TapOff: informing, motivating, and gamifying water saving
Submitted by: Trevor
Released by AUX Studio in January, TapOff is a free mobile app that not only provides Capetonians with real-time updates on the city’s water consumption, but inspires them to make positive changes that will have a lasting impact.
While Cape Town’s ongoing drought will certainly break at some point – and with it, the current watercrisis – it’s equally certain that the amount of water available will decrease over the long term. This means residents must permanently change their water-saving behaviour.
“Information alone doesn’t drive behavioural change,” says Trevor Swart of AUX. “The key is to summarise and frame it in a way that’s meaningful for the individual.” Besides displaying the city’s overall consumption for the week, TapOff enables residents to log their own water usage and compare it with the maximum amount prescribed by city authorities. In this way, individuals see how their efforts can make areal difference to a community-wide issue.
The app goes even further to encourage participation, gamifying water-saving with suburb leaderboards where residents can display their consumption figures. “The response has been great so far,” says Trevor, “with growing numbers of users posting their water usage to neighbourhood leaderboards on a monthly basis.”
AUX has also produced a public API that delivers Cape Town’s latest water statistics. This has opened up opportunities to drive awareness beyond the mobile app. “In partnership with Tractor Outdoor, we’ve created digital billboards to make a clear emotional connection with the viewer about Cape Town’s overall water consumption, putting the city’s progress quite literally front and centre. It’s also a friendly reminder to keep up water-saving efforts – whether you’ve downloaded TapOff or not.”
TapOff has featured in both the Play Store and the App Store as a top app in the Free Education category. AUX is currently looking for more partners and sponsors so that they can offer real rewards to water savers and engage hundreds of thousands of residents.
Download the TapOff app at http://www.tapoff.co.za
Contact AUX Studio at www.aux.co.za
TapOff has been featured on the following websites:
MEMEBURN: https://memeburn.com/2018/01/tapoff-cape-town-water-app/
FINANCIAL MAIL: https://www.businesslive.co.za/fm/fm-fox/gimme/2018-03-01-gimme-every-single-drop/
WHAT’S ON IN CT: https://www.whatsonincapetown.com/post/waterwise-initiatives-capetonians/
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