This case study was built based on my participation in the 2021 ElleHacks Hackathon. ElleHacks is Canada’s largest, student-run hackathon for women and non-binary folks with 600+ participants. The goal of this 36-hour hackathon is to design a solution for the following prompt: How can RBC Rewards programs better help consumers to make more conscious environmental decisions?

Right now, the greatest threat to our planet is the belief that someone else will save it. The climate crisis is not emerging at a gradual rate and is no longer an issue for the future. There is growing support for changing how society and organizational institutions address these issues.

RBC has the ability and opportunity to empower young adults through education and advocacy to support them in becoming environmentally conscious consumers. As innovators and future leaders, it is our duty as global citizens to help create a sustainable tomorrow that we can be proud of.

My team and I researched the impact, function and drive behind RBC Rewards to build a design that not only amplified the core message, but sustained it.

We conducted a competitive and comparative analysis and examined studies conducted by the United Nations. This helped us understand how youth and young credit card holders have been affected by sustainability, the environment, and the current climate change issue.

This research provided the necessary information to create a solution that not only addresses the pain points for young credit card holders but also maintains RBC's commitment to develop measurable impact for their clients.

Our synthesized findings were used to structure our persona and build a solution based on human experiences. These techniques allowed us to visualize our thoughts and develop our solution.

RBC Footprint is an extension of the current RBC Rewards app that provides learning opportunities for consumers to learn about the environment and sustainable practices that they can implement in their daily lives.

Footprint slowly creates a concious consumer by providing incentives or rewards points for continuing to engage in lessons on how to make their habits environmentally friendly.

Before creating our story, solution, and prototype we needed to understand where we were going. We needed to ask ourselves, "what's the easiest way for young credit card holders to learn and earn?" This user flow highlighted the series of possible actions our user would need to take to achieve their goal and helped us create our mid-fidelity wireframes.

We created five versions of the activities catalogue home page to visually compare our options from the perspective of the young credit card holder and RBC. Based on this, our team decided version 3 was the best choice for our final design.

While iterating on our fast fashion quiz, we realized users could possibly face cognitive overload. We had a progress bar, selection highlight, and check boxes. In order to maintain simplicity, impact and branding we removed redundant features. Our team learned the true meaning of less is more.

This hackathon truly allowed me to step outside my comfort zone, challenge myself and collaborate with brilliant individuals. It was extremely rewarding to create something with the intent of making an impact.

Since my team only had 36 hours to bring our concept to fruition, I learned the importance of playing to the strengths of your teammates and persevering when issues arise. We all provided support to one another and found joy in each step of the process.

Last minute and much to our surprise, we were chosen in the top three for a final round of judging. After a restless 36 hours, our team was required to present the solution live to several RBC mentors, product teams, and recruiters. We waited for the final results and our solution was selected as the 1st place winner for the RBC Sponsored challenge. Thank you again to my teammates for making this the best experience possible.

If I had unlimited resources and time I would focus my energy on usability testing, introducing new forms of activities, challenges and possibly gamification.