Olive

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  Cover Slide

Inspiration

The inspiration for Olive came from a frustrating reality that people want to be sustainable, but existing solutions ask too much. They require behavior changes, manual tracking, and constant effort and often no feedback on progress or contributions. Daily habits also rack up personal carbon emissions and people don't notice that. But we noticed that something quantifiable that we do on a daily is payment and financial decisions. The connection then seems so natural to us, but this solution does not exist yet. What if sustainability wasn't another app to check or habit to build, but something woven into financial decisions you're already making? That's where we come in.

What it does

Olives uses your transaction history and sustainability patterns to quantify carbon offset. It helps you build better habits and see quantifiable progress. But we've also built in real impact at scale. Through Olive, users can participate in verified B2B carbon offset programs, and here's the best part: we turn that into cash back rewards for you. No ads. No subscriptions. No hidden fees. Just a platform that pays you for making sustainable choices. Pushing you towards long-term, sustainable life choices.

How we built it

We first mapped out our daily habits to mark out the common denominator: money. We used the traditional paper and pen (and whiteboard) to sketch out any brainstorming and possible ecosystems we could use for this design.

We then used Manus as a method of research and validation, as the model of using carbon credit trade is a familiar yet uncharted territory for us. We needed confirmation that this is achievable. We then used Lovable to generate low fidelities and mid fidelities for us to speed up the design process. Finally, we created a design system and high fidelity on Figma to fully flesh out our creative and functional visions.

Challenges we ran into

Since we were using new technical software such as Manus and Lovable, a chunk of our time was allocated towards learning these platforms and maximizing our efforts. Finance is also a very UX heavy topic, and we needed to combine finance and sustainability. This was very challenging as we needed to ensure that our designs were up to par in terms of finance and sustainability.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

This is our first-ever design-a-thon, and we are so beyond proud of the progress that we made as designers. We were able to fully flesh out a case study, prototype, and pitch video (along with a design system) in exactly one day, which is something we have never done before. We also chose a topic that we were unfamiliar with: finance and carbon trade, but it is so fulfilling that we now know more about these fields and the user behavior that backs up the design decisions.

What we learned

We learned how to integrate AI tools into our design process, especially in this age, where AI workflows are prevalent. Using AI not to replace our design process, but to assist it. By using these tools, we were able to allocate more time to thinking about the design and user experience of our app. We also learned about the financial ecosystem, as well as the whole economy behind carbon trade.

What's next for Olive

Taking Olive to market means tackling three priorities. First, we need to develop the technical backbone by training Oliver, our AI model, on machine learning and integrating financial APIs to deliver accurate, personalized carbon tracking. Second comes business development. We'll partner with certified carbon offset providers and sustainable brands to create multiple revenue streams through affiliate commissions and carbon transactions, all while giving users real ways to make an impact. Third is turning our designs into reality through full-scale prototyping. Each feature we've designed serves a critical function, and we need to build them all out to deliver the complete experience users expect from Olive.

Built With

• adobeillustrator
• adobephotoshop
• capcut
• figma
• lovable
• manus