Finite Carbon

The Client

Finite Carbon is North America’s leading developer and supplier of forest carbon offsets, which is a carbon trading mechanism that enables businesses to compensate for their greenhouse gas emissions by investing in projects that reduce, avoid, or remove emissions elsewhere. They are a longstanding Arcweb client who we had been working with consistently for years. We had successfully launched two previous initiatives with them when they expressed their frustration with the current manual process of buyers needing manpower to describe available properties to them over the phone and inquires on these properties being managed in a spreadsheet.

My Process

We began the project with a design studio session to ensure alignment among product owners, stakeholders, product managers, and designers regarding the product requirements. Through brainstorming activities using post-it notes, we were able to group common ideas and clarify our goals. Most importantly, allowing everyone to sketch their thoughts generated perspectives, leading to innovative solutions. The group did multiple rounds of presentations and dot voting on ideas to clearly illustrate consensus. After the session, I took the time to organize the post-its and sketches into a clear plan of action. This process helped guide the team toward the solution of a Carbon Marketplace—a platform showcasing available projects created by landowners to highlight their properties for potential investment. The visual design of the Marketplace was a large effort and dozens of designs were proposed to the client before I iterated down to the final one.

Key Results

The Carbon Marketplace connects landowners and buyers, incentivizes both parties, digitizes the process, and revolutionizes  the carbon emission trading process. Landowners can create a digital advertisement for their land in the Marketplace and buyers can browse, search, easily assess available land to see if it meets their needs for attaining carbon emissions compensations.  They can also submit inquiries to start the process of buying the emissions. When transactions are completed, the landowner is motivated to keep their land open and full of trees, and buyers can use their business to publicly advocate for environmental conservation. This brings more attention to the industry and more participation in trading. Most importantly, the Finite Carbon Marketplace incentivizes the protection of earths natural resources.