Discussion

Design implication: aspartame has not been banned or reduced after 2 years; provide warning for possible cancer-causing ingredients in the ai assistant.

How can finance enable/help/encourage sustainability? Personalized Investing

Most sustainability plans rely on carbon credits to achieve their goals, making carbon credits a single point of failure. If the credits are not accurate, the whole system collapses.

An open question is whether young investors are more easily than professionals swayed by influencers?

, Can the democratization of various uses of money include sustainability as a feature?

For consumer activism to become mainstream it needs to much simpler. Consumers do have increasing power to use their money to reinforces certain types of businesses; as conscious consumers we can vote with our dollars. How can we do it？ Sustainable brands, ESG, etc, etc. Pushing highers Standards and choose companies that adopt circular design” What is the consumer CO₂ contribution? What is the target? Consume pressure to advance ESG regulatory standards to add a baseline ESG dynamic pricing of risk like climate, mandatory climate disclosures, carbon pricing knowing your supply chain, analyze supply chain risk.

Product-level reporting can be a basis for investing in companies. “Product-investing”. I want to invest in particular products.

Overconsumption and underinvestment. -, includes financial products creating pathways towards sustainability-focused investing.

Important: “creating sustainability trust in companies in realtime”

My home country Estonia at the time was considered low-income, a small nation in poverty behind the Iron Curtain occupation of the Soviet Union; we now in 2024, have also reached high-income status.

Memes and AI assistant can be a tool for empowerment. I would like to have an AI agent to set my requirements and preferences and give a “f*** you” middle finger to companies that don’t meet them. I could also give a thumbs up to companies that meet my expectations. Perhaps the user interface could like Tinder where I can swipe left and right.

How can AI interfaces enable/help/encourage sustainability? AI-fying User Interfaces (for Sustainability)

Trend of sustainably, how can sustainability become more accessible? People want to shop, save, and invest sustainably - how to do it?

Sustainable capital allocation methods are many. The extent to which this funnel works - and it’s indeed a complex, multi–step funnel - depends on curbing greenwashing to a level that allows consumers to distinguish eco–friendly businesses from the heavy polluters.

ESG reports are very general and opaque. We need product-level analytics and reporting to be able to compare products.. ESG is filled with greenwashing. ESG is a really low bad. metrics and goals: ESG, SDGs, ESG risk. Q: Reflection on the ESG wave: Does a company that performs well in carbon reduction but whose products are harmful to health conform to the spirit of ESG? Sest ei saa ESG ja teisi mõõdikuid usaldada, crowdsourced mõõdikud.

My thesis centers on embedding transparency into every stage of a product’s life–cycle, from raw material sourcing through purchase to end‐of‐life recycling, so that young adults can make truly informed, sustainability-driven financial decisions.

Investing is a fundamentally hopeful act. It means I think there’s a future. Specifically, ‘green investing’ is investing in the future of our planet - but can we trust the sustainability practices the ‘green’ investment vehicles aggregate, promising to have a positive impact? For example, the European Union for many years counted biomass as ‘green’ energy, even while forestry companies were cutting down trees to produce the biomass - the regulation was not specific enough to curb this practice. So, in effect, a ‘green investor’ might be supporting deforestation. How can an easy-to-use investment app address such complexities without alienating the users?

Copy-investing is a popular feature of retail investing platforms like EToro

For young people, investing mostly means buying cryptocurrencies?

It can be as mundane as choosing the next eco-friendly product instead of the polluting one we purchase in the supermarket make a difference? How to invest in the growth of companies that put ESG at the center of their activities instead of using it for greenwashing? Creating direct ties will improve ESG. A journey from consumption to investing, in line with users’ personal values, by providing relevant sustainable finance guidance.

Consumption is ruining the world the world thinking as an investor the investor mindset. But there’s so much capital in large funds retails investor money doesn’t matter at all. does retail money make any difference? Retail Investor Helpers: A wide number of banks are offering services marketed a sustainable. It’s hard to decide. Gamestop for climate massively collaborative investing by gen-z?

Analysis: Messari: investor education, information asymmetry.The Information evavõrdsus disparity between pro and novice investors creates a big gap in knowledge.

College Student Willingness to pay ( WTP)

Defining the Problem Space.

college students can get used to looking at financial charts

App Installs

Uninstalls

What percentage of people uninstalled it?

Design Implications and Feature Ideas from Literature Review

Finance

Design implications results from the literature review on design.

Design implications arising from the money chapter.

Categoy	Sub-Category	Finding	Role	Design Implications
Shopping	Legislation		Consumer	As a consumer, I can get notified by the app about highlights of poor legislation refuted by science.
Investing	Metrics	ESG can’t be trusted; ESG alone is not a sufficient metric to prove sustainability of a company and needs to be accompanied by other metrics	Company
Investing	Transparency	Investors want to know where their money is going	Investor	Visualize what happens with the money.
Investing	AI Advisor		Investor/Consumer	This applies to both institutional and increasingly retail investors. Sustainable investing is possible due to consumer demand for greener products and services, and new tools such as ESG for measuring sustainable businesses and assets, as well as advancements in large-scale computational technologies to analyze large amounts of tracking data, comparing performance between different assets. Given these developments, might it be possible to create a practical sustainable investing AI advisor for consumers?
Shopping	Greenwashing		Consumer	Sustainability is fragmented. How can billions of people find greener alternatives and build closer relationships with sustainability-focused companies? Greenwashing is widespread, how can we feel trust, honesty, and transparency? A research project for designing a sustainable shopping, savings, and investing companion.
Shopping	Greenwashing		Consumer	Reading EU Commission’s proposals, one might think the politicians have everything under control, we can relax and continue the same lifestyles as before. Unfortunately, this is not true. As with ESG, while the good intentions may be there, the reality is emissions keep rising, while they should be falling. It’s possible to curb greenwashing!
Shopping	Greenwashing	Many upcoming laws against greenwashing	Regulatory
Investing	Fintech		Consumer	Fintech Like a Robinhood stock symbol page for brands including live ESG metrics and ability to register divestment. Same for crypto can be automated? People will start to discuss ESG vs price discrepancy?
Shopping	Quality Info		Consumer	hetkel hinna info liigub aga toidu kvaliteedi info ei liigu roheline filter finding good quality products stock are disconnected from the products companies make
Shopping	Accountability		Consumer	What if we gave consumers the tools to keep companies accountable?
Investing	Education		Consumer	As an interaction design student who cares about the environment, I ask myself how can interaction design contribute to increase sustainability? I make the assumption that investing is inherently “good” for one’s life, in the same way, that doing sports is good, or eating healthy is good. It’s one of the human activities that is required for an improved quality of life as we age – and started investing sooner, rather than later, is best because of the compound interest. Nonetheless, investment also includes higher risk than sports or food. How to communicate the risk effectively while educating the users?
Investing	Engagement		Consumer	Airbnb for Investments platform for projects linked to your consumption habits. Can provide better products for you as well as invest in these companies. The consumer can feel closer connection to the businesses they interact with through shared values, leads to participatory design and stakeholder capitalism. Platform to understand investment products. Green crowdfunding already allows people to invest into projects to make new green products, for example from recycled materials. but what about getting involved on a deeper level. Bigger than projects, scalable solutions. Kickstarter has green projects section. Startups vs large businesses. The design of the user interface helps the adoption of a new technology. What is the suitable user interface for millennial green investors?
Saving	Fintech		Consumer	As a user, I can use the app to compare banks available in my country.
Investing	Transparency		Consumer	How could people apply the same principle (Know Your Company) when buying a product or investing? Would building an ESG community help push polluting companies towards greener practices? or starving them from cheap access to capital.
Investing	Metrics		Consumer	We need a dashboard of comparable public indicators about each company.
Investing	Community	Web3 allows pooling resources in multi-sign wallets.	Investor	Make a climate hedge fund with friends.
Investing	Fintech		Investor	Sustainable investing product for young people everyday use Crypto, NFT provide everyday excitement trend of young people in crypto retail investors without needing to pay bank fees
Shopping	Accountability		Consumer	AI alert: “The company you’ve purchased from 3x in the past month is owned by Unilevel, which is under investigation for poor labor practices and deforestation”.
Investing	Education		User	Help me write me investment thesis first.
Investing	Governance		Investor	Show company board membership in the app product view.
Saving	Anthropomorphism	Money anthropomorphism increases saving behavior; mobile money users are better at saving.	Consumer	Make saving money look like an avatar or piggy bank or another cute character.
Shopping	Payments	BNPL	Consumer	This suggests users are already used to having more options in the payment flow.
Shopping	Certification		Regulatory

Design

This chapter has the following design implications. This chapter and design implications spurred the following feature ideas.

Several Superapps already contain features for payments (shopping), savings, and investing - yet don’t integrate Digital Product Passports to understand the products’ journey, including the origin and manufacturing conditions, materials, components, CO₂ footprint and environmental impact, post-consumer repair, recycling, and end-of-life disposal guidelines.

Design implications arising from the design chapter.

Category	Sub-Category	Role	Design Implications
Shopping	Greenwashing	Consumer	Personal CO2 tracking is ineffective and the focus should be on systematic change towards circular design and zero waste practices.
Shopping	Accountability	Consumer	Help consumers to demand more
Shopping	Lack of transparency	Consumer	Make open data easy to use in everyday life
Shopping	Transparency	Consumer	The key idea is making CO2 Visible.
Investing	Greenwashing	Investor	Rank companies based on sustainability
Shopping	Guidance	Consumer	Help you to decide: what to buy, how to save, where to invest.
Shopping	Decision Fatigue	Consumer	What if there was a “Green Filter” on every product everywhere?
Saving	Engagement	Consumer	Become a Sustainability-Aware App or Game.
Investing	Education	Investor	Focus on how college students can invest in specific industries?
Shopping	Rankings	Consumer	Where to shop rankings for groceries: list worst offenders in terms of products; shop and invest according to your values.
Saving	Self Tracking	Consumer	What Quantified Self look like for sustainability?
Saving	Coaching	Consumer	Empowering people to live a sustainable day
Shopping	Decision Support	Consumer	What if there was a “Green Filter” on every product everywhere?
Saving	Engagement	Consumer	Become a Sustainability-Aware App or Game.
Saving	Guidance	Consumer	Guidance could help young people beat climate anxiety by taking meaningful action.
Saving	Mental Health	Consumer	The app is just as much about helping people deal with climate anxiety as it is with solving the climate issue.
Saving	Metrics	Company	List of metrics that should be tracked to enable useful analytics. Ex: % of beach pollution, air pollution, water pollution (I had this idea while meditating). In essence, “green filter” is a central data repository not unlike “Apple Health for Sustainability”.
Saving	Health Fitness	Consumer	Health and fitness category apps
Saving	Coaching	Consumer	Using “green filter” you can get a personalized sustainability plan and personal coach to become healthy and nature-friendly.
Saving	Personalization	Consumer	All green categories ― Green hub ― Ask the user to prioritize
Investing	AI Advisor	Investor / Consumer	In my “green filter” AI advisor app’s scenario, the AI is scanning for opportunities matching the user’s sustainable investment appetite and risk profile, using different methods of analysis, including alternative data sources. Traditionally, financial analysts only looked at traditional data, such as company reports, government reports, historic performance, etc., for preparing advisory guidance to their clients. With the advent of AI and big data analysis, many other options of research data have become available, for example, accurate weather predictions for agriculture can affect guidance, because of expected future weather disasters in the area. Other examples include policy predictions, pollution metrics, etc.
Investing	Fintech	Investor / Consumer	Professional financial advisors use automated tools to analyze data and present it in human form to clients. Today’s ubiquitous mobile interfaces, however, provide the opportunity to ‘cut out the middleman’ and provide similar information to clients directly, at a lower cost and a wider scale, often without human intervention. Additional (more expensive) “human-judgment- as-a-service”, a combination of robots + human input, can help provide further personalized advice for the consumer, still at a cheaper price than a dedicated human advisor. Everyone can have a financial advisor.
Saving	Narrative Design	Consumer	Narrative design brings together film school storytelling experience with design.
Saving	Narrative Feed	Consumer	Rebuilt the app as a personalized, narrative lifestyle feed.
Investing	Community	Consumer	How the design can connect people to sustainable outcomes while shopping and investing? Perhaps even forming a community of sustainable action. What I showed in class looks like an app but it could also be a physical object (a speculative design). From the presentations I saw most students seemed to be interested in form and light (many lamps) and a couple were about medical uses. I don’t remember seeing one that could be compatible with the environmental sustainability focus unfortunately…
Saving	Guided Sustainability	Consumer	Guided Sustainability refers to using technology to help users make more sustainable decisions and track progress toward goals. “using technology, such as AI and machine learning, to help individuals and organizations make more sustainable decisions and take actions that promote environmental and social sustainability. This can include things like analyzing data on resource usage and emissions, providing recommendations for reducing the environmental impact of operations, or helping to identify and track progress towards sustainability goals. The goal of guided sustainability is to make it easier for people to understand their impact on the environment and to take steps to reduce that impact.”
Saving	Data Ownership	Consumer	Young people are stuck inside platforms. You do not own the data you put on TikTok.
Shopping	Transparency	Consumer	With this perspective of scale, what would a shopping experience look like if one knew at the point of sale which products are greener and which are more polluting?
Investing	AI Advisor	Investor / Consumer	AI Financial Advisors will need to go further to motivate users; they are prone to mistakes based on the data they ingest.
Investing	Generative AI	Company	Allow producers to make use of Speculative and Participatory design to test out new product ideas.
Saving	Process	Company	Processes sustain things: implication for design: build an app.
Shopping	Choice Architecture	Consumer	If sustainability cannot be automated, give the user buttons to choose a sustainable option.
Shopping	Defaults	Consumer	The power of defaults. Make the sustainable option the default option.
Shopping	Alerts	Consumer	Your shopping products mostly come from Protector and Gamble and Nestle. These conglomerates have a massive CO2 footprint. Build an index to find alternatives.
Shopping	Transparency	Consumer	App shows traceability.

College

College Students Need Tools for Action

Environment shapes action.. create an environment where college students can influence companies.

Design implications arising from the college chapter.

Category	Sub-Category	Role	Design Implications
Saving	Community	Consumer	Taiwanese students are influenced by the actions of their peers; the app should show what other people are doing.
Saving	–	Consumer	People exist in relation to other people.
Investing	–	Investor	Psychology of ‘fundraising clubs’ vs individual investing
Investing	–	Investor	@UkraineDAOBiddingUkrainian Ukraine DAO to support Ukraine through web3.
Shopping	–	Consumer	These social movements are small and require too much effort to be feasible for the app? Most college students are not zero waste or minimalist.
Shopping	–	Consumer	Group Purchases.
Saving	–	Consumer	Find Your Composting Community.
Investing	–	Investor	Provides a community for pooling money with like-minded investors.
Saving	Climate Anxiety	Consumer	How to support the youth? Design to reduce climate anxiety? Is getting people to go to nature more a good way to increase ecological awareness? Empowered by Design. Youth empowerment: The design should empower young people.
Shopping	–	Consumer	Consumer branded carbon credits like angry teenagers?
Saving	–	Consumer	Invest time not money, student don’t have money?
Saving	Social Trust	Consumer	Show Success Scenarios!
Saving	–	Consumer	Ask how much time you want to contribute.
Saving	–	Consumer	Match with other people based on time.
Saving	–	Consumer	Create a group chatroom.
Saving	–	Consumer	Use AI to help out with tips.
Saving	–	Consumer	Ask university students what do they study and match with that industry to become expert and sustainability leader in this field.
Saving	–	Consumer	People want to help and make a difference. Give people things to do. The @dontlookupMethodology part of the Don’t Look Up movie’s social campaign provides 5 user models / roles for the audience to follow: Consumer, Investor, Activist.
Saving	–	Consumer	Choose Your Climate Solutions.
Saving	–	Consumer	Younger people show higher motivation (participants in climate protests). How to be relevant for a younger audience?
Saving	–	Consumer	Yet action remains low.
Saving	–	Consumer	Targeted and gated to college students.
Saving	–	Company	FB, etc, Gas all had the same launch strategy - start with students
Investing	–	Investor	@kuzminskiEcologyMoneyDebt2015 ecology of money
Saving	–	Consumer	Young people are mobile-first
Shopping	–	Consumer	Persona: I care mostly about… fashion, art, …
Saving	–	Consumer	Young people like to follow trends.
Shopping	–	Consumer	Food ordering apps are popular.
Shopping	–	Consumer	Monoculture to regenerative food forests Oil to electric cars / bicycles.
Saving	–	Consumer	Social Educational Edutainment Fun
Saving	–	Consumer	@aespaAespaEseupaMY2020: Karina from Korea. It makes sense your sustainability assistant would talk to you. Studies show gen N is speaking to computers all the time. Interacting with the user is on the rise. For example, Chime makes tipping suggestions on the place of purchase.
Investing	–	Investor	The demographics that stand to win the most from the green transformation of business are the youngest generations, with more years of life ahead of them, and more exposure to future environmental and social risks. It would be advisable for Generation Z and their parents (Millennials) to invest their resources in greener assets, however, it’s still difficult to pick and choose between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ financial vehicles to invest in.
Investing	–	Company	This creates an opportunity for a new generation of sustainable investment apps, focusing on the usability and accessibility of ESG for a mainstream audience. Generation Z and Millennials expect a consumer-grade user experience.
Investing	–	Investor	What would that experience look like? I’ve chosen these demographics with the assumption that if given the right tools, the emotional demand for sustainability could be transformed into action. The exploration of systems of feedback to enable consumers to apply more direct positive and negative pressure to the businesses and consumers signal consequences for undesirable ecological performance is a major motivation of this study.
Investing	–	Company	The current environmental upheaval, led by Gen-Z and Millennials, and the business adaptation (or lack thereof) to sustainable economic models, taking into account the hidden social and environmental costs we didn’t calculate in our pricing before.
Investing	–	Company	We also need to consider environmental effects (E in ESG). We haven’t taken into account the whole cost of production, leading to the wrong pricing information. To achieve this, we need expert governance (G).
Saving	–	Researcher	I was unable to find similar research on university and post-graduate level students in Taiwan.
Saving	–	Researcher	Taiwanese college students and SDGs [@hoImportancePerformanceSDGs2022].
Saving	–	Researcher	College students in tourism and related fields … and sustainability
Shopping	–	Company	Consumers may be turned off by mentioning AI in product description. @cicekAdverseImpactsRevealing2024
Saving	–	Researcher	Progress in other areas of environmental protection has not made similar progress.
Shopping	–	Researcher	There are documentaries about oil product
Shopping	–	Researcher	Plastic production documentary
Saving	–	Researcher	I’ve seen several.. find and cite them to show the progression of the environmental movement in Taiwan ADD CITATION
Saving	–	Regulatory	The Taiwanese Green party
Saving	–	Researcher	Contact SOAS?

Sustainability

Design Implications from the Sustainability chapter

Start with the most polluted regions as priority?

Design implications arising from the sustainability chapter.

Category	Sub-Category	Role	Design Implications
Shopping	Transparency	Consumer	In unison, the reviewed technologies and practices move us closer to enabling realtime ESG: up-do-date transparent information about how our product are produced.
Shopping	Speed	Consumer / Investor	Realtime ESG is a building block to enable consumers and investors make more accurate, real-world purchase decisions.
Shopping	Actionability	Consumer	Simplify action
Shopping	Pollution	Consumer	People live in the polluted areas are so used to it. What app to wake them up? “You live in a highly polluted area. Here’s the TOP 10 companies causing pollution. Here’s what you can do.”
Saving	Health Tracking	Consumer	Blood testing and biomarkers allow people to track their health. I’m introducing the concept of ‘eco-markers’ to follow the sustainability of human activities.
Investing	Circular Economy	Company	AI can help us make sense of the vast amounts of sustainability data generated daily.
Investing	EPR	Company	ERP and CDP data should be part of Green Filter.
Shopping	Eco-Design	Consumer	How to find eco-designed products?
Investing	CE and EPC	Company	Encouraging Sustainable Design
Governance	Politics Matter	Regulatory
Governance		Regulatory	Call for GOP contributors’ transparency
Governance		Researcher	“triple turn”
Governance		Company	Lack of transparency
Shopping		Consumer	Sustainability is part of product quality. If a product is hurting the environment, it’s a low quality product.

AI

This chapter looked at AI in general since its early history and then focused on AI assistants in particular.

Design implications arising from the AI chapter.

Category	Sub-Category	Role	Implication
AI	–	Company	AI companions could combine sensor data from human bodies with the ability to reason about human speech, to provide increasingly relevant, in-context assistance. Because of the conversational nature of LLMs, they are very useful for affective computing.
AI	Anthropomorphism	Company	This suggests adding an avatar to the AI design may be worthwhile.
AI	Voice Assistants	Company	There are many distinct ways how an algorithm can communicate with a human. From a simple search box such as Google’s to chatbots, voices, avatars, videos, to full physical manifestation, there are interfaces to make it easier for the human communicate with a machine.
AI	Sustainability	Consumer	While I’m supportive of the idea of using AI assistants to highlight more sustainable choices, I’m critical of the tendency of the above examples to shift full environmental responsibility to the consumer. Sustainability is a complex interaction, where the producers’ conduct can be measured and businesses can bear responsibility for their processes, even if there’s market demand for polluting products.
AI	Sustainability	Consumer	Personal sustainability projects haven’t so far achieved widespread adoption, making the endeavor to influence human behaviors towards sustainability with just an app – like its commonplace for health and sports activity trackers such as Strava (fig. 9) –, seem unlikely. Personal notifications and chat messages are not enough unless they provide the right motivation. Could visualizing a connection to a larger system, showing the impact of the eco-friendly actions taken by the user, provide a meaningful motivation to the user, and a strong signal to the businesses?
AI	Machine Learning	Company	All of the interfaces mentioned above make use of machine learning (ML), a tool in the AI programming paradigm for finding patterns in large sets of data, which enables making predictions useful in various contexts, including financial decisions. These software innovations enable new user experiences, providing an interactive experience through chat (chatbots), using voice generation (voice assistants), virtual avatars (adds a visual face to the robot).
AI	Character Design	Company	“I’m a digital companion, a partner, an assistant. I’m a Replika.” said Replika, a digital companion app via GitHub Copilot, another digital assistant for writing code, is also an example of how AI can be used to help us in our daily lives.
AI	Psychology	Researcher	Humans respond better to humans?
AI	Psychology	Researcher	Humans respond better to machines that take into account emotion?
AI	Open Source	Regulatory	For public discussion to be possible on how content is displayed, sorted, and hidden, algorithms need to be open source.
AI	User Experience	Company	User experience design (AI UX) plays a crucial role in improving the consumer-to-investing journey. The missed opportunity to provide an even more interactive experience in line with user expectations.
AI	LLMs	Company	Prompt-engineering findings have significance for “green filter” as it validates the idea of creating advanced prompts for improved responses. For “green filter”, the input would consist of detailed user data + sustainability data for detailed analysis.
AI	Cuteness	Company	Cuter apps have higher retention
AI	Transparency	Consumer	Understanding algorithm transparency helps humans to regard the AI as a machine rather than a human
AI	Anthropomorphism	Company
AI			AIs should disclose they are AIs.

Mindmaps

Initial version of the concept map focused on the app itself.

Current concept map focusing on sustainability.

What is Research?

I, as the researcher, am similar to the blind people in the elephant story; focusing on greening shopping, saving, and investing are only the trunk of the enormous elephant that is environmental disaster unfolding in front of our eyes.

Illustration of the Jainist parable Anekāntavāda also known as Blind Men and an Elephant. Generated by Midjourney on August 17, 2023. Prompt: 'A simple pencil-drawn illustration of the the story Blind men and an elephant. The man touching the elephant's trunk is a research scientist. Ohara Donshu, Itcho Hanabusa, Japanese woodcut Edo style'.

Design research books

Koskinen (2011)

Ries (2011)

Design Studies Journal

Research through design is a method for interaction design research in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI).

Zimmerman et al. (2007)

Salovaara (2020) defining a research question

Nunnally & Farkas (2016)

interview people at google who made the green filter options

Design artefacts

“design’s nature as a ‘problem-solving’ science” Oulasvirta & Hornbæk (2016)

my contribution is the design artefact, “HCI researchers also make constructive contributions by developing new technologies and design”

Affairs (2013) Card sorting

How Models Work (n.d.)

Everything.

Behavirour kit:

Take the metrics from the several frameworks and display them on the product and company level? People can choose their own framework and see product data through that lens and vocabularies.

Col1	Col2	Col3
Donut Economy	Unrolled Donut
Regenerative Capitalism	8 Principles
Blue Economy
ESG
B Corp

“research for design”. design research is about expanding opportunities and exploration

RanYwayZ (2016)

Baytaş (2020) three categories of design research: Research for Design Research into Design Research through Design

047 (n.d.)

Baytaş (2020) Research for / into / through Design

(5) Qualitative Vs. Quantitative UX Research - YouTube (n.d.)

When to Use Which UX Research Method - YouTube (n.d.)

Great UX Research for Non-Researchers Steve Portigal Awwwards San Francisco (n.d.)

Erika Hall (n.d.)

Contact Kalle Lasn, Culture Jam

online/offline ethnographic participant observation At this stage in the research, the central concept being studied is defined generally as user expectations for a sustainable investment app.

What are my hypotheses?

User experiments

Financial statistics

• The small screen estate space of mobiles phones and smart watches necessitates displaying content in a dynamic manner. Likewise, speaking is one mode of interaction that’s become increasingly possible as machines learn to interpret human language. Virtual reality glasses (called AR/VR or XR in marketing speak) need dynamic content because the user is able to move around the environment. All these are multi-modal communication questions that interaction design is called upon to solve.

Analyzing existing apps and user pain-points

List of topics gleaned from literature review for discussion with the experts:

Transparency and sources of ESG and similar data

I will test the prototype with potential users using an online choice experiment survey.

Research Process In terms of literature review, academic inquiry in social sciences largely follows phenomena, while the issues and technologies discussed here are emergent. Not many studies exist yet (they might in a few years), which is why some of my references are to company press releases and news stories, or for public companies, their advisory for investors.

Target potential retail investors aged in generation-z 20-29, all gender in Taiwan. In general, the Taiwanese culture is savings oriented: I’m in a good location for financial user experience research.

Set your target goals

Access to health care

Access to education

Climate action

I propose interfaces and workflows to see financial interactions through the filter of sustainability.

What kind of sustainability info do college students care about? How would college students prefer to interact with the AI? What role would college students prefer the AI to take? How can college students trust AI? What can college students do to aid sustainability efforts? How might AI assistants help college students find shopping, saving, and investing opportunities?

How can design enable/help/encourage sustainability?

also known as circular economy. Assuming that as individuals we want to act in a sustainable way, how exactly would be go about doing that?

…for Sustainable Products

Results: Open data is needed for civic engagement. Sharing vs privacy is a political question. Privacy and data-sharing are not in opposition. Sustainability needs to be balanced with privacy.

Give Gen-Z the tools to turn climate anger into positive change to transform companies

Use imagination

Young people expect a product.

Societal movements change things: implication for design: build a community

Growing public understanding of how nature works and intersects with our use of money to buy products, creates interest in understanding “where does stuff come from”. Sustainable supply chains.

“Systemic change through financial actions driving policy and market changes encourage broader industry shifts towards greener practices”.

AI Chatbots and Generative UIs are hugely energy-intensive and it’s an open question whether the resulting productivity gains could offsett the emissions caused by these technologies.

Overconsumption-driven extractive business practices contribute to the degradation of Earth’s natural ecosystems, pollution of water, air, and soil, deforestation, diminishing biodiversity, climate instability, extreme weather, modern slavery, worsening human health, and other environmental and social challenges (ADD CITATION). Companies are attuned to consumer demand however widespread greenwashing makes it tiring to find sustainability-focused companies and requires extensive time for research. Even for highly motivated people, it’s difficult to know what’s sustainable.

My interest lies in understanding how AI assistants can help conscious consumers become sustainable investors. The purpose of this study is to explore how to provide the best user experience to potential sustainable financial AI companion users. In their sustainability report every company looks perfect. How can people shop, save and invest sustainably? Where does our money go and what are some greener alternatives? The companion enables people to be more transparent and responsible in their consumption behavior.

In Taiwan water is too polluted can’t swim

air is too dirty can’t breather (show my own stats)

Start local then go global with backup data from global sources

Ask chatgpt how to organize my sections

rq: how to connect env destruction pollution to source causes

rq: how to connect everyday financial actions to environmental impact in a visual/ meaningful way

idea came riding my bike in annan can’t swim in yhe annan river

show local pollution map?

show factories on the map

instead of the browser pluging just make a website where you can share the link of the product (and cache rhe results)

on ios can use the share screen to share to the app?

ICID calls upon us to have the courage to redesign entire industries

This research takes place at the intersection of Taiwanese college students, sustainability, finance, AI, and design.

For the average person like myself, my experience with money is mostly limited to buying things at the supermarket. Food, clothes, furniture, soap, mobile phone. This leaves very few options on how to start with something new like saving and investing.

Could the Green Supermarket become the entry point to Green Savings and Green Investing?

Oboarding more people for sustainable practices is a complex interaction design issue hindered by ambiguous data (what is sustainable?) and messy human motivations (we love buying things).

What can people who want to preserve Earth’s environment, exactly do? How can networks of people come together?

— LLMs enable data journalists to create stories: Big Local News (2024)

Health tracking apps paired with connected devices such as Apple Watch filled with sensors provide one model for simple interactions to dynamically track digital health data - also known as a quantified self. This data allows apps to provide tips how to improve health outcomes through small daily actions such as climbing more stairs. Small interactions allow users to align their goals with their actions.

What would be a good interface to track sustainability? What is the user interface at scale, useful for billions of people?

One way to influence societal outcomes is to decide where to put our money. While our financial decisions are a vote towards the type of businesses we want to support, is it enough?

While some people are demanding sustainability, and some governments and companies are announcing green investment opportunities, how can consumers discover the most suitable investment options for their situation?

How can retail investors access and differentiate between eco-friendly sustainability-focused investable assets?

The level of knowledge of and exposure to investing varies widely between countries and people.

Could linking green consumption patterns with sustainable investing provide another pathway to speed up achieving climate justice as well as personal financial goals?

In this simplified scenario, I’m in a physical offline store, doing some shopping. When putting a bottle of Coca Cola in my basket, my AI companion Susan will ask me a personalized question:

Does individual climate action help?

Gen-Z college students (target users) may not have the capital to make a financial dent today however they can be early adopter and they will be the decision-makers in a few years.

“Like climate change, the focus on individual actions as a solution is often misplaced, though it remains a focus of media and industry. For decades, the petrochemical industry has offloaded responsibility onto individuals through promoting concepts such as the”carbon footprint”, championed in a 2004 advertising campaign by British Petroleum” Lavers et al. (2022).

Individual efforts are too small to matter unless they’re inspired by Community a effort

atmospheric pollution and climate change

The latest IPCC report Calvin et al. (2023)

Dimock (2019)

Latvian Kora app for tracking personal CO2 footprint, Earn KORA coins for reducing CO2 emissions (Kora Sustainability, 2019).

Google Chrome Extentsion

While Google is the most popular browser with 3 billion users, extensions are a relatively less known feature of the browser. Most popular extensions are Grammarly, for Taiwanese students End Note is familiar.

However it’s only available for computers (extensions don’t run on phones and tablets).

Shopping-as-Investing

• Introduce this concept

• The Manor (2022)

• Sustainability is hard. Green Filter helps you find companies that are making a true effort and build closer relationships through shopping, savings, and investing. Green Filter helps you find companies that are making a true effort to become sustainable and build closer relationships through shopping, savings, and investing

• Gather requirements and build a prototype for the next-generation investment app for young adults. Improving the user experience for young adults getting started with (green) investing. What would a “Tinder for (Green) Investments” look like? How can we make the logistics of investing so easy to use and take into account my values?

• My thesis core message is : everyone should change from consumer to sustainability investor (define these terms in the thesis). how to do this? can help you become from consumer to investor i believe there’s space for a product like that. your green investing friend find the companies tackling certain problems and invest in them using crypto business can be a force for good

• Consumer purchases are an indicator of demand. If demand trends down, companies will stop producing this product.

‘Investment-as-Product’

• Green Filter helps you discover how to save money and the planet with your daily shopping. By providing an easy way for people to learn about and shop with sustainable companies, we imagine a world where people invest in their future, find great deals on responsibly-made products, and get useful discounts from socially responsible brands.

• GreenFilter is a product that combines AI, design and marketing to help people manage their social impact throughout the stages of their lives, from young adult years to retirement. Its primary goal is to give people the tools they need to invest responsibly in sustainable companies, while also educating them on this topic. Our project offers a responsive website and mobile app that leverages AI and other advanced technologies. In addition, our prototype includes a reality-based virtual assistant with voice command capabilities which can provide customers with new insights into the world of green finance

• GreenFilter introduces a novel, interactive point-of-sale technology that helps people make greener shopping decisions. The platform uses artificial intelligence to suggest green alternatives for products on your shopping list, and will also help you to find other companies that can make sustainable versions of the product you are buying.

• As people become aware of the impact their shopping is having on the environment, they become interested in finding alternatives to big brands and large companies. GreenFilter provides designers an AI companion design which helps people build relationships with sustainability-focused companies by providing personalized recommendations, giving product reviews and helping them shop sustainably. This new tool will empower consumers to make greener choices throughout their lives.

• Better management of planet Earth

• How can wee Shop, Save, Invest in line ecologic principles and planetary boundaries? individual action doesn’t move the needle. how to group together

• App to build community

• Life within planetary boundaries

• Currently it seems there’s a secret around how things are produced we want to increase transparency

• Companies that have nothing new nothing to hide should welcome this opportunity to mark themselves to keep a conscious consumers and investors.

• We want to create competition around sustainable practices enter widespread adoption

• Cigarettes and pictures of lung cancer every product should be required to have photos of production conditions switch such as Rainforest and deforestation the products that include Palm oil.

• My thesis is that a lot of people want to do good, shop eco-friendly, invest green, etc. But they don’t believe the solutions work. They don’t have trust. This is a user interface issue. How to build trust.

Results

The research helps me (and others) to

Avoid reinventing the wheel and duplicating existing approaches.

It aims to help app developers maximize impact by aiding complementary additionality.

Make high-quality products. If used wisely, money can help build communities of sustainable impact.

Define every word in the title: “The Journey from Consumer to Investor: Designing a Financial AI Companion for Young Adults to Help with Sustainable Shopping, Savings, and Investing”

Journey - behavioral change takes time

Consumer - purchase goods without thinking about the effect

Investor - thinking about the return

Design - decisions

Financial - dealing with money

AI Companion - automated sidekick

Young Adults - College Students

Help - to be of assistance

Sustainable Shopping - shopping understanding the consequences

Sustainable Saving - in this context I mean Sustainable Savings, that is reducing one’s environmental footprint

Sustainable Investing - activity of thinking longer-term

Open-ended Questions

Close-ended Questions

Expert Surveys

Early Ideas for Interfaces / Scenarios / Product Features

Show all the different prototypes just likes architects do. And then defend why I chose the one I did. For NW make a Loom with the interfaces and talk about them?

I developed a number of early prototypes to visualize product feature ideas.

What’s on the intersection of College Students, Sustainability, Investing, Data-Driven Design and Artificial Intelligence (AI)? AI-Driven Sustainable Investment Tools.

The app aims to address the market failure by providing consumers sufficient sustainability information on the goods, services and investments.

resource depletion

and adopt the doughnut economy as my overarching theoretical framework

Humans are successful because of our adaptability. The study suggests tools to adapt to our current reality.

United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration

Hypothesis: extractive business practices reduce college students trust, regenerative business practices create trust among college students towards the company.

Provided there is awareness

How can sustainability-minded college students find companies that meet their expectations, standards and requirements?

• Make a public profile of my carbon consumption!!! Like on Commons.

• Shop

• Save

• Invest

• Build closer relationships with sustainability-focused companies

• Sales funnel for eco-focused products

• The eco-friendly market is fragmented

• Build trust, clarity, transparency, and honesty

• Make a ‘Sustainability Flywheel’ graphic, like that of Amazon’s

• Sustainability is fragmented. How can billions of people build closer relationships with sustainability-focused companies based on honesty and transparency? A research project for designing a sustainable shopping, savings, and investing companion.

• TODO: Make a table showing research results translated to design decisions

• Your Green Helper

• Make some initial prototype? make YoutTbe video… hi, you have reached? spread… through ESTBan and others?

• Currently CO₂ footprint calculators ask you a couple of questions and give a ballpark estimate. Does it make sense to track sustainability on a more nuanced level, like Apple Health, in order to encourage sustainable behavior?

Product Idea	Source		Prototype Link
Speak Truth to Power	Literature Review	Consolidate user feedback for companies	greenfilter.app/prototypes/truth-power
Shopping Divest	Literature Review	What if you could build communities based on what you buy?	greenfilter.app/prototypes/shopping-divest
True Cost	Literature Review	What if you could see the actual cost of each product including externalities?	greenfilter.app/prototypes/true-cost-
Sunday Market	Literature Review	First prototype for going to the organic Sunday Market with friends.
XYZ	Expert Interview
ABC	User Survey

• Affinity diagrams help users organize ideas by brainstorming, sorting and labeling to cluster related information (Kara Pernice, 2018; Quignard, 2022)
• Scan a product to see the company and start investing or divesting from them Current economics is lowering the quality of life on the planet

Actionable Insights: Translate data into everyday actions the app can suggest.

• What does investing look like at the scale of billions of people? like IG
• The most effective things are Commodities? Food, transport, fashion, plant trees.
• personalized AI, meta glasses understand your context. sense and reconstruct the world around you and to understand the context in which you’re using your device.sense and reconstruct the world around you and to understand the context in which you’re using your device. Make suggestions and take action proactively to help you get things done — ideally, so seamlessly that you may not even notice.neuroscience co-adaptation of the interface. your future devices will learn and adapt to you as you use them.
• Scalable Climate Solutions: What really works on a large scale?
• brand colors: pink, orange, green

Database

Compile a database on relevant apps and companies in the space

Easily access data used in this research project (please wait a bit until it loads below). The database includes sustainability-focused apps categorized by features and problems they try to solve, sustainable investing apps, and links to research papers.

Design Implications from the User Survey

Group-Related Features

General theory about Taiwanese society suggests that it’s low-context and people need groups to do activities. But my survey about my sustainability app shows that people don’t pick the features for joining groups. Joining groups was one of the least interesting choices in the survey.

Factor	Potential explanation
Survey framing effect	Survey respondents may feel the way I framed the survey question for “joining groups” made it sound like an extra commitment they didn’t want to make.
Group fatigue	Survey respondents may already have too many group obligations to attend to (school, work, family, etc). Joining another new group may feel like a burden, not a benefit.
Fear of awkwardness	Survey respondents may feel joining strangers in online group is risky, uncomfortable or unnecessary.
Desire for personal achievement and changing cultural trends	Survey respondents may be more motivated by individual achievement to personally feel they are making a difference instead of waiting for the group. Possibly they are more individualistic than my expectations in their behavior (particularly in a digital context) and the traditional “group society” stereotype is weakening.
Are “group” and “sustainability” concepts related enough?	Survey respondents may not clearly understand the benefit for sustainability from their joining a group.

Factorial Surveys (Li et al., 2022): “Factorial surveys is a research method that combines classical experiments with survey methodologies. Factorial surveys use short narratives, called vignettes, to represent various levels of independent variables that are too complex or unethical to create and manipulate in real-world or lab situations”

and a including a choice experiment between potential feature sets in consumption, savings, and investment.

Start with a simple but powerful question: — Does it matter what you buy? — Does it matter how much you save? — Does it matter where you invest? Why?

Research Limitations

First, finance is a highly regulated industry and the proposed user experience designs may be limited by legal requirements. This study does not take such limitations into account, rather focusing only on the user experience.

This work is focused on user experience design and does attempt to make a contribution to economics.

ESG data is expensive so couldn’t be used in this research. ESG needs data to give us an accurate understanding of the realities inside companies and the user experience design does not address the underlying data quality problem further than by providing a link to the data source.

I don’t have access to user financial data.

Research Reason: While many people are working on AI models, there’s a lack of people working on “Human-AI interaction”. Sustainability is the context. How can we better team up to solve the challenges we face this century? The huge externalities.

Future Research

The literature is rich and there is ample space for future research. The following includes some suggestions for authors whose work deserves a deeper look.

Does the specialized interface offer any advantages of a general UI such as ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Mistral, and others?

Some ideas for fruitful research directions

Perception of pollution levels among Taiwanese college students.

RQ: Does AI acceptance increase with Affective Computing?