Project Overview

Introduction

The level of climate-warming carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere is forecast to rise by a near-record amount in 2019, according to the Met Office. The increase is being fueled by industries, transportation, agriculture and general house hold electricity and heat production. To avoid this upset, individuals need to be more conscious of the impact and how much carbon emission they are accountable for. Furthermore, individuals need to partake in activities that reduces their carbon emission rate.

EcoSoft at its core is a system about raising the awareness for climate change, encouraging the reduction of carbon emission activities, and providing a tailored activity list for each individual for them to help combat carbon emission. It’s designed to enlighten and educate its users, providing personal list of activities users can partake in to help reduce their carbon emission, as well as providing a central place for news and articles related to climate change that might interest the users. EcoSoft design is centred around gamifying the activities and rewarding the completion of said activities to encourage users to be more active. Furthermore, EcoSoft is also akin to a social platform where friends can compete and raise awareness among each other.

Scope

The final product will be an mobile based android app, user progress tracking system that has some social media features. The proposed solution details everything that will be included in the final project, with other features falling out of scope. Specific tasks that are out of scope include:

• Maintenance of third party API's.
• Content maintenance / management.
• News article creation and all in-app purchase features.
• Developing algorithm to scrape news articles.

The overall system design will be focused on three core criteria:

Confidentiality: all data stored on the site will be secure and encrypted due to the confidential nature of the data shared through the system. As such this will be built by:

• Hosting the service on a secured server.
• Using industry standard encryption algorithms to add a layer of security on the data.
• Allowing patients to be able to remove their data from the system anytime they wish. Using industry standard API and libraries.

Care: the application is all about caring for the environment and to encourage users to partake in this ideology. Hence the build will involve:

• Creating a variety of activities that would help reduce carbon emission.
• Creating individually tailored suggested activities and challenges for users to attempt.
• Creating a virtual garden to track user progress and provide graphical entertainment.
• Displaying graphs and statistics for those who likes viewing their data numerically.
• Allowing multiple theme selection and personalization.

Content: the application will provide a various forms of content for the user to experience and enjoy. The features necessary for the build will include:

• Adding friends and promoting the app among social groups.
• Allowing a friendly competition among friends to encourage group improvements.
• Providing a central hub for related news and articles for users to view.

Glossary

In this project the following word or phrases will adopt the following definitions:

Word	Definition
User	Individual or corporate that subscribes to the app and uses the services provided.
Activities	Events or a form of action users can partake in provided by the app.
Garden	A virtual garden that displays user's activity progress in graphical visual.
Friends	Other users that has either accepted the self user's friend request or has been accepted by the self user.
Leader board	A sorted list that displays the user's friends in the sorted order.
Green Points	A virtual currency developed for the app to quantify the magnitude of activity participation which can be used to purchase in-app features.

Overview

The system aims to help users reduce their own carbon emission and spreading the knowledge of climate change. It will give users access to related news and articles, individualized recommended activities and challenges to keep users engaged and on track and a easily interactable graphs and visuals. It will track user's progress and attempt to gamify the whole process and then display it as a virtual garden to keep the users entertained. It will also allow friends management to create a social group that promotes friendly competition and group support. Lastly, to engage the users and encourage the users to consistently partake in activities, the system rewards users with in-app currency that can be used to further perosnalize their app or unlock new features.