Xiaohongshu
Software Developer Volunteers: EcoCounts Carbon Accounts App
What We Have Already
- Three years of annual carbon footprint data and growing monthly data since the start of this year, currently held in spreadsheets across approximately 25 participant households.
- An emissions factors database: a curated, growing dataset of CO₂ emissions coefficients covering food, energy, transport, goods and services, which forms the calculation engine behind every footprint.
- A MySQL database into which this data is being migrated, which will serve as the backend for all future tooling.
- A community dashboard currently in development for the EcoCounts website, visualising group-level emissions trends.
What We Want the Software to Do
The goal is the EcoCounts Carbon Accounts app: a user-friendly mobile application that removes the barriers to people recording their carbon-generating activities in real time.
The two core end goals are:
- Real-time carbon logging: users record individual activities and purchases as they happen, for example filling a vehicle with fuel, paying a gas bill, eating a meal, buying a loaf of bread. Each entry is matched to the relevant emissions factor and added to their running carbon account.
- Insight and comparison: users can see how their emissions accumulate over time, compare categories within their own footprint, track progress against their prior data, and benchmark against others in the EcoCounts group or against external reference points such as a typical Londoner or a typical US citizen.
Beyond the basics there is significant scope for engagement features, including trend alerts, personalised reduction suggestions, and optional group leaderboards, but the foundation must come first: the lowest possible friction between a user and logging an item.
How the Team Will Work
We use a Scrum approach: short development cycles, each producing a testable and usable increment, with rapid feedback from real EcoCounts participants at every stage. There is no long development tunnel here. Each iteration ships something that can be put in front of users immediately.
You will be working alongside UCL volunteer developers and student contributors already engaged with the project, with oversight from a director who has a professional software development background.
Our Infrastructure
We are an ethical, low-carbon organisation. Our database, code repository and staging environments are all UK-hosted, on platforms independent of Big Tech.
Please check out our manifesto to see how we advocate for a break-through in the climate crisis: https://ecocore.org/ecocore-manifesto_compressed/
- Create a database with input and maintenance screens for the emissions factors (the activity or item specific data that people base their carbon footprints on) (web-based is fine if quicker)
- Create the basic MVP or prototype that fetches an emissions data item and logs an amount to a user carbon account
- Create some wireframes or even just images of the screens required for the first deployable MVP
Initial Development Tasks
The first sprint focuses on the foundations:
- Connect to the MySQL database and build input and maintenance screens for the emissions factors dataset, web-based is fine at this stage, so that the data can be managed and extended as the programme grows.
- Build a basic MVP or prototype that allows a user to select an emissions factor, log a quantity, and record it against a user carbon account.
- Produce wireframes or annotated screen designs for the first deployable MVP, to support user testing and iteration planning.