Position: Web designer, web developer, webmaster Timeframe: Fall 2008 Location: Needham, MA (USA) Key technologies: JavaScript, PHP, CSS

challenge.greenneedham.org

The Green Needham Collaborative (GNC) approached me with the task of creating a user-friendly tool that would help the organization to promote and track the progress of their newly introduced 10% Energy Challenge. The 10% Energy Challenge is GNC’s flagship project for 2008-09 and will implement a set of programs to support Needham residents in reducing their energy usage and carbon footprints by 10%.

One of the main aims for this project was to figure out an effective way of bringing together the vast amount of information available on environmental sustainable practices and to communicate this to the residents of Needham, MA in the most effective way possible. After analyzing a number of other tools available online, it became increasingly apparent that the organization needed its own customized tool to achieve its objectives.

Researching existing tools and talking to a number of residents provided some input into the design process for the web-application. User-friendliness was regarded most importantly to ensure that a particular user would not be overwhelmed with the information presented. The tool is designed as an online checklist, presenting information on a particular energy saving action, providing a numerical estimation of the impact of this action and then an option to commit to this action. The application then keeps a running calculator that will show the total percentage reduction in carbon dioxide emissions that the user has achieved based on their current energy usage estimation and the total of all the actions they have chosen. The data then gets transmitted and stored on the Green Needham server for later retrieval.

Initial testing of the tool by a number of residents has provided very positive feedback, along with a number of improvements and bug fixes that are continually being implemented in frequent application updates. The simplicity of the tool has been so popular that the Government of Massachusetts has expressed an interesting to rolling it out in a number of other communities across the state.

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