Help consumers engage in a low carbon lifestyle through social learning
WHAT IS CAHOO?
Cahoo is a service model that encourages young consumers to take actions toward sustainability and takes them through individual purchase choices to enhance the discovery of new, more sustainable alternatives in everyday life.
WHO IS THIS FOR?
Young consumers who want to make a positive impact on the environment but do not prioritize sustainability in their daily lives.
WHY CAHOO?
Cahoo pivots around some strong design principles to develop and share across communities, behavioural encouragement of small actions that are personalised and bring satisfaction when fighting climate change.
Cahoo
Personal green finance - financial data solution
Duration
24 weeks
Jan. - June 2022
Team
Chin-Cheng Ou
Priyanjali Rane
Partner
Moroku
My Role
Ideation/Conceptualisation, Survey Interviews, User Research,
Wireframes, Prototyping, Design Systems, Design Strategies
Design Brief
Consumer behavior is driving towards sustainability, and consumers are consciously choosing to relate to brands that match the same values and they want businesses to help them to adapt. How might we help consumers make sustainable decisions while using the financial services infrastructure?
“Decisions are the hardest thing to make, especially if it is a choice between where you should be and where you want to be.”
— Anonymous
Process and Tool used
My Key Contribution
Design Process Starts Here
01. Set the Vision
Planning and Scoping - Project purpose and constraints
Me and my team started with understanding what sustainability is and the relationship with financial services. We realise that there is no a clear definition of what sustainability is, but we can help consumers to make decisions that create less impact to the environment in a user-friendly way. Moreover, financial services have a great potential to help and there are many existing options for customers to participate in saving the planet. However, navigating through green washing noise and showing impact of green financial products are the constraints in this project.
State-of-the-art sustainable products and services
Sustainable banking is a new domain, and 50% of consumers are willing to swap to another bank if they offered a sustainable value proposition. We targeted our market on millennials, which now represent the largest consumer group in the UK and they are highly motivated. Finally, the project success to us is to decrease the pain while young customers when making green decisions so as to increase customer engagement in both sustainability and financial services.
After arranging industry reports, we mapped out state-of-the-art sustainable products and services in financial sector including Established bank, Neo banks and Fintechs. The result led us to think about the intervention area which is “day-to-day banking” which has the opportunity to help users to engage in sustainability and create real impact with financial services.
02. Desk Research
Explore and Implication - Industry report & literature
With regard to sustainability, our primary research led us to the behavioural science theory of the intention action gap, which has been supported by studies from IBM and Visa. The intention-action gap refers to the difference between intended and actual behaviour. In this circumstance, even the finest intentions to live a more sustainable lifestyle are ineffective. A quantitative study discovered that a gap exists for two out of every five people in the United Kingdom.
Intention action gap in sustainability
Daily consumption impact on environment
Concerning day-to-day banking, we started with understanding everyday consumption pattern. The average footprint in the UK based adult is roughly 12.7 tonnes of CO2 per year. And when we split those down into activity, we find that 57% are related to our everyday purchasing decisions. Food, our home, and travel, we emit around 7.2 tonnes of CO2 per person each year. We know that one individual cannot eliminate it, but if everyone does their part, we may be able to make a difference toward our goal of lowering world temperatures.
03. User Research
Analysis and Insights - In-depth Interview & Affinity Diagram
We conducted in-depth interviews with 16 people from various backgrounds over the course of three days to hear about their thoughts on sustainability. We discovered some emerging patterns through affinity diagram and come up with initial user insights.
Consumers' mindsets against not taking action were influenced by their belief that sustainability is difficult and unrelated to daily life, as their top priority in life were to achieve their present goals, wants, and desires. Even if they intended to accomplish anything, comfort, ease, and accessibility typically got in the way. They were also concerned about whether or not their actions made a difference.
Consumers who actively engaged in sustainable initiatives reported that they were concerned about climate change, which motivated them to act. They took action after learning about it online or via a friend or family member. The aftermath of usually doing the action was said to be emotionally rewarding.
Prioritise Insight generates 3 key levers for intention action gap
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Social Learning
(user research + social proof)
Sustainable actions which young people will take on a daily basis rely on the information acquired by observations of others and choices that are comfortable, convenient and accessible.
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Social Influence
(user research + herding theory)
Sustainability is a collective goal and action viewed by young people which should rely on a group force for moving toward sustainable lifestyle.
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Emotional connection
(user research + social psychology)
Emotions like feeling better, uncertain and sense of belongings are crucial guide to day-to-day transaction when the outcomes of making sustainable decisions is indeterminate.
04. Data Synthesis
Prioritise and Redefine
4-1 Define problem - Problem Statement
With the initial problem assumption from desk research, intention-action gap, and user research, which validated the problem, we prioritised our insights and generated three key levers based on multidimentional research. Finally, the insights and levers led us to several how might we questions, and we consolidated one final one into our problem statement.
How might we, empower young consumers to learn, act and share about reducing impact with their community so as to develop better consumption habits in the longer term?
HMW educate sustainability through social learning when young people are making daily finanacial decisions ?
— Lever one “Social Learning”
HMW build awareness about actions that help young people make decisions towards sustainability through social influence?
— Lever two “Social Influence”
HMW create emotional connection making young people feel they are improving their life and creating impact in sustainability?
— Lever three “Emotional Connection”
4-2 Define users - User persona
Within the problem we defined, we used persona as a communication tool to bring consensus in our team for who we are designing for. We defined 3 user groups in our project scope from different mindset, behaviour pattern, motivation, pain points and needs. The result helps us to build empathy with target users and be more specific on understanding the intention from users’ point of view and what the barriers are which stops them from reaching their goals. There are trend seekers, caution consumers and empathetic doers in our user category. Among all, trend seekers have more social interactions both online and offline and are associated with brands more frequently which are our main target group; cautious consumers are our secondary target group.
4-3 Set Scenario - Journey Mapping & User Lifecycle
Every consumer has a decision making journey of their own which are impacted by internal factors like, emotions, feeling, convenience, effectiveness etc and external factors like cost, availability, accessibility. Firstly, we mapped out the decision making journey in five stages for seeking the opportunities for intervention throughout the actions and emotions over time. Secondly, we mapped out the day-to-day consumption experience with highlighting one of our insights “sense of belongings” which is related to emotions. The result helped us to define the scenario and channel which are the moment before everyday life decision making and mobile.
consumer decision making journey - as is
consumer daily consumption lifecycle
4-4 Clarify Value - User stories
After our target users are defined, I tried to use Agile software design tool “user stories” to identify the new capability users need from their perspective. By using informal, natural description language description; we could emphasise more on what users really need in different conditions. The result helped us to articulate how our work will deliver a particular value back to users and kept our team on track to stay focused on human-centric solutions. The template is built on the original “As a <type of user>, I want <some goal> so that <some reason>,” adding pain, gain and job from Value Proposition Design.
05. Ideation + 06. Validation
Explore concept and build
5-1 Crazy 8 - Brainstorm ideas for concept
Based on the user stories we created, we identified values which could match user need. However, we identified several values which became a barrier for us to decide a direction. In order to figure out which value brings the biggest value and impact, our team conducted crazy 8 to explore potential concept and solution. The process is we first draw out the 8 ideas which match our insights within 8 minutes, and analyse the common attributes among those ideas. Finally, we came up with six themes which we could build up for our final solution.
crazy 8 and 6 themes for solution direction
6-1 Feedback for Hypotheses - Peer Review & In-person Surveys
In order to prioritise the ideas we have from real user feedback, we conducted a peer review to evaluate our ideas from designers’ perspectives then ran 22 in-person surveys with target users. Peer review helped us to refine how we story tell our ideas and make sure that we explain the ideas in a clear way. We learned that we need to concise our ideas and visualise them, so we came up with a new version for the in-person surveys.
storytelling ideas and peer review
After the surveys, three of these stood out and were the foundations of our final solution.
The first is sharing experiences. We discovered that users wanted to engage with other people's experiences since it gave them confidence and trust in undertaking a given activity. And there are people with different levels of knowledge and experience who have willingness to share and exchange their experience.
The second is visualising impact. Scaling and visualising micro actions may make users' efforts more concrete, and if they can follow the changes and regularly and periodically see the impact of their adjustments, it functions as motivation to continue doing so.
Finally, we discovered that incentives were critical in the early phases since they provided motivation to continue doing something because it seemed instantly satisfying. As a result, it serves as an extra motivator for making green decisions in everyday life.
In-person surveys and feedback learning
idea testing and user feedback quotes
6-2 Expert voice - Provocation Workshop
We conducted a provocation workshop with industry experts who stay on top of sustainability and banking area to reveal valuable insights which can help us with our project direction. We turned HMW questions into How might you questions as one of our frameworks to guide the conversation and to comprehensively cover the topic. Immense value feedback were received and it was a great learning for us which made us this think beyond the surface. The experts validated our thinking by their thoughts.
provocation workshop with industry experts
crazy 8 for capturing perspectives
5-2 Explore concept - Frame solution and Model creation
Based on our ideas, we created a service model that combines behaviour science concepts, the SBI Feedback Model (Situation, Behaviour, Impact), and the Circle of Engagement paradigm to help young consumers easily make green consumption decisions in everyday life through social learning. The model builds a circular loop that stimulates interaction, nudges consumers to take action, and provides feedback on the consequence. It also allows business users to create a community-led marketplace of sustainable actions and businesses to learn and grow as a collective.
Cahoo service blueprint
5-3 Prototype - Wireframing and Storyboarding
We outlined the scenes, which are arranged in sequence to describe how all the parts of the concept model work together in situations. The storyboard helped us to translate abstractions like "motivation" into human terms that can be easily grasped. On top of that, we created wireframes that users could engage with and experience our solution in order to test our assumptions. Information is gathered through observing and is recorded with video and note taking.
Introducing Cahoo
At the end of our 24 week long capstone, Pri and I delivered an engaging and sustainable consumption model which leverages the power of social learning and network effect. It encourages engagement, motivates customers to take action, and offers feedback on the outcome for better decision-making in sustainable consumption. Moreover, it enables users to build a community-led marketplace of sustainable actions and businesses in order to learn and grow as a group.
Set goals with personalised insights
We applied open banking technology as a data-driven approach to help users understand their own consumption habits. This could give users a clear view of the carbon footprint produced over time and help them to set achievable goals. Our service visualise carbon emissions at both an individual and community level to give insights that encourage users to set goals.
Benefit / Pain point solved
Create impact with your community
We connected community leaders and advocators to create community challenges that can be participated in by service users. The purpose is to create a platform that gathers sustainable ideas that are easy and accessible. Users are able to learn from others’ actions by joining a challenge by day-to-day consumptions they prefer and scaling micro actions to create impact together.
Benefit / Pain point solved
Easy access to knowledge in communities
Cahoo enables you to learn and make sustainable decisions easily by providing you with personalised actions. You can get suggestions based on the challenge you take, your priorities in daily life, and where you are. We aim to make sustainability closer to your life and learn by taking actions.
Benefit / Pain point solved
Inspiration and guidance from communities
Cahoo provides actions with personal experiences shared by advocators and users in the community, which are easy and direct for users to follow. For the action "go to a vegan restaurant", guidance such as what the available options are and how to reach the place will be shown to users to help them complete their actions.
Benefit / Pain point solved
Complete challenge with reward and report
Cahoo creates a networking community by receiving feedback from every completed action at the end. It allows Cahoo users to learn, share, and motivate each other. Cahoo also generates reports for users on a regular basis, allowing them to measure their progress and make it more feasible and challenging at each step. Moreover, rewards from sustainable brands can be redeemed after earning points from challenges.
Benefit / Pain point solved
Cahoo in detail
Cahoo would require collaboration with a variety of organisations in order to function properly and efficiently. To make open banking available, for example, we would need to collaborate with firms like Plaid for permission online and utilise their platforms to collect data and follow rules as needed. One of the key features of the app is that it has advocates who create tasks for others to complete. The service would have to reach out to them and motivate and empower them to take on new tasks.
There are very few applications available for consumers to utilise, but Cahoo stands out since it delivers social learning and helps you in taking activities with your community while also being personalised and giving data-driven insights.
Cahoo may enter the market in two ways. First, it works directly with users and is offered as a free app in the market, earning its revenue from companies and businesses approved by ethical and ecological organisations. Second, cahoo may be used by banks and organisations to get a competitive edge in a changing world where customers place a greater value on sustainability and make income through premiums and monthly subscriptions based on users.
Retrospective
Challenge -
Our biggest challenge in this project was working on the intersection between sustainability and finance. We started by understanding users’ perspective on sustainability and their habits around using financial tools. Then the result led us to the social aspect, which relies heavily on community and human connection. We tried to make the service more financial-oriented since our intention is to build a financial service. However, the outcome surprised us with a service model that can be a foundation for behaviour change, and we demonstrated how it can be applied to the financial sector, which aligns with our project goal.
What can be improved -
The service model has been proven successful as a digital solution. We are planning to apply this model to both physical and digital channels to create more impact and solve the intention-action gap with more possibilities. For instance, challenges can be held by different stakeholders with physical assets. Moreover, new business models can be created with our service model when our users grow to a certain number. The Cahoo app is a starting point for making sustainable actions accessible and enjoyable. We believe that our future work will grow on a larger scale from the small actions we took today, as we integrated more touchpoints and developed a cross-channel experience.