How We Calculate Your Projected Savings

JouleBug is designed to change behavior by inculcating new, more sustainable habits in your community members. We measure the impact of the app in your community by looking at how many people have taken the actions necessary to instill those new habits.

We start by looking back at the past year of activity – or fraction of a year if your community has not been running JouleBug for a full 12 months yet – and count how many people earned every Pin in the app. We also count how many people “Buzzed” a Pin but didn’t do so enough times to earn it fully. (They get partial credit.) Each Pin is built around a specific sustainable action, most of them repeatable. A few Pins correspond to rare or one-time actions, like replacing a major appliance.

We combine the activity statistics from your community with our database of the environmental impacts of JouleBug actions. For every JouleBug Pin, we’ve calculated (where possible) an average annual carbon emissions, monetary, and water impact. If the average American performs a given action consistently for a year, those numbers show how much CO2, water, and money they would save.

There are, of course, several important assumptions built into those calculations that we want to emphasize. First, they are averages. They do not take into account the specific conditions of your community, such as the mix of sources for your electric power or whether your commutes tend to be longer or shorter than average. Second, they assume that the user who earned a JouleBug Pin was not performing that environmental action before-hand. We have no way of seeing or measuring a person’s behavior before they began using the JouleBug.

Based on those averages and on the number of Pin earns (and buzzes) in your community, we calculate how much your community will save in the coming year based on its activity in the previous year. We do not make projections about new users earning additional Pins. We take into account only the activity people have already logged with the app.

JouleBug changes behavior. Your community members are developing new, green, money-saving habits thanks to the app and your outreach work. Our savings projections, based on years of expert research about the environmental impacts of people’s daily habits, help give you a sense of the magnitude of this behavior change in your community.

Your Analytics Report

In addition to the savings calculations, your analytics report includes a number of other statistics and graphs to help you make sense of how people in your community are using JouleBug.

Total Community Membership

This is the total number of people who have downloaded and used JouleBug in your community since you launched the app.

Community Members by Device Family

This is a breakdown of how many JouleBug users in your community are using Apple (iOS) devices versus Android devices.

Total Community Actions

This panel graphs how many Buzzes, Pin Earns, Social Posts, and Badge Earns your community members logged in the app over the report period. You should expect the Buzzes number to be much higher than the others.

Activity by Category

Every JouleBug Pin is assigned to a category based upon its primary environmental impact: energy, water, waste, or transportation (i.e. gas) savings. This shows you the category breakdown of all the actions completed in your community during the report period.

Average Hourly Activity by Pin Category

This graph shows you how your community’s JouleBug activity changes over the course of a typical day. It averages all activity over the reporting period.

Top 10 Money-Saving Pins and Top 10 Carbon-Saving Pins

These charts list the 10 Pins responsible for the most money and carbon savings in your community. This reflects both what your community members are doing with the app and the specific environmental impacts that vary widely between Pins.

Top 10 Pins Earned in Report Period and Top 10 Badges Earned in Report Period

These charts show the Pins and Badges that your community members earned the most in the report period.

Buzzes per Active User and Pin Earns per Active User

These statistics show the average amount of activity – Buzzes or Pin Earns – performed by all active users. Active users are those who logged at least one Buzz with the app during the report period. This is distinct from the “Total Community Membership” over all time.

Badges with Activity and Pins with Activity

These statistics show how many different Badges and Pins in the app saw any user activity – at least one Buzz – during the report period.  This is a good way to determine how much exploration your community members have undertaken.

Social Activity: Photos Posted and Social Activity: Comments and Likes

These graphs show the “social” activities conducted with the app by your community members in the report period. Please note that the two graphs do not have the same scale. Some community members will use JouleBug as a Sustainability Diary; others will use it to show off their sustainable activity. It’s all good and these sections give you a good understanding of how much sharing is taking place in your community.