ScoBees is a platform that provides actionable steps toward reversing climate change. This project is inspired by SOBY Leather, which is a flexible biomaterial that's made from a symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast (SCOBY).
TIME: 2019 Fall - 2020 Spring
TYPE: Individual Project (Senior Project)
Software: Xcode, Figma, After Effects, Premiere Pro
We are facing a climate emergency, but most people don't know what they can personally do to help slow and reverse climate change. Project Drawdown offers 100 solutions to reverse global warming by 2050. However, none of them are attainable on a small scale by individual effort.
How might we popularize feasible climate-change solutions and engage people in sustainable efforts?
Create a platform that encourages individuals to grow biomaterial (SCOBY) to reduce greenhouse gas emissions during production.
Daily articles explain how SCOBY can help reverse climate change.
Users can help ScoBees produce biomaterial that's free from harmful chemicals or animal products by trading in their extra SCOBY.
Users can order a SCOBY Starter Kit to grow biomaterial at home. They can also purchase and produce SCOBY by-products, supporting a market that's good for our planet.
When we say "reverse climate change," we are talking about reducing greenhouse gases. If we look at the chart below, we can see 65% of greenhouse gas emissions is from fossil fuel and industrial processes.
The industrial process is the process of turning raw materials into a product. If we can find and create products that don't require heavy industrial processing, we can eliminate unnecessary greenhouse gas emissions, thus reversing climate change.
Kombucha SCOBY (Symbiotic Culture Of Bacteria and Yeast) is a natural material that forms during the kombucha fermentation process.
Out of all the biomaterials I studied, I chose SCOBY as my primary focus for the following reasons:
1. It doesn't create more waste during production.
2. All the raw materials it requires during production are available everywhere.
3. It is customizable based on individual needs.
The image below shows how SCOBY helps reverse climate change.
In order to understand the durability of this biomaterial (SCOBY), I spent a semester growing and testing it. While performing my experiments, I found SCOBY has the following properties: Oxygen barrier, home compossible, more durable than paper, self-adhesive, heat-press sealing, conductive, customizable, and not soluble in water.
After growing my own SCOBY leather, I was thrilled to show it to my friends and hear what they thought about it.
"I might use products made of this material, but I don't think I will grow it myself."
"This material looks like some kind of animal skin, what is it?"
"I'm not familiar with this material, so I'm not sure If I will choose it over other materials and products that I've known."
Reviewing the feedback, I realized that it is hard to adapt to a new material in your life when you are not familiar with it. So I redirected my design intent to popularize this material.
Climate change is not a problem derived from individuals alone. It's a problem we created together, and one we need to tackle as a group. With that in mind, my first step in addressing the climate change issue is to list all the groups that might be interested in using SCOBY for climate-change purposes.
Interest and action do not come hand in hand, so I created various posters for different groups – some for attracting attention, and some to encourage taking action.
After talking to more than 20 people, I realized this approach wouldn't work. When the viewer wasn't familiar with the content (SCOBY), they tended to criticize the graphics and overlook the design intent.
None of my interviewees understood that SCOBY could help reverse climate change before I explained it to them. I concluded that people need to know what SCOBY is before they'll take any action, so I redefined my project, and shifted my design intent again.
Below is a diagram demonstrating how the decision to act is made. A person has to understand the action and why it's an important move to make.
For my project, I want people to grow SCOBY. I can start by sharing information about SCOBY to help people understand what it is. The only thing left is finding the right group of people with the motivation to take action.
However, finding the right group of people can be tricky. It's hard to find people who have backgrounds in both kombucha brewing and environmental protection.
Another rational path to educate potential users is to educate kombucha brewers about SCOBY's environmental impact, and introduce SCOBY to environmental activists. My job is to create a platform that can make this happen.
Throughout the entire project, the "cold start" issue bugged me and delayed my progress several times. I interviewed a few kombucha brewers to gain insight about the process. Most of them track their brews using pen and paper, while others use a digital app.
This finding inspired me. If I build an app that kombucha brewers will use, I can easily solve the "cold start" problem. So, I decided to create a kombucha app that can help brewers track their brews and help climate activists learn how to brew kombucha.
By the time I finished my third iteration, I graduated from college, and San Francisco was under lockdown. I was very anxious, not only because I went from being a student to being unemployed, but also because of the sense of powerlessness caused by COVID-19.
To overcome my anxiety, I wanted to do something that would help me feel like I'm making a difference, and potentially help me find a meaningful job when the pandemic eased. So, I decided to learn how to build a real app using Xcode.
With 10 days of intense learning (on average nine hours a day), I created two versions of the ScoBees App. The first one is the looks-like version; it replicated all the micro-interactions and screen transactions of a real app. The second one is the works-like version; it utilized Swift Core Data to store, create, edit or delete an item from the database. I also made some adjustments to my UI design based on my learning from Xcode.
