Climate communication through the interactive ducky app

Over the course of the people's climate research project, the research team had come in contact with the startup company "Ducky AS". Ducky is a web application to make personal climate action visible and fun. Ducky's goals are very similar to those of the People's Climate Research, namely, to help households track and reduce their carbon footprint by committing to specific climate actions, such as reducing red meat consumption etc. In Ducky, which is was available in a beta version at the onset of FOLKDUCK, users log actions as they are completed, and the Ducky platform tallies the user?s cumulative CO2 savings. The project's main objective was to utilize the app-based climate communication network (ducky.no) to disseminate findings from a cross-disciplinary research collaboration on Norwegian households' climate impact and actions to reduce it. The research findings have been broken down into household actions relevant and applicable to the users of the ducky platform and implemented into the system. The adapted system was pilot-tested and the most effective communication approaches were identified and then rolled out to the larger public.

A research collaboration including the NTNU Industrial Ecology programme, the NTNU Department of psychology, and Friends of the earth Norway, works to explore and evaluate a range of concrete "climate actions" that can be undertaken by environmentally concerned households. Over the course of the project, the research team has come in contact with the startup company "Ducky AS". Ducky's goals are very similar to those of the People's Climate Research, namely, to help households track and reduce their carbon footprint by committing to specific climate actions, such as reducing red meat consumption etc. In Ducky, which is currently available in a beta version at www.ducky.no, users log actions as they are completed, and the Ducky platform tallies the user's cumulative CO2 savings. Ducky is already much more appealing as an interactive tool for the public than what can realistically be constructed by the researchers and thus an outstanding opportunity for dissemination of the research results to the public. In order to make it fully compatible, a certain level of modifications of the existing Ducky platform will be required, including design as well as programming efforts. This project will implement the changes in Ducky that allow the full compatibility between the interdisciplinary research team and Ducky. The adapted Ducky platform will be pilot tested on selected users and the final version will be rolled out to the public.