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An engaging mobile experience that integrates brand design, user interface design and user research to empower climate action in an innovative way.

Contents

• The brief
• Timeline
• The problem
• Make it easy
• Make it a habit
• Make it feel good
• Make it shareable
• Merchandise
• Logos
• Branding
• Accessible colour scale
• Illustrations
• Reference list

The brief

An engaging mobile experience that integrates brand design, user interface design and user research to empower climate action in an innovative way.

Audience

Tech-savvy adults over the age of 18 who are interested in making a positive climate impact. The target demographic is also engaged in using social media and mobile apps.

Challenges

• How might I make climate action as easy and effortless as I can for a wide range of people?
• How might I make climate action fun and intuitive?
• How might I promote the urgency of climate action without invoking fear or climate anxiety?
• How might I educate people on issues surrounding climate change while inspiring impactful action?

Timeline

This project was completed in a 6 week sprint, where three weeks were spent on research and the pitch proposal, while the remaining weeks were spent on visual design and prototyping.

The problem

Surveyees generally lack the time or motivation to participate in political and financial climate action and are pessimistic about our climate future.

In the research stage of this project, survey data was collected from 61 participants between 20–46 years old.

82% of participants agreed that governments and corporations need to take responsibility for reducing climate emissions, but only 19% are actively engaged in political activism.

Political, social and financial activism is crucial to a better future, as over 70% of global CO2 emissions historically can be attributed to just 78 corporate and state producing entities (CarbonMajors, 2024).

Make it easy

If people perceived the lack of time to be a barrier to political climate action, what if I can make it a task that they can do in 5 minutes?

Political action can be daunting with the perceived amount of time required to take action, but signing a petition or calling your local member of parliament (MP) can take as short as 5 minutes.

I wanted this app to be as simple as possible, enabling climate action in pockets of downtime — be it during commute, while waiting for a coffee, or waiting for a friend.

Climasaur drafts an email for you and finds the email address of your local MP, so that sending through your thoughts would only take two taps.

Make it a habit

Effective climate action isn't just a one-off. It's crucial for action to be sustained and consistent. Climasaur makes it a habit.

Rome wasn't built in a day, and neither is our ideal future. Climasaur uses a daily streak feature to help motivate sustained and consistent climate action.

Users can add a widget to their home and lock screens to be reminded to collect their daily card on Climasaur.

As users continue to contribute to climate efforts through the app, they will see the seed they planted grow.

Make it feel good

Climate change fear can immobilise meaningful action.

We need to show users that good change is happening, and that their actions do have big impacts.

Amongst young people from across ten countries, 84% reported that they were at least moderately worried about climate change, highlighting that climate anxiety and eco-anxiety is a global phenomenon (Hickman et al., 2021).

While the feeling of helplessness towards the challenge of climate change can become a barrier between environmental concern and action (Gunderson, 2022), cognitive climate-change hope is consistently positively related to climate engagement (Ojala, 2023).

People know about the consequences of climate change, more so than they know about the efforts and success of climate groups and organisations.

Climasaur shows one piece of good news every day to help inspire hope in our users.

Users will also receive 'return cards' for when a climate action they have taken has succeeded in reaching its goals (e.g. when signing petitions or donating to a climate organisation or cause).

Make it shareable

Climate action is a collective effort. Climasaur makes it easy and fun for its users to share the cards they've collected and spread awareness.

The cards in Climasaur are designed to be easily shareable on social media. Cards have different rarities depending on how uncommon it is for people to have completed the task.

Rare cards have special designs, encouraging users to take climate action where they might not have thought to before.

By encouraging people to share the climate efforts that they have taken, Climasaur encourages relational climate conversations and subsequently climate action (Fine, 2024).

Merchandise

Climasaur's illustrative style makes it easy to create merchandise and foster a real-life community of climate activists.

Research has shown that creative merchandise offerings can contribute to the creation of a unique brand identity and facilitate communication of this identity to consumers (Roggeveen, et al., 2021).

Climasaur's aim isn't just to enable personal political and social climate action, but also to connect its users to a broader community of activists in person.

Merchandise made from illustrations used in climate action cards can serve as a way for users to advocate for actions that they care strongly about.

Logos

The logomark of Climasaur features Dino the brontosaurus, while the combined logomark and logotype features Dino, as well as a modified version of Pangram Pangram's Cirka typeface.

The logotype has been altered to have more rounded features in the letters "C", "i", and "a", to have a more cohesive flow with the logomark.

The logotype is never used on its own.

Branding

Large title is set in Cirka (Regular) and body in Pangram Sans Rounded (Regular): modern and sharp, yet friendly and inviting. Built to be accessible and scalable.

Accessible colour scale

Every colour was expanded into a full luminance scale, with documented rules pairing each background step to a text step that meets contrast requirements.

Illustrations

The illustrative style used in Climasaur is fun, yet refined and suitable for an adult audience. It is inspired by editorial illustration in newspapers and feature images related to the climate action it encourages.

The climate action tasks are typesetted in a variety of typefaces, bringing visual engagement when the user swipes through their daily cards.

In the future, collections with more variety in style can be created through collaboration with a range of artists.

Reference list

• Berry, H. L., Waite, T. D., Dear, K. B., Capon, A. G., & Murray, V. (2018). The case for systems thinking about climate change and mental health. Nature Climate Change, 8, 282–290. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-018-0102-4
• CarbonMajors. (2024). The Carbon Majors Database: Launch Report. carbonmajors.org/briefing/the-carbon-majors-database-26913.
• Gunderson, R. (2023). Powerless, stupefied, and repressed actors cannot challenge climate change: Real helplessness as a barrier between environmental concern and action. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, 53(2), 1–25. https://doi.org/10.1111/jtsb.12366
• Fine, J.C. Refining relational climate conversations to promote collective action. npj Clim. Action 3, 10 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44168-023-00091-0
• Ojala, M. (2023). Hope and climate-change engagement from a psychological perspective. Current Opinion in Psychology, 49, 101514. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2022.101514
• Roggeveen, A. L., Grewal, D., Karsberg, J., Noble, S. M., Nordfält, J., Patrick, V. M., … & Olson, R. (2021). Forging meaningful consumer-brand relationships through creative merchandise offerings and innovative merchandising strategies. Journal of Retailing, 97(1), 81–98. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jretai.2020.11.006