Climate Action Guide
Creating the minimal viable product (MVP) and brand identity for a B2B Saas Climate Risk Analytics startup for real estate investors and asset owners.
Team
Harsh Jain (Co-founder),
Madhubanti Deb (Environmental Economics), Parth Panchmatia (Software Development),
Nalin Dwivedi (Marketing Analyst)
My Role
User Research
UX & Product Strategy
Branding & Visual Design
Timeline
June - August 2020
(12 weeks)
NOTE: Out of respect for confidentiality, I cannot share certain details online since the product has not yet been released! Do reach out to me to learn more or read about my experience working at Climate Action Guide.
How might we…
Empower real estate businesses to mitigate risk due to climate change with a data-driven approach?
Overview
The Challenge
The global climate has changed and will continue to change. This creates new opportunities and risks, but above all it creates uncertainty which impacts every aspect of a real estate business.
For asset owners and investors, these impacts range from building life cycles, operating margins to market desirability of assets.
My Impact
Led user research (conducting interviews & analysis of qualitative data) & pioneered a Lean UX process with the team.
Designed the first MVP and front-ended the user research, visual design, branding & website design which gained the startup a seed funding of $500,000 to develop the beta-version of product.
The Solution
Climate Action Guide is a SaaS web-based tool which quantifies climate risk specific to an asset or portfolio in dollar value.
The tool empowers asset owners, businesses and investors to use the climate risk assessment to strategically mitigate the risk and generate long term profits.
Tools
Figma & Mural
Adobe Illustrator & Indesign
Wix Website Editor
Google Suite - Docs, Sheets, Slides
Zoom (user research & testing)
Process & Deliverables
Qualitative Research
Climate Action Guide started with the idea of developing a web-based assessment software for understanding and mitigating climate risk on real estate assets. As a novel concept in the market there were many uncertainties that the team needed to overcome.
Research Plan
I began by creating a research plan that would help keep me organized and on track for such a quick research phase. I started the discovery process by interviewing the stakeholders to gain a better understanding of the business objectives.
Research Goals
Who are the target users for this product?
What are the current mindsets and challenges in evaluating climate risk currently, if at all?
How can Climate Action Guide meet these needs?
Recruitment Criteria
We worked as a team to reach out to real estate professionals in the insurance, banking and real estate development industry.
Since the rest of the team had relevant experience in the real estate and finance industry, they took on the task of recruiting potential users to interview and oversaw market research.
I took on the responsibility for qualitative research which included creating the interview questions, leading the user interviews with the team on board and synthesizing qualitative data findings.
What We Heard from Interviews
Competitive Analysis
We also wanted to study competitor’s offerings to discover the advantage that could help CAG stand out.
We learnt that CAG could create a competitive edge in the market by providing a customized assessment and mitigation solutions for individual and portfolio level assets based on the context of its investment and operational needs.
(Click to Enlarge Image)
Persona Development
Analysing data from qualitative research interviews and market research, we deduced that the target users for the product would fall into one of these two primary categories (investors or asset owners), each with its own set of goals, pain points and needs articulated below:
Investor Persona - Click Image to Enlarge
Asset Owner Persona - Click Image to Enlarge
Investors
Includes:
Private Real Estate Companies
Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs)
Individual Investors (invest for 5-10 years +)
Banks or other debt providers
Asset Owners
Includes:
Asset Operators/ Managers
Asset Owners who operate the assets
Real Estate Developers
Real Estate Investment Trusts who operate assets
Core Insights
I was given the responsibility to design the first wireframes of the product prototype. Below are some of the main requirements/issues that the product needed to address, for both investors and asset owners, that guided the prototyping phase of the MVP.
Education
People tend to think of climate change as a long-term change that may not directly affect their bottomline in the 5-10 years that they hold an asset.
They believe that climate risk may be marginal or abstract and will affect a region rather than a single asset.
Data source transparency and industry credibility is key for creating trust in the product.
Customization
Users want to see quantified financial estimates of risks and opportunities for optimization.
They should be able to compare markets where investments are made to ensure profitability or least risk as well as see potential returns with different investment strategies to take data-driven decisions.
Complexity
Users don’t view any one kind of risk in isolation during decision making. They look at a combination of factors such as ESG mandates, current market value, location/region, property type, holding term, etc
While evaluating different assets, owners and asset managers want to know how operating costs change over the specific holding time.
Lean UX Canvas
To validate our product idea and test it, I facilitated an open workshop and created a Lean UX Canvas to set the priorities for the research, ideation and MVP development process by bringing all the stakeholders onboard.
Service Experience Mapping
Paper & Low Fidelity Prototypes
User Testing
To validate the product’s main features, we used the mid-fidelity wireframes and conducted 2 rounds of user tests with some of the interviewees we had previously reached out to.
This also helped us validate some assumptions about the context of use, required and redundant information or tools we needed to provide to potential customers for them to derive maximum value.
Some of the questions we asked:
Where do you see the most impact from this product?
What is useful to know when assessing climate risk?
How often would you use this product?
At what point in the process would you use this product?
In what kind of investment scenario/context would you derive the most value out of this product?
Is there any part that you would consider non-priority/redundant?
What else can add more value to this product for you?
Analyzing User Feedback
Through the process of user testing we found out about additional needs and product requirements that the MVP needed to address:
Investors:
To view and/or compare short-term & long-term climate risks associated with assets/portfolios
To capitalize on growing opportunities/markets - needs an overview of low-risk & high-risk regions with respect to 5 or 10-year terms.
Asset Owners:
To be able to customize the climate risk data findings for the audience being presented to for making investment decisions
To know downtime and business loss due to sudden impacts of climate hazards
To know details of changes to insurance coverage based on climate hazards occurrence & how much or why insurance can become a risk in the future.
Information Architecture
I re-organized the information architecture of the prototype to prioritize certain features and content that are most valuable to users, such as viewing assessments and reports by risk, comparing assets and portfolios by location, holding time, priority and risks.
High Fidelity Prototype
In this phase of prototyping, I worked with a UI style guide to create consistency in the visual design and translated user feedback from testing into the final prototype.
Click “Sign in” below to begin viewing the interactive prototype.
The Minimal Viable Product
Below is the MVP we pitched to angel investors for providing advisory guidance and seed funding of $500,000 to develop the beta-version of the product.
Financial Insights for Daily Decision-making
A simple and customizable tool to evaluate climate risk, generate climate assessment reports and discovery mitigation strategies for real estate investors and owners, easily accessible on the web.
Insights about the financial impacts on dollar value climate risk on assets including Net Operating income (NOI), valuations, cashflow, capital expenditure - all in one place.
Affordable & Customized Climate Risk Assessments
Provides standardized comparative analysis & outputs that can be directly plugged into the financial model. The entire platform is technology driven and affordable for everyone. We use environmental report templates to generate climate risk reports.
Data-driven Mitigation Strategies & Payback Periods
Driven by risk related data insights, we provide mitigating or adapting strategies with measurable returns and time required to payback additional expenditure. This is a unique proposition by CAG available with no competitor.
Instantaneous Portfolio-level Analysis & Asset Comparisons
Flexibility to slice and dice the data to view or compare strategies and risks apt for portfolios, assets and markets across climatic scenarios and hazards. The ability to incorporate insurance and other measures within the assessment.
Logo Design & Branding
While simultaneously working on the product prototype, I was also responsible for creating the visual language, voice and tone of the product’s brand which would be consistent across the product website, marketing materials, social media pages and the prototype.
Branding Workshop
To incorporate the vision of the team, I conducted a workshop to document the collective vision for the brands voice & tone as well as visual mood boards as a starting point to design the logo and the branding schemes.
We considered how our brand would stand out from the competition by choosing a color palette that was unique and conveyed professionalism and calmness over cliched climate activism. Below are some of the responses I collected from the team:
Logo Design Concepts
Based on the team’s vision, I came up with multiple concepts and options for the logo.
Triangles
inspired by the symbols of the four elements - fire, water, air, earth
CAG
Climate Action Guide abbreviation integrated within logo
Hexagons
Dynamic & flexible form, hexagonal structure found abundantly in nature
Layers
Symbolic of the layers of the earth’s atmosphere that gives birth to climatic conditions
Bars, gradients and visual upward arrow
Data-driven tool, indicating growth/success and profits from investment.
Design Iterations
I incorporated feedback from my teammates to conclude on the final design.
Final Design
Email Marketing
As a pre-seed startup, Climate Action Guide needed to spread the word about the product not only to potential investors, but also to potential client companies to increase the outreach of the product.
For this purpose, I was tasked with designing a downloadable marketing brochure that could be easily distributed to potential customers by email showing the use case to guide customers while making the product offering relatable to day to decision-making.
(Scroll on laptop screen below to view)
Website Design
The goal of the website and the brochure was to educate potential clients and investors about climate risk and the impact of Climate Action Guide as a novel product in the market.
As the timeline was short and the team wanted a easy-to-edit layout that could be customized in the future, we decided to use Wix website builder.
Initial Sketches
Click Images to Enlarge
User Flow
Landing Page Design
(Scroll on laptop screen below to view)
Reflection & Learnings
My time at Climate Action Guide was a great learning experience not only because it was the first real-world product MVP that I worked on, but also because I learnt a lot about getting comfortable in an unfamiliar terrain, sharing knowledge and collaborating with a team remotely.
Listen & Communicate.
Being able to communicate your work to the team is as important as the work itself. Feedback on every aspect of the design adds value to the overall product outcome.
Balance Needs.
It’s tricky to design for multiple stakeholders, especially when finding the right product-market fit.
Jugaad is Good.
Quick cycles of design sprints and testing with existing ideas and resources can help discover unknowns and validate assumptions in days rather than weeks!
Be Adaptable.
It’s important to be agile, open-minded and flexible. The design process should adapt to the needs of the product, the context & the team’s capabilities/skills.