Setting sustainable goals

In this project case study, I will be sharing one of my experiences working as a founding product designer and developing a sustainability reporting software for an ESG start-up.

The goal was to create an web app that automates the processing of sustainability questionnaires and ESG ratings for enterprises. To help keep track of the data that is being collected by users with the questionnaire, we developed a goal setting feature that allows users to set sustainability goals aligned with the Unites Nation's 17 world Sustainable Development Goals (SDG).

Client

Codio Impact

Year

2023

Role

Product Design, PM, UI Design

Problem

New legal requirements demand transparent KPIs for sustainability measures. Executives and management struggle to define sustainability targets.

The introduction of the European Sustainability Reporting Standard (ESRS) required enterprises and medium-sized businesses to report on their business practices and their measures and efforts in improving their sustainability. It is common for companies to set general sustainability targets ('We want to become more sustainable'), but these are often not concrete or operationally actionable ('But how? When?'). Administrators needed better tools to set and monitor sustainability goals and casual users needed a clear visualisations and benchmarks for their progress.

Collaborative workshop to emphatize with users and define the problem

Discover

Understand user's needs

I interviewed 5 users from our existing customers. Sustainability goals do get set in their companies, but these are often vague and without clear implementation. The SDGs are rarely actively pursued, but are usually only included in strategic documents or OKRs without structured follow-up. Customers want to clearly demonstrate which SDGs they are contributing to in order to create transparency and credibly communicate their sustainability strategy.

Competitor Analysis & Market Research

I analysed products from large software companies with complex goal setting solutions and found that the goal overview is presented in a simple, streamlined table format. This helped us to adopt proven design patterns for our users and make the user experience intuitive and familiar instead of completely reinventing it.

Collaborative Workshop

I worked closely with the founders, the sustainability expert and the developers to come up with possible solutions. Our CTO and developers made sure that our design was technically feasible, while our sustainability expert made sure that we were aligned with current sustainability practices. Together, we harmonise on the core functions and focus on simplicity and user-friendliness.

Clarifying the Core Problem

Lack of awareness: Companies often do not recognise what specifically needs to be done.

Lack of stocktaking: Companies do not have a clear overview of their current situation.

Unclear objectives: Companies do not define specific, measurable objectives.

Iterate

Wireframing & Flow Mapping

Based on the empathy map and user flow, I developed wireframes that allow users to set goals, create KPIs, and check progress during onboarding. However, internal testing showed that creating goals only from the top down was not enough to connect goals to actionable tasks in our data collection feature.