Organizational Sustainability

Team Members Andrew Gillespie, Bhavana Gupta, John Horstman, Tongbo Huang, Jared Pryor Final Presentation

Project Overview

What is CLEAN AIR-COOL PLANET?

Clean Air-Cool Planet (CACP) is the leading organization dedicated solely to finding and promoting solutions to global warming: CACP partners with companies, campuses, communities and science centers to help reduce their carbon emissions. CACP helps their partners, constituents, regional opinion leaders, and stakeholders understand the impacts of global warming and its best available solutions, through comprehensive outreach efforts celebrating commitment, innovation, and success in climate action. CACP proposes and recommends the implementation of effective policy solutions aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions at the state, regional and national levels.

What is the CAMPUS CARBON CALCULATOR? (CCC) measures campus emissions The Campus Carbon Calculator
and can be used to help create a climate action plan, analyzing viable long-term strategies to reduce a campuss carbon footprint: Provided as a free resource as a part of CACP's Campus Climate Action Toolkit. Currently in use at more than 1200 campuses across the country, the calculator is designed to be compatible with any type of school from a technical community college to a 4-year university. The Calculator is also the tool of record for most of the 600 signatories to the American Colleges and University Presidents Climate Commitment, a voluntary agreement to move toward campus climate neutrality.

The CAMPUS CARBON CALCULATOR tool takes the form of a Macro-enabled Excel spreadsheet:

The CAMPUS CARBON CALCULATOR tool takes the form of a Macro-enabled Excel spreadsheet:

The CAMPUS CARBON CALCULATOR tool takes the form of a Macro-enabled Excel spreadsheet:

The CAMPUS CARBON CALCULATOR tool takes the form of a Macro-enabled Excel spreadsheet:

Our Faculty Advisors: Jen Mankoff

Professor Mankoff and her colleagues developed StepGreen, a website that promotes changes in energy consumption through personalized information in the form of social influences (e.g., persuasion by peers) and competitive interaction with other groups who are similarly trying to save energy. StepGreen.org encourages and assists individuals in reducing their ecological footprints, and/or the amount of natural resources he/she uses.

Our Faculty Advisors: H. Scott Matthews

Professor Matthews is the Research Director of the Green Design Institute and a faculty member in the Departments of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Engineering & Public Policy at CMU. His research and consulting interests are in the areas of using the Internet to facilitate the environmental life cycle assessment of products and processes, carbon footprinting, green supply chain management, and the energy and environmental impacts of transport, and information infrastructure.

Focus For Campus Carbon Calculator Tool

We came up with 3 Foci, decided on 1: 1. Understand issues with the existing carbon footprint calculation tool 2. Understand the spreadsheet user's work flow and identify potential issues 3. Understand how data in the existing tool relates to data in other footprint calculators

Our Use of HCI Methods

Focus Setting / Affinity Diagram:

Our group found the development of our foci to be a challenge because of our unfamiliarity with the domain. Our focus switched back and forth between different applications a couple of times. After speaking with CMU's Facilities Management Services (FMS) environmental coordinator, we understood more about the CCC work flow and we were able to narrow down our potential CI targets. We used feedback from our stakeholders to help narrow down our focus, and confirm that we were on the right track.

Contextual Inquiry (CI):

CI reveals the work flow across multiple users. Since each university had a different process for filling out the CCC Tool, we saw some very different data points from our CI users. All of our CIs were performed on users that had already completed the CCC tool for the most recent year, so we had to study their workflow retrospectively. The CI participants provided a good retrospective account because they had easy access to their copies of the CCC and to their appropriate notes. We dealt with a couple of CI false alarms where we scheduled a CI with users who did not actually use the CCC tool, and this wasnt properly communicated to us.

Contextual Design:
Consolidation led to potential design ideas. It was good that we didnt decide to do every single model, but chose to only create the models which were a good fit for our project and for the CIs that we had performed. The CD process required more time and effort than our group initially anticipated in order to reach a consensus that everyone was comfortable with. Creating models from the data of the CIs we conducted early on provided us with a blueprint of what to do and of what not to do for our subsequent CIs. Consolidation revealed a large number of breakdowns directly related to the CCC tool.

Personas:
The Persona roles we developed were obvious after looking at the consolidated flow model. Our stakeholders expressed excitement about the idea of creating good representations of the typical users of the Campus Carbon Calculator. Persona 1: Gladys, FMS Supervisor Persona 2: Arturo, Data Entry Worker & Grad Student

Think-Alouds:
Decided to perform a Think-Aloud on our current tool in order to collect more data for our design solutions. Found some breakdowns that didn't come up in CIs. Identified problems that didnt come up in CIs: Enabled us to watch how long it can take a user to scroll through the tabs and columns, even when the user is familiar with the data to enter Observed how frequently users have to zoom in & out The vastness of the CCC Tool created long search times for particular goals

CogTool (KLM):
Built models of the tasks evaluated in the think-alouds. This was the fastest method we performed all semester. It only took about 2-3 hours to build the models & calculate the estimated task completion time. There was much less overhead involved since we didn't have to hunt down volunteer test subjects or work around their schedules. Models provided quantitative measures of performance times.

Design Solutions

Design solution:
Collapsible columns that hide unnecessary columns. Displaying columns that are useful for the user and hiding other columns that aren't.

Rationale:
The user has to do a lot of horizontal scrolling within each tab
Evidence: Consolidated Flow Model, UARs from think-alouds, CogTool models

Design solution:
Improved navigation between spreadsheet sections A drop down menu would suffice in letting the user see all the different tab options. The sidebar frame design that shows the tab options vertically, perhaps collapsible categories would work.

Rationale:
User cant remember all of the available tabs, and it takes a long time to scroll among them. In the tabbing, the graphical output data is given the same hierarchical status as the input spreadsheet fields.
Evidence : Consolidated Flow Model

Design solution:
System remembers the zoom percent last entered by the user and keeps it until user changes it. Find a heuristic or research about optimal zoom levels and use that to set the default zoom.

Rationale:
User is always zooming in and zooming out.
Evidence: UARs from think-alouds

Design solution:
Add a conversion feature, perhaps a warning or label to remind the user to add in the correct conversion Allow the user to choose the units when inputting data or when displaying output data.

Rationale:
Input & output units arent always consistent with what the user expects.
Evidence: UARs for think-alouds, Consolidated Flow Model, Consolidated Cultural Model.

Design solution:
Add a place to record assumptions within the system, such as an additional spreadsheet tab (that is unless it's redesigned without tabs).

Rationale:
Need to write assumptions / procedures when filling out the form in a separate document than the main CACP Carbon Calculator.
Evidence: Consolidated Sequence Model, Consolidated Flow Model

Design solution:
Give the tabs/sections better names for example, change the name of G_TotalEmissions" to "Graph_TotalEmissions or Graph: Total Carbon Emissions.

Rationale:
Tab (section) names arent clear.
Evidence: UARs from think-alouds

Design solution:
Better facilities for user support Online forum that connects CCC users, and gives them a chance to ask questions and receive answers from the community (would be nice if the site could be monitored by the Clean Air Cool Planet organization). Include a directory of common or experienced users of the spreadsheet that are available to contact. Certain sections of the User Guide pdf could link directly to specific threads within the Community Forum so that a confused User could receive a larger range of related advice whenever they encounter problems Add direct links from the CACP Spreadsheet to the appropriate section in the User Guide (Add bookmarks to the User Guide, add an index).

continued... Design solution:

Create online training modules which could provide basic training over the main functionality of the CACP Spreadsheet, and answers to common questions.

Rationale:
Users have trouble finding an easy way to get help for their questions
Evidence: Consolidated Flow Model.

Design solution:
Add a reference section to the user guide containing general guidelines for estimating data. Reference material for estimate guidelines can be collected from previous CACP tool users.

Rationale:
The user has to perform a lot of estimation on the data that he/she has collected.
Evidence: Consolidated Flow Model

Design solution:
Add a reference section in the user guide to explain the data entry cells that users commonly find confusing.

Rationale:
The user guide does not include guide to direct data to appropriate cell.
Evidence: UARs from think-alouds/Consolidated Flow Model

Conclusions and Recommendations

Conclusions
Choose your CI models effectively. For our group, physical models provided very little value, so we didn't spend time building them. This freed up more time to spend on critical models (flow, cultural, sequence).

Conclusions
Allocate plenty of time for consolidation and visioning. Consolidation ended up taking us about 3 times as long as we expected. Consolidation meetings were eating into our remaining schedule. There was a lot of debate about how the models should be consolidated.

Conclusions
Well-designed think-aloud tasks lead to better data. When reviewing the think-aloud recordings, we found ourselves questioning whether or not our task details were too specific.

Conclusions
Over communicate with your test subjects. There's no such thing as scheduling too far in advance. Make absolutely sure you're speaking with the right person. Call or email to confirm your upcoming meetings. Line up extra test subjects if possible.

Questions??

Appendix

Consolidated Cultural Model:

Consolidated Flow Model:

continued... Persona: Gladys

Gladys is the Sustainability Manager at Penn State. She is 42 years old and is passionate about environment and sustainable living. She did her undergard in Environmental Sciences and is a LEED certified associate. She is married and has one daughter. In her free time she likes to spend time with her daughter, tend her garden and take care of their pet dog, Snoopy. Her favorite color is blue.

Persona: Gladys
Having been at Penn State for 5.5 years, she extends the same enthusiasm for environment in her workplace. She has great relationships with her co-workers and they all enjoy the challenge of making Penn State carbon neutral and getting more a lil more budget from the college board. Her office is in the basement of the Facilities building and this is her only complain with the workplace. She cannot keep plants in her office, as there is no sunlight in the basement. She uses the CACP tool because it is free and some of her colleagues at other colleges recommended it. Every year, it is her job to present he final carbon print report to the college board. Arturo was hired by Gladys to work on the CACP and for the more hands-on work of the tool. Also, she does not like working with Excel sheets and would rather collect data and supervise Arturo.

Personas: Arturo
Arthuro is a grad student at Penn State in Civil & Environmental Engg. Dept. He is 24 and did his undergrad in Civil Engineering from Georgia Tech. He is fascinated by bridges and that was one of the reasons he decided to study in proximity to Pittsburgh. Arthuro took up the part time job with Gladys to earn some extra money. He has been working on it since Aug 2010 and is now confident about using it. He finds it hard to take out time for the tool consistently every week since his classes started, and he is worried Gladys may not be happy about that.

CogTool (KLM):

CogTool (KLM):

CogTool (KLM):

CogTool (KLM):