1. Identify two SPECIFIC funding sources for the design phase of your project and two SPECIFIC funding sources for the dissemination (implementation / distribution / commercialization) phase of your project. For each funding source, explain why this is a good fit for your project, and what SPECIFIC aspect of your project might the funding source support.

 

Funding sources for design phase: 

• In a sense, we are funded in credits by the university. Students are incentivized to work on the project through the accumulation of credits.
• Facilities & Services provides funding for additional chilled water and steam meters through Lehigh University’s budget. This is a good fit for our project because F&S and our team benefits from the installation of these meters, and Lehigh’s budget accounts for these purchases over the next few years.

Funding sources for dissemination:

• Khanjan will provide pizza for an implementation event to advertise the dashboard. This is a good fit for our project because we need to make people aware of this resource.
• The Office of Sustainability will help advertise the website. This is a good fit for the project because it benefits both the dashboard and the office of sustainability since both require marketing. 

 

1. Identify five specific partnerships that you need to forge to advance your project forward with the ultimate goal of positively impacting at least one million people. Describe exactly how that partnership might help you achieve scale and why that entity might be willing to work with you.

 

1. We need to partner with Doug Spengel in the Lehigh Facilities and Services department. He has access to valuable data and shark meter readings that form the foundation of our project. 
2. Jeremy Mack in the Lehigh Library and Technology Services department has a wealth of knowledge and technical expertise related to ArcGIS, the mapping system we will use to display our data. 
3. The Eco Reps and the Office of Sustainability run the annual energy competition between dorms, which will be an essential part of disseminating our project and integrating data into campus life. 
4. Electro Industries – shark meters. Shark meters are essential for the real time data, organizations will need to install shark meters in their buildings for the dashboard to work. Electro industries would benefit from this partnership because they will increase their sales.
5. ArcGIS is also a major component of the dashboard. A partnership with them would benefit both partners. The Energy and Water Dashboard could offer ARCGIS services for a lower cost, and ARCGIS would increase subscriptions.

 

 

1. Identify one existing social enterprise that you feel aligns well with your venture – explain what it does, why you like it, and in what ways it is similar to your venture.

 

ME to WE is a social enterprise which supports the creation of jobs in developing countries. It also allows people to track the impact of their purchases on the communities which provide the good. This tracking system is a really important aspect of their model because it incentivizes people to buy from the communities that ME to WE supports. People only change their behavior if they see the benefits of changing. This is similar to our dashboard because we display the impact of student’s energy consumption with equivalencies. Students will decrease their energy consumption if they are shown the impact of each kilowatt hour.

 

Financial Model Draft: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1HTnggmBP-TA02MuVYq08TNDwfHhpIbZ8A93gwXvdOhg/edit?usp=sharing

What are the technological, social, economic, and political trends that will impact (help or hurt) your ventures?

1. What is the Total Available Market and Total Addressable Market for your product or service?
2. Do an initial draft of your business model canvas – on each block of the BMC, have a visual and 1-3 bullet points. Remember, these are only drafts – you will continually refine your business models!

1.

• Technological

• Widespread use of computers 
• Convenience of the internet

• Social

• Desire for people to compete against each other
• Growing interest in sustainability in younger generations & on college campuses

• Public mistrust of media as a result of fake news
• Cultural lack of data-based decision-making

• Economic

• Rise in gas & oil prices from Russian and/or Middle Eastern conflicts – motivation to reduce energy usage to save money

• Political

• Democratic control in US government – typically includes environmentally- conscious legislation
• UN SDGs

• Environmental impact is a politically contentious topic; could drive people away from the dashboard if they don’t think they need to reduce their energy footprint

 

2. At steady-state, the total available market includes all of higher education, both public and private. In 2020, this market was approximately $77 billion (GlobeNewswire). The total addressable market includes those institutions that have a sustainability office.

 

 

Partner Network Office of Sustainability EcoReps Professors Facilities and Services	Key Activities Ability to resolve data exceptions Design for usability	Offer Learn about energy Save time finding energy data Host energy competition Reduce overall energy usage	Customer Relationships Dedicated personal assistance	Customer Segments Students Professors Office of Sustainability EcoReps Facilities and Services
	Key Resources Shark meter network Web server access  Coding expertise		Distribution Channels Internet Classroom
Cost Structure Academic credit for students Money to keep dashboard on server			Revenue Streams Saving time Saving money

 

Collaborative Plan

Team Name:  Energy and Water Dashboard                                                                                                                        Date: 4/3/22
Goals	Big G: Long term (end of year, and beyond): Hosting the Eco-Reps competition via the dashboard Incorporating invoice data (water, natural gas, electricity) Integrating dashboard into classroom(s) Short term (until end of semester) Gain a better understanding of data storage – will lead to functioning trendlines & graphs Web deployment Energy data verified in the code Energy equivalencies finalized The metrics of success for the short term goals will be mostly self explanatory ; once the features that we want are officially deployed to the dashboard, we can consider these goals achieved. As for the long-term goals, it will be important for our team to establish a relationship with the Eco-Reps so t These goals align with our sponsor’s (Audrey McSain) priorities for the dashboard as well as our own project requirements. Little g: Spencer – get more familiar with coding Alyssa – get more experience with web development; improve presenting skills Aidan – explore ArcGIS (metadata, APIs, etc; Jeremy Mack may be a good resource) Josie – improve eye for design with Figma; refine leadership skills to motivate team members and meet deadlines Wesley – learn more about deployment; learn react; gain experience working with a team Caitlyn – learn more backend development; learn React; gain experience working on long-term project
Roles	Deployment – Wesley deliverables include website deployment, map functionality Backend – Caitlyn, Alyssa deliverables include data storage, pipelining, data in graphs Frontend – Alyssa deliverables include website design – displaying equivalencies, OOS logo, filter display functionality, displaying graph  Equivalencies – Spencer, Alyssa deliverables include specific energy equivalencies that explain the impact of energy usage & corresponding graphics Engagement – Aidan, Josie deliverables include integration of the dashboard into the classroom through learning modules to offer professors, establishing partnership with the Eco-Reps, incorporating Eco-Reps’ priorities into dashboard, managing the soft launch of the dashboard with specific groups of students, faculty, and staff Data Analytics – Aidan, Spencer, Josie deliverables include verifying energy data through code revision, verifying metadata for buildings using ArcGIS & Grafana Interaction between subteams is essential; these interactions include Engagement & Equivalencies, Frontend & Backend, Deployment & Engagement, for our current goals, although interactions between all subteams are bound to happen. In terms of project management, Josie handles most of the administrative work (facilitating meetings, writing meeting agendas, emails, etc.), but all team members have an equal voice when it comes to decision-making and design thinking.
Procedures	Decision Making: We approach decision making through a democratic process – everyone has a say in project matters As conflict arises, we defer to our project mentors for information that can help us reach a consensus Refer back to our team expectations document to keep everybody motivated and on the same page Meeting Operations Designate a note-taker at each meeting Email those attending the meeting the agenda 1 day in advance Josie guides us through the meeting agenda, but each member individually reports on their progress and what resources they need moving forward Meetings with sub-teams occur throughout the week: coding working sessions, equivalencies brainstorming, data analysis meetings Communication Between members, communication is primarily via GroupMe and messaging Between members and mentors, communication is primarily via Slack and email Communication is often daily as members develop questions concerning their individual tasks for the week Timely responses are expected from all during reasonable business hours, as a part of our team expectations document
Relationships	Team Diversity Josie IDEAS major, engineering ethics experience, customer service experience, logical & procedural thinking, detail-oriented, assertive, peer tutor, INTJ Aidan Logical, direct, education/coaching experience, professional experience working in energy, experience conducting independent research Spencer Engineering physics major, economics minor, eco-rep, creative, risk-taker, flexible Wesley Computer Science Major, Data Science Minor, ISTP, logical thinking, problem solver, risk-taker, leadership experience  Caitlyn Computer Science and Business major, ISTJ, logical thinking, expressive, organized, diligent Alyssa Computer Science and Business major, ENFJ, customer service and (slight) corporate experience, leadership experience, facilitation experience,  creative and logical thinking All of us, coming from various engineering majors, enjoy hobbies that focus on proceess like cooking, building things, and listening to music. This means we understand each other’s ideas, but it also means we should try and think outside of the box!

Start Keep Stop:

1. Start thinking beyond the technical-components of the project
2. Start consistently updating Trello & Sprint reports
3. Keep sharing our 1 good thing every week!
4. Keep asking questions:
   1. How do I move forward with this task?
   2. What resources do I need to make x amount of progress?
   3. Why?
5. Stop complaining & start taking initiative to make things better
6. Stop beating up on ourselves!

 

1. Identify FIVE specific things in your slides that you could have done differently.
2. Identify FIVE specific ways in which you could have delivered your presentation better.
3. Identify FIVE specific ways you could have built your credibility further.
4. Identify FIVE specific questions that you could have answered better. What was the question, how did you respond, how should you have responded?

1.

• Make the context diagram more readable. The font was too small, and people had trouble understanding how the different input and output arrows functioned.
• The agenda slide was probably not necessary to include. We could have just told our audience what our agenda for the presentation was without including a specific slide for it.
• Slide theme was not consistent throughout the presentation. Sticking to a single color scheme would help reduce any distractions from our slides.
• Our last two slides (Future Applications and Landing Strategy) were not very strong, and they should have been our most compelling slides. For the next presentation, we need to eliminate any confusing wording used on these slides and specifically outline how the Lehigh student body would interact with our dashboard. This was a major issue with our presentation and it came up quite a lot in our Q&A.
• We did not have clean or persuasive graphics. Specifically, on our Solution slide, all we included was a basic logo from the Office of Sustainability and a text box. For the next presentation, we will find replace basic Lehigh images with graphics from our dashboard. 

 

2.

• I could have looked at the screen less, and made more eye contact with the judges.
• Do not repeat “as you can see on the slides”, and do not say “hopefully”.
• Display more enthusiasm and confidence
• Transition between slides could have been smoother – specifically between the slides that showed our dashboard and the slides that identified our stakeholders. 
• Try and let go of the nerves! It’s hard, but we’ll get better as we keep delivering.

 

• Having additional screenshots or graphics from our dashboard would contribute to showing the audience what steps we have already accomplished and make the distinction between past and future goals more clear.
• As Doug Spengel mentioned, having more people with a speaking role in the presentation could increase credibility by showing that each group member is knowledgeable on the topic, but this could take away from the flow and timing of the presentation on a larger scale. 
• Mentioning specific people that we have communicated with and gained feedback from could increase our credibility.
• Clearly identifying our audience moving forward and receiving feedback from these stakeholders would be valuable to include in the future, as well as for moving the project forward.
• It was suggested that we collaborate with other groups, such as the PlasTech team, which would increase the scale of our project and show interdisciplinary focuses. 

4.

• “Can we get a demo?”
  • It took a lot of time for us to answer this question, when really the answer should have just been: “Unfortunately, no. As of this week we have made some coding changes to the dashboard that have disconnected navigation to the map itself.”
• “Is this real-time data, or static old data?”
  • For this question, 2 people answered when it was really only necessary that one person answer.
• “What does success look like for your team?”
  • For this question, we answered in terms of adding features to our dashboard. While those are important to the project, we should have also mentioned the process of integrating the use of our dashboard into classrooms and into the Lehigh community. Success for our project is reduced energy usage overall, and we have to figure out how to get people to use our dashboard and care about the content.
• Not quite a question, but Khanjan mentioned that moving forward we should focus on identifying our customers and internal markets.
  • We got a little defensive over this question as a team, which was not fair to us or to the audience. It is important to recognize during these presentations that feedback at this stage is incredibly valuable for the future of our project. 
• Tara recommended the addition of a feature that would tell you what any money saved could actually be used for. Something along the lines of, “these thousands of dollars would pay for a new classroom.” 
  • Because this was more of a recommendation than a question, it was unnecessary for the audience to really hear  the long ‘answer’ that we gave. We should have just agreed that it was a great idea and moved on to the next question.

Blog #6 prompts (as a team):

1. Develop a storyline for your mid-semester presentations.
2. What supporting evidence will you provide for each point?
3. How will you boost your credibility every step of the way? 

1&2&3) With our CINQ team, we came up with this storyline and credibility :

• Problem & Proposed Solution

1. This is our problem statement: “Energy data that could influence and drive behavior change is currently too difficult for the student body, faculty, and university departments to gather.” We offer the solution of a dashboard that will make it easy, understandable, and entertaining for all of the concerned parties to access this data. 

     2&3. We will provide credibility for our problem & proposed solution by explaining how lack of access to energy data contributes to lack of knowledge and understanding surrounding energy use and efficiency on campus and explain how successful implementation can resolve this through informing students, faculty, sustainability office, and facilities and services. 

• Case Studies

1&2. We will be using the Energy Usage dashboards from UC Davis and University of Pittsburgh in our Case Studies section to show the successful implementation of this solution at other universities. 

3. Our case studies section will provide credibility for our project, showing that Energy Dashboards are a reachable, valuable goal to pursue at Lehigh University.

• Core Elements

1. For our core elements, we will display the current and goal functionality for our dashboard. 

2&3.  We will provide credibility and evidence by showing screenshots and explaining thoroughly how we plan on finishing the project. 

 

• Target Audience and Future Applications

1&2. We will present our target audience and their potential future applications of the dashboard with the visual aid of our context diagram. 

3. Our context diagram will also assist us in providing credibility as it explains each stakeholder’s needs and how our dashboard will support them.

 

• Landing Strategy

1. We will hand off our dashboard to LTS to maintain the server and call upon other CS students, ie. in a email from Heidi – the department head, if the Sustainability Office or other stakeholders run into technical issues

2&3. Heidi’s reputation as a department head, the CS department’s committed students, LTS’ experience with maintaining servers provides us credibility for our landing strategy. 

 

What is a statement that summarizes the “macro” version of your problem? What is a statement that summarizes the “micro” version of your problem? In both cases think of an “elevator pitch” version of your problem statements.

 

• A statement that summarizes the “macro” version of our problem is “people do not understand the effects and quantity of their energy usage.” By focusing on this statement, we are focusing on our long term goal of inspiring interest in reducing energy usage. We will ensure our Water and Energy Dashboard has features that allow users to see how much energy they are using, as well as the resources for them to understand and take action on it. The “micro” version of our problem is “there is no resource for Lehigh students and the sustainability and campus operations committees to view data on energy usage.” This focuses on our goal of a tangible product and features of a webpage that will allow individuals and committees to view the energy data.  

Based on your life experience, skills and interests, what would a design process that is both uniquely yours and effective look like?

 

• Based on our life experiences of being CSB majors, we will use the AGILE design process in developing our webpage. The agile design process focuses first on general idea generation, then more detailed ideas, implementation, constant testing, and revisions as the process goes along, as well as check-in meetings. The whole goal of AGILE is for a straightforward, efficient, and ever-changing process to meet the end product. 

You have begun to talk to stakeholders for your project, and will continue to do so going forward. For these conversations, list 10 hypotheses for your project that you will need to validate, and 10 assumptions your project is making, and the basis for those assumptions.

 

• Hypotheses:

• The dashboard will encourage students to use less energy
• The dashboard can be help lehigh be more sustainable
• Lehigh organizations, such as the sustainability office, could use the dashboard to access energy information more easily
• Money will be saved because Lehigh could easily see where energy is being wasted
• Students will use the dashboard if there are incentives
• The dashboard will teach students the importance of saving energy
• Making the dashboard user friendly and accessible will increase the use of the dashboard
• The dashboard could be used to identify leaks and energy failures
• The dashboard will allow the lehigh community to monitor lehigh’s energy consumption in real time 
• The dashboard could spread awareness for lehigh’s sustainability efforts

• Assumptions:

• People will care about sustainability

• • People would only be interested in our project if they care about reducing the energy consumption at Lehigh

 

• Lehigh organizations will use the dashboard

• • We expect organizations, such as the sustainability office and eco reps to use the dashboard to help pursue their sustainability goals around campus

 

• Having energy information be accessible will change behavior

• • Students looking at the amount of energy wasted should encourage them to use less energy

 

• The dashboard will be well marketed and advertised

• • Lehigh should spread awareness about the dashboard to students around campus so it’ll be used by students and can make a difference

 

• Incentives will be provided by Lehigh

• • Incentives encourage students to use the app and we expect lehigh to provide them

 

• The website will work correctly even when the original developers aren’t maintaining it

• • The capstone students can’t maintain the project forever, so we hope other students or a lehigh organization can maintain it

 

• Information collected is correct

• • Meter data needs to be correct and accurate for the site to work properly

 

• Lehigh will use the dashboard for sustainability efforts

• • We expect Lehigh to use the dashboard to view where lehigh can be more sustainable and also where money can be saved

 

• The app will work as intended

• • The app is still in development and it’s unknown when the app will be able to be used by the community as a whole

 

•  Nobody will use the app maliciously

• • Students could purposely try to increase energy usage in buildings around campus as a “joke”. For instance, a greek life house could try to increase their energy usage to “brag” that they are the highest energy consuming house

https://sustainability.lehigh.edu/sites/sustainability.lehigh.edu/files/accessible_LSPLAN_Final_0.pdf

Blog #4

1. Review the six focus areas in the Sustainability Strategic Plan 2030. Identify and describe in detail how your project aligns with one or more of the focus areas. Be sure to think outside of the box. Each project aligns with more than one focus area, although it might not be immediately obvious.
2. Identify the key Lehigh University-based and external stakeholders for your project. For each stakeholder:

• Describe what their interest in your project might be.
• What resources might they provide?
• How does your work further their goals?
• How might you engage with them?

1.  The six focus areas in the Sustainability Strategic Plan are climate action, educational experience, campus operations, culture & engagement, health & wellness, and focus leadership. While the Water & Energy Dashboard can definitely contribute to all of these, it aligns the most with educational experience and campus operations. The Water & Energy Dashboard aligns heavily with the educational experience of all of Lehigh University because it allows the unique opportunity for users to learn about energy consumption and units of energy consumption with our equivalencies feature. Our dashboard will make learning about sustainability and energy fun, encouraging education across campus. Additionally, it heavily affects campus operations because normally the entire campus has no idea how much energy each building is utilizing, but with successful implementation of our public dashboard, buildings will be held accountable for their energy usage and stakeholders will be informed of it for the first time.
2. External stakeholders are campuses nationwide. With UC Davis being the only college with a sustainability dashboard as of now, Lehigh can also be a trailblazer for energy consumption transparency for college campuses, which is very important because dashboards like these can hold colleges accountable to their big sustainability goals. Likewise, Lehigh’s Office of Sustainability can be held accountable through this dashboard and it will inform students, families, etc. of their progress. Internal stakeholders can be students who want to track the energy usages of their buildings, campus operations directors, and maintenance-people who can use this to examine and resolve energy spikes.

Alyssa Milrod

1.List the top 20 questions your team needs to answer to advance the venture forward. Categorize the questions if necessary.

2.Develop and Visualize the Theory of Change (Logic Model) for your venture.

3.Develop a M&E plan for your venture.

Clearly list all assumptions.

Identify short-term and long-term success metrics.

(Optional) identify specific methods to measure the metrics.

 

1. How do we run it locally?
2. How do we deploy to a server?
3. What types of filters should be on the website?
4. What do we do about the buildings with no shark meter or meters that must be replaced?
5. When do aesthetic front-end changes happen?
6. Can we add new features, such as a leaderboard?
7. Is the website part of a Lehigh website or its own webpage?
8. How do we compile data?
9. How do we handle invoices?
10. How do we make the Lehigh community aware of the dashboard?
11. What can we accomplish in 4 months?
12. What has been accomplished up until now?
13. How can LTS help us?
14. What changes when Katherine is replaced?
15. Who will be maintaining the website?
16. Can we develop a mobile app?
17. How do we add Mountaintop and Goodman campuses?
18. How do we determine if a leak occurred or if a meter stopped reporting?
19. How often is the data collected, updated, and presented?
20. What is the bare minimum needed to make the dashboard operational?

 

 

Program: Energy and Water Dashboard Logic Model

Situation: 

Inputs		Outputs			Outcomes — Impact
		Activities	Participation		Short	Medium	Long
Shark meters & meter data   Money for additional meters   Web server   LTS Staff		Energy Competition – partnership with EcoReps   Dashboard    Media feature   “Do Your Part” Section of the dashboard   User feedback surveys	Student Body   Faculty   Facilities & Services Staff   LTS Technicians   Brown & White writers, Brown & White audience   Office of Sustainability   EcoReps		Generate more interest in sustainability   Small fluctuations in energy consumption	Professors conduct more research on Lehigh’s energy consumption     Students create and start more projects related to Lehigh’s energy and water use		Major sustainable changes in lifestyle and operations at Lehigh   Reduced energy and water consumption

 

 

Assumptions		External Factors
Dashboard is live and running, students are interacting with the dashboard without system or meter errors   EcoReps partnership has been successfully established   Every Lehigh building is metered and reporting data		Timely responses from LTS and Facilities & Services staff   Funding for additional shark meters

 

 

3. ideas for metrics

Until the Energy & Water Dashboard is live and running, our metrics of success will consist of tracking progress in Trello and completing weekly Sprint reports. Trello logs all of our project requirements and backlog items in order of priority. This week we are starting with the first three priority items, and, depending how the semester progresses, we aim to complete 1-2 Trello backlog items each week. Each week we also complete weekly Sprint reports that log what we did that week and what we could change for next Sprint. These two methods of recording what short-term goals we complete will keep us on track for the semester.

Our most important long-term goal is to reduce Lehigh’s energy and water consumption overall. An indicator of reduced overall consumption would be a general downslope of the long-term energy and water consumption graphs that our system generates. Currently we aim to store data up to one year’s worth of data, but a more effective long-term evaluation of consumption would be to store data back 5 -10 years. Other indicators of impact we make via the dashboard will come from user feedback surveys implemented into the site. We also aim to track the number of students or faculty using the website in order to determine whether the dashboard has generated more interest in sustainability. Other long-term goals include partnering with other student organizations like EcoReps and the Brown & White in order to help generate more interest in sustainability at Lehigh. A collaboration with EcoReps would ideally lead to starting an energy use competition between dormitories at Lehigh, and students could track their building’s progress using the dashboard.

 

M&E Plan:

• Objectives:
  • Create a user friendly dashboard
  • Raise awareness about the dashboard
  • Get more people engaged in environmental competitions
  • Reduce energy and water usage
• Indicators:
  • User feedback surveys
  • Record of number of students logging on to the site
  • Graphs of energy and water consumption over time 
• Responsibilities: 
  • Figure out who will be monitoring the website after it is finished (who keeps track of # of users, and user input?)
  • Working with other student organizations (EcoReps, Brown & White) to create awareness about the site
  • Gathering data/recommendations for the website through surveys
  • Adjusting the website

I wanted to join this class, CINQ388, as part of my Computer Science and Business major’s capstone project. I got to select one project to work on from more than 40 projects, and I chose the Lehigh Sustainability Water and Energy Dashboard because it offered the unique opportunity to not only work on web development, but to work on sustainability efforts and bettering the Lehigh community through them, too. CINQ388 will allow me to gain new knowledge regarding sustainability so I can help make the dashboard the best it can be, and I am also very interested in environmentalism so I am looking forward to the learning experience it offers. 

 

I believe that this course and project will make me a better Computer Science and Business student and professional because it will give me the opportunity to work on my first long-term project. Additionally, it will allow me to see how I can incorporate causes such as environmentalism into my computer science projects to benefit the greater good.

 

Over 50,000 mattresses a day are discarded throughout the US. This can be solved through recycling programs. For instance, Sleepy’s, or any other mattress store chain, can set up an initiative where people can donate their old mattresses and they will be refurbished. This will work because there are various mattress chain locations near every city, making it easier than ever for people to recycle their mattresses.