BeLeaf

What is the problem your solution addresses?

To combat against the aggravating problem of climate change and global warming, actions must be promptly taken. However, in this day and age, a lot of people struggle to find ways to contribute as they often associate environmental movements with high commitment and sacrifices. We wanted to counter this overwhelming mentality by reframing this issue. To create a solution addressing the issues of sustainability, we decided to tackle the problem of accessible environmental activism with low commitment and sacrifices! Everyone has the power to influence the environment! Even through small changes in one’s daily living, with the collective weight of these small changes, we’re able to make a difference.

Why did you pick this solution, and how does it address the problem?

To make environmental activism more accessible, we’ve created an app to build the bridge between daily living and encouraging sustainable habits. Our app, the BeLeaf, delegates a series of randomized tasks to users whose goal is to complete them to earn leafs (the point currency). All tasks encourage sustainability practices-- this can range from picking up trash, to reducing electricity use. The key point of the tasks is that everyone can accomplish them! Advance levels by earning more leafs. Compete with friends to see who’s living the most sustainable life. The app also offers a reminder component where users can choose what they would like to be notified. Reminders span from alerting users of high carbon levels or of any eco holidays such as Earth Hour. While it may seem inane to be reminded of bringing reusable containers to dinner, it ensures the development of your sustainability habits.

Inspiration

The driving force of change is through a collective effort, and BeLeaf was inspired by just that. By creating an app that allows people to compete and motivate others while completing tasks emphasizing sustainability practices, this creates a positive feedback loop that drives further contributions to help out the environment. Additionally, as college students, we are all well aware of the lack of free time we have outside of academics. With the conflict of time as the main obstacle preventing us from living a more sustainable life, this app aids users to live a sustainable life without any drastic changes or time commitment.

What it does

BeLeaf generates small achievable sustainable tasks for users to complete on a daily basis. After finishing each task, users can earn a certain number of leafs and accumulate them to eventually level up and receive achievements. Users are also given the opportunity to connect and compete with friends through how fast each person finishes their tasks. The app also features a reminder portion to notify users of eco-related holidays or to remember to bring their eco bags for groceries. Holidays are linked with websites and organizations for users to read to their heart’s desire.

How we built it

BeLeaf was created in Figma with the use of the LottieFiles and Iconify Plugins, as well as Unsplash stock photos.

Challenges we ran into

One of the major problems we ran into is how to incentivize our users into completing tasks. However, with the help of suggestions from different users during usability testing, we learned that a great incentive is peer motivation and competition. With this suggestion in mind, we were able to later implement a more social and interactive function into our app by allowing users to compete with their friends.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of being able to see our app go from start to finish. We spent a lot of time during the prototyping stage of Figma since we were making sure all the buttons landed on the right page. It was truly exhilarating to see how it all was able to come together in the end.

What we learned

As intermediate designers, we knew the basics to Figma but not of some of the more particular components such as animation. Once a user signs up for BeLeaf, we wanted to incorporate confetti in the page to spur excitement. We tested animation from the Confetti to the LottieFiles plugins to figure out the best way to achieve our desired effect. At last, we were able to settle down with an animation and we are glad and thrilled to have learned such a technique. Moving forward, we are eager to experience and learn more while designing.

What's next for BeLeaf

In hopes of BeLeaf becoming more developed and garnering more support, we would like to further increase the incentive to participate in completing tasks by gifting sustainable goodies. Additionally, it would be great if BeLeaf could track the performance of users region by region. This would allow BeLeaf to be part of a more globalized movement.

Built With

• figma
• iconify
• lottiefiles
• unsplash