IUPUI Office of Sustainability Project
This was a semester-long group project. I performed the duties of group leader and primary client contact. Some of my other contributions include: the design of the rating system of leaves, the Welcome to Our Green Office certificate, the office icons, the LinkedIn ad with the computer icon, and I worked on the written content of all deliverables as either a writer or an editor. Additionally, I created the final slide presentation that is pictured here.
In the research phase, we asked ourselves the following question. Through interviews with faculty and staff on campus, we reached several conclusions.
For our first option, the group was asked about the possibility of using an app; however, we could not give the Office of Sustainability a product that required ongoing maintenance after our project was turned in.
We found an existing app called Joulebug that has well-defined categories and good functionality. You can track the sustainable behaviors you practice, and view your impact totals to understand how the actions you take benefit the environment.
Challenges allow you to join with the community via the app to participate in bringing greater change to your city or neighborhood.
We considered the possibility of using the app, and building our own marketing campaign focused on how to take advantage of the Joulebug features to practice sustainability within the offices of IUPUI.
We found an existing app called Joulebug that has well-defined categories and good functionality. You can track the sustainable behaviors you practice, and view your impact totals to understand how the actions you take benefit the environment.
Challenges allow you to join with the community via the app to participate in bringing greater change to your city or neighborhood.
We considered the possibility of using the app, and building our own marketing campaign focused on how to take advantage of the Joulebug features to practice sustainability within the offices of IUPUI.
We contacted Joulebug to find out how the app would work in a university setting, but it was cost prohibitive to have a branded app with custom challenges.
Even though Joulebug was not a viable option, we used the app's sustainability categories as a starting point for our work. The group chose to focus on energy, water, transportation, food and drink, and office because they fit best with the university setting.
Our second option focused on building our own survey and rating system based on pros and cons from other university websites. Most of the surveys we found required participants to rate their sustainable behaviors on a scale of 1-10, which we found difficult. Sheridan University's system asked survey takers to rate themselves by answering always, sometimes, or never. That seemed like a logical rating system, so we decided to incorporate the idea into our approach.
Option three involved adding our survey and incentive program to the Office of Sustainability's current website. The IT professional we spoke to said that this process would take approximately three to four months to accomplish, but we did not have that much time to devote to the solution.
We decided to add a simple link to the Office of Sustainability's website so that participants can sign up for the program in the fall. The sign up and survey were both created by Alex Updike.
Each participating office will receive a quarterly Google Forms survey. Answers can be tracked in an Excel spreadsheet, so the Office of Sustainability has
up-to-date information throughout the academic year. The point system is: Always = 4, Sometimes = 2, Never = 0, Yes = 2, No = 0.
up-to-date information throughout the academic year. The point system is: Always = 4, Sometimes = 2, Never = 0, Yes = 2, No = 0.
It was important to the group to create a system that honors the ideals of the Office of Sustainability. We designed a digital system of rewards. Not only does this cut down on paper usage, but it does not effect the office's budget.
We chose a rating system of leaves, with 4-Leaf being the highest rating that an office can receive on their annual certificate. I designed the leaf and its four different configurations for the rating system.
We chose a rating system of leaves, with 4-Leaf being the highest rating that an office can receive on their annual certificate. I designed the leaf and its four different configurations for the rating system.
The participating office will receive a digital certificate that shows the leaf rating that was achieved for the academic year. This is an interactive PDF that can be updated and awarded via email. If an office wants to hang the certificate on the wall, they can print it at their own expense. Otherwise, it can live online at the office's website. I created the certificate design.
The leaf is also used on a digital badge that an office can display on their website after becoming Green Office Certified. Here are some sample badges. The one on top was chosen because a single leaf is less busy than multiples. Also the cream stroke is less harsh than the black stroke. The shape of the badge is taken from the center of our certificate design. The badge was designed by Alex Updike.
This shows what the digital badge will look like on a website footer.
The group worked together to create a cohesive set of icons. Each person took a category, and worked within a set of parameters to achieve similarity in our designs. The parameters we set were that the drawings would have a line weight of one-point, each icon would contain an element of IU's mint green, and all of the icon corners would be rounded. There is a primary icon for each category, and three secondary icons to represent the educational content the Office of Sustainability wanted to convey. At this point, the category of Food and Drink was changed to Waste.
The Office of Sustainability requested an educational toolkit to send to offices that participate in the Green Office Certification Program. We created a scrollable PDF, and also included the same information as a set of Task Cards that can be printed, cut in half, and hung in locations where employees would benefit from having easy access to the information. This was designed by Wyatt Schutte.
The Office of Sustainability planned to advertise registration for the Green Office Certification Program in their newsletter. My group thought we could reach more people if we designed ads for the Office of Sustainability's social media accounts: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Each person in the group created one ad that could be used in the fall campaign to increase participation in the program. We showed the ads to the client as mockups so they could visualize the campaign in context. I designed the ad with the computer icon for LinkedIn.
Another piece of the toolkit is an educational motion graphic. We suggested this animation as a fun way to distribute the informational highlights the Office of Sustainability wanted Green Office Program participants to understand. Chaz Russ created the motion graphic, and Wyatt Schutte recorded the audio.
