Mobile app development isn’t usually about saving the environment or bringing down our carbon footprints. But when we talk about lifestyle app development like Kimla, it can be.
Our lifestyles define us; from what we wear to what we eat, everything comes together to make us who we are. But we are not the only ones getting affected by our lifestyles. Every human being has a carbon footprint, which is calculated by analyzing their lifestyle. Everything we do leaves a mark on our environment, from how many long and short-haul plane trips we take per year to how often we shop. The average annual carbon footprint in the United States is 16.12 tons. This means an average American is responsible for 16.12 tons of carbon emissions every year.
Looking at these numbers, it shouldn’t come as a shock to anybody that we are facing a global environmental crisis. From global warming to frequent wildfires and the storms ravaging coastlines, perhaps never before have humans faced such dangerous conditions. The need to take strict measures is clear; we need to come together to figure out how to live in a way that doesn’t put too much strain on the environment.
But while drastic lifestyle changes are required to bring down our carbon footprint, we can’t eliminate it. We still need to travel, eat, shop, etc. However, there is a way to offset our carbon footprint.
Carbon offsetting is the way to compensate for carbon emissions by funding projects that remove, reduce or capture emissions from the atmosphere, such as reforestation, energy efficiency, generating renewable energy, etc.
Most businesses these days see it as a vital business process. They invest in an offset unit built on the projects we talked about earlier, and that offset unit cancels out a company’s carbon emissions.
Most environmentalists believe that carbon offsetting is a powerful and quick way to heal our environment, and lifestyle apps like Klima are here to help. And if you are looking to develop a lifestyle app like Klima of your own, then here’s everything you need to know.
What is Klima?
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Klima is a lifestyle app that doesn’t tell you how to reduce your carbon footprint but instead tells you how to compensate for it by carbon offsetting.
Launched in 2019, Klima is a Berlin-based social startup with a simple ideology: Make climate action simple for everyone.
With the help of its brilliantly designed mobile app, Klima allows you to calculate your Co2e and then put money towards an environmental cause of your choosing.
Klima has three strategies: Trees, tech, and social. Each of these three strategies has a list of verified projects working in their respective domain. Klima follows a rigorous selection process while picking these projects to ensure that every penny goes where it can make the most impact.
Their verification partners include Gold Standard, Verified Carbon Standard, and Climate, Community & Biodiversity Standards.
Based on your carbon footprint, Klima calculates the optimal amount you can donate to the strategy of your choosing on a monthly subscription basis.
Unique Klima Features to Add to Your Custom Lifestyle App
Some of the most exciting Klima features that you should consider adding in your lifestyle app are:
Easy Onboarding
The onboarding process in Klima is very straightforward. It asks which country you hail from and then gives you that country’s average CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent).
Next, it gives you a list of 8 questions:
- How many long-haul trips by plane do you take in a year?
- How many short-haul trips by plane do you take in a year?
- What are your dietary preferences?
- Do you own a car?
- What type of shopper are you?
- How big is your house?
- How many people do you live in your house?
- Does your house have renewable energy?
Based on your answers, Klima calculates your annual carbon footprint. It then puts it against the national and global average for perspective.
Carbon Footprint Calculator
Klima’s most significant feature is its carbon footprint calculator. An algorithm analyzes the answers you give during the onboarding section and then calculates your carbon footprint. It starts at the national average and then changes that number in real-time based on the answer to every question.
Stunning UI and Smooth UX
What makes Klima so unique is its fantastic UI/UX. While sometimes it can be a little text-heavy to explain its operations, it still mostly relies on well-designed visual forms of data representation. Its selection of colors is remarkable and eye-pleasing as well. Klima also offers a very fluid user experience with all the main features easily accessible to the users
Strategy Pages
Once you know your carbon footprint, Klima takes you to the strategy page, where it gives you the option to select as many of them as you like. Based on the number of choices you have made, one, two, or all three, it equally distributes your subscription between them.
Subscription Calculator
Based on the user’s carbon footprint, Klima calculates the type of offset subscriptions. It gives you four options: Money equal to your carbon footprint, 120% more than your carbon footprint, 200% more than your carbon footprint, and custom.
Social Features
After selecting your subscription plan, Klima asks you to signup. You can do that in various ways. It allows Facebook and Google signup, on top of email sign up as well. Only once you have signed up does Klima take you to the payment page
Secure Payment
Klima offers two ways to pay for your subscription. Either you can buy a subscription using GPay, or you can add your credit card and set up monthly payments. Either way, a secure payment gateway is vital for an app like Klima to succeed and must not be overlooked.
How to Develop an App Like Klima?
Mobile app development is a complex process in which every step must be followed with great care. If you want to develop a great mobile app that will add value to your users, you must focus on each aspect of mobile development.
There are three ways you can go with mobile app development. The first is that you can hire people and build an in-house mobile app development team. But before committing to this approach, keep in mind that hiring so many people full-time can be a challenge for new startups. While more prominent companies can afford to pay their IT teams and manage the infrastructure they require to do their jobs, new startups don’t have that deep pockets.
So if you are on a tight budget, the best approach for you is to hire a mobile app development company. There are plenty of big names in the market that offer excellent services at competitive rates.
But, if you don’t want to outsource your work completely, you should go for team augmentation. IT staff augmentation allows you to enhance your in-house development team by renting talent from IT staff augmentation companies for a fixed period. It is a very scalable process that is efficient and a lot kinder to your pockets than hiring full-time talent.
Whichever way you choose to go, the following steps to mobile app development will serve you well:
1.Research and Planning
To develop an app like Klima, the first thing you need to do is research. You will need to find good environmental projects with verifications from globally recognized organizations.
Countless environmental projects are going on worldwide, but which ones you choose will depend on the type of platform you intend to create.
In the case of Klima, it goes heavily on renewable energy and green initiatives, and accordingly, it backs a list of projects that focus on these areas. Similarly, you will need to spend a good amount of time finding projects that speak to you.
Then, you need to do some market research and figure out what technologies are currently in trend and who your competitors will be. You can learn a lot from your competitors’ successes and failures. Furthermore, you need to figure out what customers think of apps like Klima. While Klima is a great app, it can always be better. So link to their userbase and figure out what they feel can make Klima an even better app. This information will prove very useful as you build your app.
Finally, once you have done your research, you need to plan how to approach mobile app development. This part is best done with a mobile app development company because their insights and experience will be vital.
Working in unison with your developer can figure out which features you want to add to your MVP, what technologies you should use, etc.
2.Design and Development
While designing an app like Klima, you must keep in mind that simplicity is the key. While you may have a list of hundreds of excellent features, you can’t add all of them in a single app. It makes it slow and cluttered, and very tough to use. Furthermore, your UI should be visually stunning. The color scheme you choose must not hurt your user’s eyes or distract them from the focus of your app.
You can also think of adding small videos during the onboarding process, like Klima. It helps keep things dynamic.
The point about simplicity carries over to UX design as well. None of the key features should be hidden inside menus. You shouldn’t add too many pop-ups as well, asking your users to give you ratings on app stores or subscribe to their newsletter.
Depending on your budget, you can add more or fewer features to your app. Furthermore, you can choose between native and hybrid app development. In native app development, an app is developed separately for different platforms. For example, an app for Android will have a different development cycle than iOS. Simply put, an app will have to be developed as many times as the number of platforms you want to make it available on.
On the flip side, hybrid apps use internet browsers on a mobile phone to run, so they only have to be developed once. This means they cost less than native apps and take a lot less time to be developed. However, hybrid apps can’t provide the quality product and fantastic UI/UX that native app development can.
3.Testing and Deployment
Once the development is done, it’s time to test the app. In this phase, your testers will put your app through countless quality and functionality tests to ensure that the product is in the best shape possible when it debuts on the app stores. The testing phase uncovers any inconsistencies, bugs, data leaks, etc., in your app as well.
Once the testing is done, the app is deployed on app stores. But after the deployment comes the maintenance part. After the release, you need to fix whatever issues your users have and keep working on new updates. If you wish to stay relevant in the market, you will need to release updates for your app frequently.
Conclusion
Climate change is a genuine threat, and we are all facing its consequences. While things are happening to improve the situation and companies are trying to be environmentally responsible, it still isn’t enough. We all need to do our part, and that is where apps like Klima come in.
If you are looking to develop a lifestyle app like Klima, Matellio has more than a decade of experience creating easy-to-use software platforms that add actual value to their users’ lives. Our immense pool of talented mobile developers, web developers, AI specialists, etc., allows us to give our apps the extra edge that sets them apart. Using the Agile methodology, our team leaders ensure that our clients are always at the center of our development strategies. If you want to develop a lifestyle app like Klima, contact our experts today for a free consultation.
