Contract Development Application

Contract-development Application

Background + Problem

Project Development within the context of carbon credit generation, is the process of identifying and mitigating areas where carbon can be reduced. Project development involves a series of steps including implementing the project, monitoring & evaluating the project, and reporting/documenting progress in order to certify credits. One small, but important part of this complex process are the contracts between project developers and those who fund their projects (sponsors).

Approach

At the time of research with participants, a contract was in progress with the legal department (meaning nothing concrete could be shared), but there were still a few areas that could be tested:

information design
comprehension (of standard terminology)
content design

I chose a qualitative, comparative concept test of contracts, paired with a short interview for this generative research. Because I was (am) interested in information and content design, I also prototyped the contract.

Recruitment had already occurred through a third-party agency when I joined this project. On the plus-side, this gave me access to on-the-ground customers (agricultural growers), which is often hard to come by. On the other hand, recruitment sampling choice had already been determined. 10 end users were interviewed.

Team structure

On this project I was the lead and sole Researcher. My principal contacts were with the Product Owner (PO) and Product Manager. For this particular study, I interacted with Legal, Engineering, and a Business Analyst.

Findings + Impact

Information design: Growers appreciated the plain language addition to the contract. They viewed it as an easy way to reference the document and as an FAQ. Surprisingly, the Calibri typeface change (from Times New Roman) was not welcomed. Calibri type felt too informal to participants; it gave an appearance of marketing materials. Times New Roman was more typical of their experience, it felt more formal and trustworthy, aligning with traditional ideas of a contract. This was probably my favorite finding.

Comprehension design: While a contract had not been been developed, my team had ideas about key terms that might be used (~30 key terms). The team was curious if these might need clarifying among growers and ranchers. I asked my participants about their level of familiarity through a simply ranking method (Low, Medium, or High familiarity) for each term, giving each a score. In the end, terms were almost split evenly among the three groups, but knowing the least understood terms proved helpful for final contract development.

Content design: Finally, I reviewed the contact flow with participants (I. Definitions, II. Project activity, III. Transactions, etc.). I asked them to inform me if the flow was as expected, if they understood from a glance what it might contain, and what was missing. What I learned from them were the areas of most importance and how they envisioned the delivery of information.

It took almost another six months implement these contracts. Once executed, however, the reception among project developers was positive because they were well-received by growers and ranchers who valued the contract simplicity and usability.