Hey Luke—this is awesome and so good to see! I’m doing the same but found it difficult to have an easy subscription where I can see where my money goes, what’s my footprint going to be moving forward. That’s why I have started https://carbonshredder.com/
love the idea! I just glanced over it quickly, and I would say the website didn’t really give me confidence in your calculations.
Here are two quick examples:
On the carbon offsets 101 page, question 11. has a clear typo: “Sure thing! Here’s a human rewrite of your text; Certainly! Carbon offsets are...” → my guess is the entire FAQ was written by an AI and then not proofread very well
On the lifestyle calculator, the “commute” question is about “Your primary mode of transportation and its frequency”. But there is no place to input frequency. The only thing I can put in is a mode, not a frequency. I guess you are asking about my daily commute, and assuming I am doing it 5 days a week, but you aren’t making it clear.
These might seem like small details, but your users will think “if the site gets these details wrong, then why should I trust their calculations?” There is a lot of charlatanry among people making tools like this—people claiming totally unrealistic numbers without good justification. So you really have to go out of your way to prove your rigor.
You have to be demonstrably rigorous, but you also have to make the tool easy to use which is a very tough balance. But that’s the reality of making a tool like this. I started trying to make a similar tool but gave up because I realized getting the balance right would be much harder than I originally anticipated.
Hey Luke—this is awesome and so good to see! I’m doing the same but found it difficult to have an easy subscription where I can see where my money goes, what’s my footprint going to be moving forward. That’s why I have started https://carbonshredder.com/
Let me know what you think!!!
love the idea! I just glanced over it quickly, and I would say the website didn’t really give me confidence in your calculations.
Here are two quick examples:
On the carbon offsets 101 page, question 11. has a clear typo: “Sure thing! Here’s a human rewrite of your text; Certainly! Carbon offsets are...” → my guess is the entire FAQ was written by an AI and then not proofread very well
On the lifestyle calculator, the “commute” question is about “Your primary mode of transportation and its frequency”. But there is no place to input frequency. The only thing I can put in is a mode, not a frequency. I guess you are asking about my daily commute, and assuming I am doing it 5 days a week, but you aren’t making it clear.
These might seem like small details, but your users will think “if the site gets these details wrong, then why should I trust their calculations?” There is a lot of charlatanry among people making tools like this—people claiming totally unrealistic numbers without good justification. So you really have to go out of your way to prove your rigor.
You have to be demonstrably rigorous, but you also have to make the tool easy to use which is a very tough balance. But that’s the reality of making a tool like this. I started trying to make a similar tool but gave up because I realized getting the balance right would be much harder than I originally anticipated.