🏆
2025 FINALIST
Alaska Airlines Environmental Innovation Challenge
designing a sustainable AI framework.
ROLE
Product Designer
Pitch Lead
SKILLS
Project Management
UX/UI Design
UX Research
Pitching
DURATION
3 months
Jan - Mar 2025
TEAM
3 Designers
CONTEXT
This was a passion project that I took on with peers from my graduate program.
MY CONTRIBUTIONS
Pitched our solution to an audience of 250+ judges at the 2025 Alaska Airlines Environmental Innovation Challenge
Moderator of semi-structured interviews
overview.
[COMING SOON] KEY FEATURES
PROBLEM STATEMENT
How might we educate knowledge workers about the trickle-down effects of AI usage and encourage more eco-friendly AI use?
SOLUTION
An interactive website that visualizes energy consumption data as it relates to generative AI technologies
A sustainable AI framework and workshop for enterprises
research.
THE PROBLEM SPACE
Generative AI comes at the cost of the environment, straining power grids and depleting water resources.
"The worst-case scenario, where LLMs are increasingly applied as general intelligence, showcases an exponential growth in energy consumption that could lead to a substantial increase in the global energy demand, potentially exacerbating environmental and social issues."
GENERATIVE RESEARCH
Do users know that AI isn't sustainable at this rate?
I led survey and interview efforts to understand people's use of genAI tools and to identify their knowledge gaps about AI's environmental impact.
METHODOLOGY
Survey
n = 32 respondents
Semi-structured Interviews
n = 8 knowledge workers who currently use or have used AI tools in the past
SME Interviews
n = 2 experts in…
AI ethics
Data center operations
1.
AI usage is more common for corporate than personal use with the top two most frequent use cases being question answering (63%) and summarization (52%). Users recognize companies and individuals share the responsibility for using AI sustainably.
"In a work context, since it is provided as a tool, it would be foolish not to use it." - Survey respondent
"They push us to use it and utilize it every day. I’m not sure if there’s metrics that track employee use but there are little reminders: Copilot is there so make sure to use it." -P1
2.
There's a degree of guilt around AI use, primarily due to conflicting values: independent thinking vs. convenience and ease of use.
"I feel guilty about using it, because it feels like I don’t have to put any effort or thought into the things I use it for, but the convenience it provides is unbeatable." - Survey respondent
3.
There's limited awareness of AI's environmental costs (74% are slightly or not knowledgeable at all). While most users are open to learning and cite climate change education as an effective example from the past, others doubt awareness will do much to discourage usage.
"It's already gone so far with environmental damage, so at this point I can’t imagine what would make people stop using AI or be more environmentally conscious" -SME 2
"I see the criticism of AI, but it also seems like it will happen regardless . That is where the investment is going at." -P8
ideation.
Research clearly shows that the AI bandwagon won't stop anytime soon and it's difficult to visibly reduce its usage at this moment.
As a result, instead of prescribing a behavioral change, I identified and approached the problem from an educational standpoint.
We know from climate change education that the messaging and education matters significantly, especially to those who are exposed to it for the first time.
DESIGN PRINCIPLES
The solution needs to be educational, actionable, and interactive to achieve the intended purpose for our target audience.
Does the solution educate and bring awareness about the topic in a friendly, non-intrusive manner?
Does the solution provide actionable steps for individuals to change behaviors?
Does the solution afford interactive elements that help individuals track their AI usage?
TOP 3 IDEAS AFTER DOWNSELECTION
A toolkit for employees to evaluate how their company is performing in terms of circular design
There is a strong interest in sustainability among young knowledge workers: 83% believe their employer is not doing enough to enhance sustainability and tackle climate change.
An infographic or interactive data visualization that enables users to learn about the issue
A few participants mentioned how they learned about climate change as a child, citing visualizations of fossil fuel emissions and the Earth’s temperature.
A shared depository of AI queries and answers that are packaged into nuggets of information for areas of knowledge
Instead of rendering results useless, this enables circular design by reusing query results.
