Life-cycle assessment (LCA) software is the most rigorous and credible way to measure environmental impacts of products. However, few companies use LCA because existing software's user interfaces and data visualization are not intuitive and difficult to grasp without substantial LCA experience. In an effort to expand the LCA user base, we created an interface that would be useful for not only environmental assessment experts but also for everyday product designers and mechanical engineers who may be new to LCA. Though the iterative process of user studies and design prototyping, we were able to provide a more intuitive flow to the LCA process thereby allowing users to build quicker models. We also explored various methods of representing the results granting users more informative and engaging analysis. We hope that by accomplishing these goals, LCA software adoption will greatly increase resulting in industry’s ability to better produce greener products and reduce systematic impacts.
Title
User Interface and Data Visualization for Environmental Assessment
Published
2017-05-10
Full Collection Name
Electrical Engineering & Computer Sciences Technical Reports
Other Identifiers
EECS-2017-43
Type
Text
Extent
20 p
Archive
The Engineering Library
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