -We want to use the AI to also have a pre-consumption predictive feature -Smart Carbon will have a competitive social media aspect where users can compete with their score and show off their creative sustainable activities -Potential mascot for children's literacy in sustainable development and carbon emissions