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Lifestyle Calculator

The Lifestyle Calculator is a tool for creating awareness around how lifestyle choices affects our carbon footprint.

The Lifestyle Calculator is set of 12 to 35 questions that the user answers in a quiz-like format.

After 12 or 13 questions the user is presented with a rough carbon footprint estimate, as well as the opportunity to answer more questions for a more personalized footprint.

The hypothesis is that when we understand the consequences of our decisions, it becomes possible to commit to making positive changes.

The tool and methodology was developed by Doconomy and the UNFCCC secretariat to provide organisations in the world the opportunity to share this tool for individual insights.

Try out the Lifestyle Calculator at https://www.lifestylecalculator.com/

The fast track and the complete questions battery​

The Lifestyle Calculator is built in layers.

  • Fast track: ~12 questions
  • Complete questions battery: ~35 questions

At first the user is presented with the fast track – a subset of the full question battery, along with a set of assumptions – to achieve a faster result that still holds a high accuracy.

With this fast track we aimed at creating an engaging and intuitive experience where the user don't have to stop and think to get a first quick understanding of her footprint.

The user can then dig deeper to explore the footprint further. After finishing the fast track, the user can go into the second layer of questions and replace the assumptions with their actual data by answering more questions in four categories.

These further details will improve the accuracy of the carbon footprint estimation and showcase additional sources of emissions that the user might not have thought about.

Four main categories​

The lifestyle Calculator is a set of questions selected to cover four high level lifestyle categories selected because they represent the biggest emission hotspots related to an individual's lifestyle.

  • Home
  • Transport
  • Shopping
  • Food

Share the calculator with your users​

The Lifestyle Calculator is an API, and a web site, built on top of the API. Doconomy customers can help spread the awareness by implementing one of these technologies to share it with their users.

  • The web site – can be provided as a customized version on a subdomain
  • The API – provide your own frontend on to of the API via an app or a web

Capabilities​

Language packs – This is what we call the calculator's capabilities for language, units, measurements and currencies.

  • The calculator can be made available in different languages.
  • The questions and responses will use either the metric or the imperial system for units and measurements depending on the country selected in the calculator’s first question.
  • In terms of currency, we use EURO for Europe, JPY for Japan and USD for the rest of the world.

GUI – The web site is a packaged version of the calculator – i e it has a frontend built on top of the API, that you can visit online. A version of the calculator can be made available to Doconomy customers on a subdomain. For instance https://www.lifestylecalculator.com/unfccc

Reskin – Doconomy makes the Lifestyle Calculator web site available as a version customised to better fit your brand. Customisation or reskinning capabilities include:

  • Logo
  • Colors
  • Category images
  • Font

API – Doconomy also provides the Lifestyle Calculator as an API is for development teams wanting to have more control and build their own frontend. The API allows you to initiate a survey and get the survey questions and response options.

For every answer submitted a current footprint and the next question is returned. At the end you will get a summary of the survey results.