Life Cycle Analysis is how researchers measure environmental impact. The standard tool is OpenLCA. It's powerful, but tough to use, especially for new researchers and students.

We built Pristine LCA as an attempt at that gap: same functionality, much friendlier interface. We ran a few rounds of user observation and usability testing, prototyped on paper and in Figma, then built a working version on top of the OpenLCA API.

The work was submitted as a paper to CHI HCI 2023.

Read the paper (PDF)

Research & process

Before building anything, we spent time understanding who actually uses OpenLCA: engineering students, researchers, first-timers. Empathy maps and personas helped us pin down where people get stuck: too many options, unclear reference flows, and a steep learning curve.

We prototyped early on paper: cutout sheets for usability testing, low-fidelity layouts to test navigation ideas, and sidebar progress concepts to make multi-step workflows feel less overwhelming.

Understanding users

Paper prototyping