Climate change is accelerating, making corporate sustainability efforts more critical than ever. Businesses must actively engage employees to drive meaningful environmental change. With this in mind, I explored how a digital product (in Dutch) could motivate the Brunel Amsterdam team to participate in the company’s sustainability initiatives.
Design challenge
How might we create a digital product that supports the Brunel Amsterdam team in actively following the company's sustainability policy?
My mission
I executed this project in 2018 on behalf of Fourleaf Digital Agency
for Brunel, a leading global tech company. I was responsible the complete product design process.
Design goals
• Foster team involvement in sustainability
• Encourage ownership and connection to the policy
• Ensure ideas are practical and feasible
Target audience
The Brunel Amsterdam team includes approximately 300 employees, generally aged 28-38.
Outcome
Waste Warriors, a collaborative mobile app where employees can propose and vote on sustainability initiatives. This gave employees a voice while ensuring oversight by experts for implementation.
To find my answer to the design challenge, I used a variety of research and design methods. These were the ones that had the most impact on design decisions.
• User interviews and prototype testing: Employees shared their sustainability experiences, and I later tested clickable prototypes to refine core features.
• Co-creation workshop: A hands-on session where employees brainstormed sustainability improvements. Facilitating this session required creating a safe, open, creative environment where everyone could contribute. The session involved structured activities, making concept posters, and to generate actionable ideas, they were reviewed.
• Expert consultation: Sustainability experts reviewed proposed ideas to ensure alignment with company goals.
To get the answers to the questions I had, research was conducted. I could now identify how to create solutions that are beneficial for involvement in sustainability for the Brunel employees.
Interviews revealed that employees felt disconnected from the sustainability policy because it was imposed top-down. The majority of employees showed a strong value to sustainability, and expressed a strong desire for involvement. This way, they understood on a deeper level how their actions impacted the success of the sustainability goals.
This insight underlined that the company's sustainability policy should be seen as a shared responsibility, rather than directive. It gives the opportunity to work together towards the goal and celebrate the successes together as a team, this made the contribution to the policy a lot more attractive.
The co-creation session allowed employees to brainstorm sustainability improvements. The session was energizing for everyone: it really showed their involvement to sustainability, and the need to have a sense of ownership in the policy. Employees came up with lots of smart, realistic ideas to make the sustainability policy a lot easier for them to follow, like placing a clearly visible paper recycling bin in places where paper was usually being thrown away.
To validate the feasibility of proposed ideas, sustainability experts were involved as administrators. They reviewed the employees' concepts to ensure alignment with Brunel's sustainability goals, while also challenging and encouraging creativity from the team.
Visualizing the desired outcomes and benefits of the sustainability projects made it more attractive and compelling to employees. This enhanced motivation and reinforced the habit’s appeal over time.
I sketched out initial ideas to explore various features and flows for the app. The concept review with users confirmed key insights and helped refine the core functionalities.
After gathering user feedback, I created low-, mid-, and high-fidelity prototypes using Figma, focusing on usability and intuitive navigation.
Wireframe Design Notes:
• Clear task prompts for submitting and voting on initiatives
• Structured layouts that highlight active campaigns and their impact
• Transparent review process for proposed ideas
The app’s flow focused on simple, actionable user input, supported by expert-reviewed sustainability initiatives. A structured proposal and voting system ensured practical implementation.
I conducted user testing to fine-tune the app’s usability and core features.
Key Feedback:
• Preference for simple, clear navigation
• Need for transparency in the review process
• Interest in recognizing contributions through visible progress indicators, like how many trees were saved by this initiative, and how this contributed to the bigger picture of the sustainability policy.
I implemented this feedback by refining the app’s structure, adding progress tracking, and enhancing transparency around the proposal review process. You can see my prototype (in Dutch) in action here.
A user-centered mobile app designed through an iterative process, Waste Warriors empowers employees to co-create sustainability policies with ease and clarity. Thorough research and three rounds of prototype testing refined usability and core features.
• 80% of users reported feeling more connected to the sustainability policy
• 70% found the app motivating for proposing new initiatives
• 90% appreciated the transparent review and voting process
When resources are available, these are my recommendations for a future version based on user and expert feedback:
• Add push notifications for new initiatives and voting reminders
• Introduce a sustainability impact tracker for proposed ideas
• Enable team-based challenges for collective sustainability goals
• Explore scaling the app to the national or global team to increase impact on sustainability
Designing Waste Warriors was a defining moment in my growth as a UX designer. When I started, I was still inexperienced and felt intimidated by the scale of working in a corporate environment with 300 employees.
Initially, I was hesitant, but through this project, I learned that even in a large organization, you can convince key stakeholders like the sustainability team and C-level leaders to support impactful initiatives. Facilitating the co-creation session was particularly challenging but rewarding. I'm still grateful for the guidance and support I received at the time from Paul, Creative Director at Fourleaf Agency, whose feedback helped me to master the process.
The most important lessons were:
• Set clear expectations: Communicate what participants are expected to contribute.
• Create a safe environment: Ensure participants feel comfortable sharing ideas.
• Provide clear structure: Give your participants a clear playfield by explaining what is expected of them. Explain your goal and the process step-by-step.
• Facilitate and encourage: Guide participants, recognize promising ideas, and help refine them without imposing personal opinions.
• Keep it fun: I always welcome an energizing, fun vibe into any creative session. This time, I added a game element to keep energy levels high.
• Driving meaningful change and innovation can even be done by a newcomer in a large corporate setting with the right structure and communication.
I still think it's an important case study because it has so many valuable lessons to share. Still to this day, it remains one of my proudest learning experiences.
Waste Warriors
Creating a mobile app to reach sustainability goals for a major enterprise.
I'm available for Senior/lead roles, collaborations and discussions with peers.
Let's have a chat to see if we're a great fit!