imp:ACT

Take action and fight real-world issues in a playful manner - measure your actual personal impact, challenge friends and be rewarded for daily routines. get

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WHY - From the problem to the inspiration

Real-world issues, globally defined by the sustainable development goals (SDGs), especially Goal 13 "Climate Action", attract an increasing amount of attention in the recent past. However, we challenge the contemporary view that fighting these problems is to be done by politics and the economy. People lack the information of their daily routines' specific impact. Although we're experiencing a constant upward movement of more and more aware people, proven by rising movements as "Fridays for Future" for example, those already aware people find it hard to motivate people with anti-social or unecological behaviour. This lack of motivation does not only originate from unawareness but also from the lack of personal benefits when making efforts to change daily routines.

Speaking words of wisdom, what does it need?

  • a user-friendly log tool that calculates the exact impact for daily activities
  • gamification, saving the world must be fun
  • rewards for people who are succeeding challenges
  • a distribution partner who passes alternative products/lifestyles to potential new customers

WHAT - What imp:ACT is and what it does

Precise calculations of personal impact: With imp:ACT you'll see your immediate impact on real-world issues. By using official data from climatewatchdata, theshiftdataportal, population.un or icos-cp for example, we are able to create a reliable database to calculate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions per capita for almost every country. Sectors can be analyzed to the lowest level, i.e. it's possible to calculate the impact of eating eggs, meat or rice for example.

Gamification: Users get the possibility to begin challenges, which can either be set up by editors, by themselves, or by our partners. When creating an own challenge, e.g. "Who's first in saving 100 kg CO2?", it's possible to invite new members such as your colleagues to join your challenge and compete. Challenges can be started as an individual, within a team, or in a team vs. team mode.

Rewards: When starting a featured challenge, i.e. pursuing a target set by one of our partners, users will be rewarded if they succeed. Let's say the vegan brand "Beyond Meat" is placing the challenge in the App which wants the users to cook at least 3 times vegan in one week by integrating at least one product of this brand. If the competitor reaches the goal, he or she will earn 30% off for the next purchase.

Distributional partner: For our partners who are able to offer featured challenges, the App is the perfect opportunity to reach prospect consumers. For all newbies concerning a sustainable lifestyle, it's a chance to try out new products and form an opinion on alternative products.

HOW - The tools we used

Since the project idea was purely honed during the Hackathon, there is no code yet. Still the project team is proud to present a thoughtful business model, a clickable prototype built with the help of proto.io - try out the prototype. UX/UI is designed in figma - have a look at it here. Further App development will be in Flutter or Xamarin, respectively.

Challenges we ran into

First of all, it must be said, that the team members haven't known each another before and we are spread around the world with time differences up to 7 hours. So getting to know each other was the first part of the project. Secondly, the idea had to be precisely defined and we had to compromise a lot to find a minimum viable product (MVP) definition everybody was pleased with.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Finally, the previously mentioned challenges were solved brilliantly due to consistent conversation, daily team calls, and precise documentation on trello.

What we learned

Speaking for all of the team members we surely developed excellent communication skills. Furthermore, we got in-depth views into App development projects and building sustainable business models.

What's next for imp:ACT

Firstly, the UI/UX design and the clickable prototype will have to be further improved. Secondly, the actual development of the App will start. This also means setting up a database, look for the exact APIs to include, etc. In the next step, the MVP can initially be rolled out to test users before launching in App Store and Market Place. Simultaneously, we will start to deepen our network within the sector to acquire partnerships.

In the long run, it is imaginable to embed further APIs such as to automatically identify the ingredients of meals by taking pictures of them. Natural language processing of receipts to prove purchases. By implementing ML/AI algorithms, people can be assigned to similar acting users to make their challenges harder and funnier at the same time. Last but not least, the focus can be widened from just tackling the SDG 13 "Climate Action" to some of the others that can be measured by available key perfomance indices.

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