Greenscale – Redesigning
Climate Literacy for the Next Generation

A gamified MVP web platform that empowers high school students across the world to understand and reduce their carbon footprint—making sustainability education engaging, personal, and actionable.

Greenscale India Website

Brief

Greenscale is a web-based MVP platform designed to close the climate knowledge gap for high school students and educators. The goal? Make carbon literacy engaging through interactive quizzes, real-time feedback, and personalized action plans. Students are guided to explore their environmental impact through gamification, storytelling, and progress tracking—transforming learning into long-term behavior change.

The platform also enables school administrators to drive curriculum-level changes and foster a culture of environmental responsibility across institutions.

DISCOVER

Uncovering the barriers to carbon literacy in schools ,we began the discovery phase with a simple question:

“Why aren’t more students actively learning about their carbon footprint?”

Despite growing awareness around climate change, most high school students still lacked practical knowledge about how their everyday choices impacted the environment. Through stakeholder interviews, surveys, and competitive audits, we uncovered a series of recurring themes and friction points.

1.Carbon Literacy Is Either Overwhelming or Oversimplified
Students often felt either lost in technical jargon or underwhelmed by generic, surface-level tips. Educators struggled to find curriculum-aligned resources that could meaningfully engage different student levels.

2.One-Time Interactions Don’t Lead to Real Change
Many existing apps or programs focused on single-use quizzes or informational modules. Schools, however, needed tools that encouraged ongoing participation, habit-building, and long-term tracking—without feeling like homework.

3.Gamification and Storytelling Were Missing
Students responded best to apps that felt like games, not textbooks. But most platforms lacked rich interactivity, characters, or personalized feedback loops that could turn learning into play.

4. Educators Wanted Institutional Support, Not Just Student Tools
School leaders needed support in integrating sustainability into the school fabric—via dashboards, measurable metrics, and culturally relevant teaching hooks.

We weren’t just building a quiz or a tracker. We were building a bridge between climate science and student behavior, supported by narrative, data, and delight.

To further uncover user challenges, we brought our personas to life by embedding them in realistic, contextual narratives.

“It’s not like skipping one burger is going to save the planet.” - Logan Shaw

17 Years | Male | Grade 12 Student at Branksome Hall, Canada

Logan represents students who are disengaged or indifferent toward environmental topics. While intelligent and curious in other areas, he finds sustainability boring, preachy, or irrelevant. He’s grown tired of climate doom-talk and avoids platforms that feel like lectures. However, he responds well to challenges, social features, and competitive games.

Goals

Focus on academics and social life—not sustainability
Enjoy learning only if it's fun, competitive, or social
Avoid “guilt trips” or being told what to do

Pain Points

Climate content feels overwhelming or emotionally exhausting
Traditional lessons lack excitement or novelty
Feels like individual actions don’t matter

Preferences

Short, interactive experiences that don’t feel like school
Reward-driven systems like levels, badges, or leaderboards
Social validation through peer challenges and shareable wins

“I want to make a difference, but I just don’t know where to start.” - Li Hua

16 Years | Female | Grade 11 Student at GIIS Singapore

Li is the tech-savvy, curious learner—interested in sustainability but unsure how to take the first step. She uses apps and YouTube for entertainment and education, often looking for relatable influencers or bite-sized videos. She’s excited by visuals, animations, and practical advice. She doesn’t like content that feels too “science textbook-y.”

Goals

Understand how her actions impact the planet
Find practical steps to start living more sustainably
Feel empowered and confident in making eco-friendly choices

Pain Points

Overwhelmed by scientific jargon and abstract stats
Doesn’t know which sources are trustworthy
Feels her efforts may be too small to matter

Preferences

Gamified visuals, mini-quizzes, and interactive content
Real-life examples, not just theoretical advice
Tools that give her clear feedback and encouragement

“We want to lead by example, but the tools we have aren’t built for schools.” - David Williams

48 Years | Male | Principal at Taunton School, England

David is a forward-thinking educator and institutional leader. He is deeply committed to making sustainability a core value of his school’s curriculum. However, he faces resistance from staff and students who are either skeptical or unaware. He’s looking for a tool that is not only impactful for students but also easy to implement and scale across the school.

Goals

Integrate sustainability into daily school life
Track measurable progress to align with environmental commitments
Inspire both teachers and students to actively participate

Pain Points

Existing tools are built for individuals, not institutions
Hard to align new tools with curriculum timelines
Difficult to measure the real impact of sustainability efforts

Preferences

Concise, actionable material for staff and students
Dashboards or reports that track student engagement
Culturally adaptable tools for seasonal relevance (e.g., Earth Day)

DEFINE

After synthesizing our discovery research, we uncovered key user pain points and reframed them into design opportunities. This helped align stakeholders and the product team around focused, user-centered problem statements. The four core challenges were:

Low Engagement with traditional carbon literacy resources.
How Might We make carbon literacy feel exciting, fun, and worth returning to?

Lack of Personal Relevance make it difficult to relate
How Might We make sustainability education feel personal and actionable to each student?

Overwhelming and inaccessible environmental concepts
How Might We simplify complex climate science into digestible, engaging content?

Lack of long-term behavior tracking or goal setting
How Might We help students and educators visualize and track the long-term impact of choices made.

COMPETITOR ANALYSIS

We studied three key players: Giki Zero, Pawprint, and Klima.

Key Learnings

Content Depth vs Cognitive Load
Giki Zero offers extensive action items (120+), making it a robust resource—but one that’s overwhelming without visual hierarchy or simplification. Depth of content is valuable, but only if it’s digestible for student minds.

Gamification Needs More Than Points
Pawprint and Klima introduce eco-challenges and achievements, but often lack adaptive difficulty, rich feedback, or interactive visuals. Progression systems and emotional storytelling are key.

Lack of Community and Peer Dynamics
Few apps tap into social motivators like peer sharing, school-wide challenges, or team-based eco-goals. For students, learning is social—adding community-based interaction boosts participation and recall.

approach

Designing for sustained curiosity, not one-time awareness

Personalization & Storytelling

A polar bear mascot reacts in real time based on quiz answers—adding emotional resonance. Students receive tailored tips based on their behavior.

Accessible Sustainability

The app simplifies carbon literacy with digestible visuals, relatable analogies, and culturally relevant challenges (e.g., “How to celebrate Diwali sustainably”).

User Engagement Beyond the Quiz

With a literacy hub, interactive cityscape projections, and real-time impact dashboards, students are encouraged to revisit and take deeper actions.

Visual Design that Sparks Joy and Understanding

Cheerful visuals and climate metaphors simplify complex ideas, helping visual learners stay engaged. Characters, color cues and micro-animations build clarity & emotional connection.

STORYBOARDING

We mapped the user journey through an emotional and educational story led by a polar bear mascot—from taking the quiz to exploring results and diving deeper into climate literacy. Each stage was crafted to maintain engagement, simplify complex topics, and encourage long-term behavior change—turning a static quiz into a narrative-driven experience that feels playful, personal, and purposeful.

Enters Quiz

An interactive polar bear narrative reflects the impact of users' choices—visually linking quiz results to climate change and rising sea levels over time.

During Quiz

As students take the quiz, a playful polar bear mascot reacts to their choices—rewarding eco-friendly answers and prompting reflection through light animations and a pawprint progress bar.

After Quiz

Students see their carbon footprint visualized as a city and use a slider to explore its 50-year impact, with tips to reduce it to the ideal 50 tons CO₂/year.

Learning More

Students unlock themed learning realms like Food, Transport, and Lifestyle by reading articles, completing mini-quizzes, and earning badges—turning climate literacy into a gamified journey with real rewards.

WIREFRAMES

With core features defined, we translated the storyboard ideas into wireframes to shape the Greenscale experience across user types—the homepage for teachers and school admins and the questionnaire and carbon footprint results for students. Each screen was crafted to minimize cognitive load, prioritize progressive disclosure, and encourage long-term engagement through visuals and gamification.

TYPOGRAPHY

We paired LTC Goudy Old Style Pro for headers with Gabarito for body and UI text—balancing classic credibility with modern readability. This combination ensures a tone that feels both educational and engaging, while remaining fully accessible across devices.

HEADER , SUBHEADER

LTC Goudy Old Style Pro

Aa Bb Cc Dd Ee Ff Gg Hh Ii Jj Kk Ll Mm Nn Oo Pp Qq Rr Ss Tt Uu Vv Ww Xx Yy Zz 1234567890!@#%^&*()

BODY, BUTTON, INFO, LINK

Gabarito

Aa Bb Cc Dd Ee Ff Gg Hh Ii Jj Kk Ll Mm Nn Oo Pp Qq Rr Ss Tt Uu Vv Ww Xx Yy Zz 1234567890!@#%^&*()

Gabarito Regular

Gabarito Medium

Gabarito SemiBold

Gabarito Bold

ILLUSTRATIONS

We used playful, character-led illustrations to make sustainability feel friendly, relatable, and emotionally resonant—especially for younger students. From an expressive polar bear mascot to eco-themed icons and creature companions, each visual element was crafted to reduce cognitive load, simplify abstract concepts, and inject a sense of fun into learning.

INTERACTIVE Elements

Turning data into decisions through playful interaction

Greenscale’s interface was designed to do more than just display information—it invites students to explore, reflect, and take action. From animated cityscapes and draggable projections to real-time eco-feedback, each element was crafted to reduce cognitive load while enhancing emotional engagement. Visual metaphors and intuitive micro-interactions make sustainability data feel accessible, personal, and empowering—not overwhelming. Every interaction reinforces the idea that small decisions can lead to big changes.

Homepage

Positioned carbon literacy as a shared mission for students, principals, and school administrators through a bold, purpose-led message.
Crafted a clean, welcoming entry point using a natural color palette, handmade-style visuals, and clear navigation—encouraging both students and educators to explore the platform.
Encouraged institutional adoption with clear calls to action, impact statistics, and contact prompts.

Carbon Quiz

Turned everyday habits into playful discovery moments by mapping quiz questions to real-life student routines across different parts of the day—making carbon tracking feel familiar, relatable, and highly contextual.
Kept students engaged through mascot-led humor and visuals, using a cartoon polar bear who reacts comically to each answer. These micro-animations deliver a dopamine boost that maintains attention and makes sustainability learning fun and memorable.
Reduced friction with visual-first design and intuitive flow, featuring multiple-choice questions with icon-based answers, a scrollable progress bar by time of day, and a consistent navigation system that keeps the experience light and distraction-free.

Carbon Footprint Results

Made carbon data relatable and fun by pairing absolute footprint numbers with real-world analogies—like trees, streetlights, and footballs—helping students visualize their impact in everyday terms.
Broke down complex science using character-led storytelling, introducing animated mascots to personify each greenhouse gas and explain CO₂e in an intuitive, memorable way.
Encouraged behavior change through interaction, with bar chart breakdowns by lifestyle category and a simulation game that let users adjust habits and instantly see how it lowers their carbon footprint.

Carbon Literacy

Turned education into exploration by designing scrollable articles and interactive visualizations across topics like food, travel, and lifestyle. Each section helps students connect their daily choices to carbon impact—turning abstract data into digestible, story-rich experiences.
Designed for decision-makers too with a content-rich, visually immersive layout that showcases the platform’s educational depth. Custom infographics, animated charts, and house cross-sections demonstrate Greenscale’s ability to integrate climate education into real curriculum.
Made science engaging with playful visuals like greenhouse gas mascots and parallax scenes—helping students understand complex topics like GHG equivalence and energy use with delight, not dread.

Conclusion

What we achieved from this project?

Transformed climate literacy into an engaging experience by designing gamified quizzes, visual storytelling, and bite-sized educational content—making sustainability approachable for students of all motivation levels.
Increased relevance through personalization by offering behavior-based tips, culturally contextual eco-challenges, and real-time mascot feedback tailored to individual choices.
Built motivation loops for long-term engagement through progress tracking, achievements, and school-wide leaderboards—turning one-time quiz-takers into returning learners.
Bridged the gap between students and educators by designing tools that support both individual learning and institutional impact—helping teachers track engagement and integrate climate goals into the curriculum.
Crafted a first-of-its-kind emotional narrative layer with a polar bear mascot that visually reflects user impact—creating empathy and emotional reinforcement through every decision made.

What we learnt from this project?

Gamification works best when it’s meaningful— students don’t just want badges; they want to see their actions make a difference in the world they’re building inside the app.
Averse learners aren’t lost causes— with the right mix of storytelling, challenge, and peer visibility, even disinterested students (like Logan) became more open to eco-action.
Simplicity and delight beat guilt and overload— breaking down complex climate data into visuals, analogies, and micro-learning helped reduce cognitive friction and increased return visits.
Emotional storytelling is a powerful teacher— the mascot metaphor created deeper reflection and behavior change than charts or graphs could alone.

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