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NO C.A.P.
(Corporate Action Present)
Taking a dive into an underwater city to see corporations' impact on climate change and what we can do about it.
CHALLENGE
While individual lifestyle changes are important to combat climate change, big industries and corporations are contributing even more greenhouse gases than individual citizens and accelerating the climate crisis with little to no accountability or incentive to stop.
SOLUTION
Build an interactive infographic that educates consumers on the industries contributing the most to climate change and what they can do as individuals to hold corporations accountable.
TIMELINE
14 Weeks
Feb 2021 - May 2021
MY ROLE
Subject Matter Research
Idea Generation
Interaction Design & Information Hierarchy
TEAM
Myself + Jay Meadowcroft (Design & Illustration), Nik Delgado (Research & Design), Nana Aidoo (Development)
Prototyping
Front-End Development
Presentation & Marketing
GOALS
Educate our audience on how much these industries are contributing to the climate crisis and why urgent action is required to stop them.
Motivate users to get involved and advocate for a better future, supplying them with information on how they can go about making that change.
Provide a platform to communicate the message through online channels like social media as well as making suggestions on how to take it past the internet.
BACKGROUND
In 2020, people worldwide were quarantining due to COVID-19. Voices were greatly magnified online, and public characters & corporations were being called out for their contributions to injustices around the world. We saw an opportunity to share the message of corporate responsibility and empower individuals to hold those corporations accountable.
With in-person events being indefinitely paused and the internet becoming the lifeblood of social discourse and movements, it was the perfect time to deliver a digital experience that could rival the impact of a physical exhibit. To achieve this, we set out to immerse our audience in an underwater cityscape devastated by rising sea levels.
RESEARCH
Using the EPA’s Facility Level Information on GreenHouse gases Tool (FLIGHT), I dug into how much greenhouse gas was produced by large corporations compared to individuals. We also looked into changes in surface temperature & sea level, as well as climate policy and the impact of corporate lobbying.
As we expected, the data showed that the average corporation poses a much greater threat than the average individual.
WHAT WE FOUND
Surface Temperature Increase
50% of the earth’s surface temperature increase is caused by corporations.
Rising Sea Level
Since 1880, water levels have risen 7 inches. Large corporations alone are responsible for 35% of that.
Read more about it here.
Corporate Emissions
It takes 41,193 people to equal the same amount of annual carbon emissions as the emissions of 1 singular corporation.
INFORMATION HIERARCHY
Once we had conducted our research, we created a map of the experience and organized our most poignant findings into a cohesive story.
The narrative followed a simple path:
Introduce greenhouse gases and their affect on the climate.
Highlight the disparity between the emissions of individuals and corporations.
Cover climate policy at a high level to give an idea of how the government & these corporations interact.
Beyond this point, we would explain how our audience could make a change larger than themselves and provide a platform for them to begin.
SHOW, DON’T TELL
An issue we ran into at this point was properly guiding our audience through the experience. We wanted folks to explore the environment, but hiding information underneath subtle visual elements made it inaccessible. There was also too much text being used to explain the issue, so we decided to implement more visuals to show the issue.
LESSONS LEARNED
A quote our professor had told us repeatedly since the beginning of the project was, “Cut it in half, then cut it in half again.”
A lot of things on our to-do list ended up being cut for the final, such as micro-animations in the underwater environment, gyroscope interactions on mobile, and additional sharing methods that were more complex to implement. It was a tough choice at first, but a necessary one to meet our deadlines.