Carissa Wodehouse

We started with interviews and small games, and worked up to beautiful full page analyzers of water use, home energy, waste…transit trackers, savings trackers, oh my!Working with the designers at Bryan Potter Design was a breeze, because they were so familiar with the books. I hand them a word document with the text and a general layout concept, and they set it up. For me the most intensive part is the research–finding national statistics is one thing, but turning them into an activity individuals can measure is another entirely. Zoomerang surveys show that roughly 10% of people use an interactive page in the book, which is about what I’d expect. These are as much, or more, about getting the question into the reader’s head–how much water am I using right now?–than having them run off and write it down. And I think they’re rad.

2007/2008

For this year, I was a contractor at the company, but was given pretty much free reign. The books had a strong following and returning advertisers, so I interviewed some of the Portland figures in the green scene to introduce one side to the other. I conducted 6 phone interviews in each city (Portland, Seattle, Minneapolis), and it was one of my favorite tasks of all time. Editing each interview down to 150 words was a shame, and a tricky maneuver. The EcoMetro Active feature I introduced to give a DIY element to the book.

2008/2009

For this year, I wanted to focus the interactive features on actions that make a big difference in an individual’s climate impact. There was an exponential increase in awareness of environmental issues in 2007-2008, and green actions became trendy, which isn’t necessarily a good thing. Telling people to carry a cute market tote is one thing, but giving them the tools to realize how their actions can change is what I was after.

A group management note: Because these features appeared pretty much the same in each city, we wanted all the teams to be able to make comments on one draft. Traditionally, paper drafts were mailed, marked, and returned. I created a locked blog (on Blogger) where we posted each of these and had teams write feedback in the comments. Worked like a charm.

This home waste audit below would have been better with localized information, and we received feedback saying as much, but we didn’t have the resources to print individualized audits in each city. However, for the 2009/2010 books, I did have the time to do the research and create a more comprehensive recycling guide. I was pleased to get in the phrase ‘flotsam and jetsam.‘

The next piece is created to tie the coupons in the back of the book together with the content at the front. This was to get people turning pages, and also to generate interest in the content among people who had been reading the books each year and stopped looking to the front. Think: ‘What coupon can I use for home energy savings, let me look’ and ‘I used a coupon for a compost bin, I’ll put that on the chart.’ The tie-in with the carbon calculator is maybe too much, now that I look at it, but we didn’t have anywhere else to put it.

The following was our one true flop so far. Not a single person sent this back in. We’re re-running it in the Denver 09′/10′ edition with a prize as incentive. My sole design note on this was “that hipster dude would not ride that cruiser bike,” which I still maintain is true.