Anchit Som

Born and raised in Delhi, India. I find Design to be a way of exploring a common yet diverse humanity. Solving user problems, creating systems, processes and experiences is a meaning-making activity, both for myself and the stakeholders of my practice.

I have worked as a Product Manager and Design Researcher at various companies in India & Hong Kong. My projects include - designing safety systems for manufacturing factories, researching digital literacy in urban villages, and creating solutions for food waste in multi-person households.

Having completed an undergraduate degree in Computer Science and Business Design Innovation at the University of Hong Kong, I work at the intersection of business, design, and engineering to create more than human-centered solutions for the most pressing issues our populations face.

Accomplishments

Featured in the Harvard Business Review

Received the Jury Prize by MIT Innovation HK

Finalist of the Terra Carta Design Lab

Distinction for paper on Service Design in the 4th dimension

Design has come a long way from its inception in industrial design, we live in a post-industrialised society where design isn’t about making chairs anymore. It’s a political act of shaping reality and given the impending ecological crisis we find ourselves in, it matters whose reality we shape and what realities we create.

In my time at the RCA, I found myself drawn to the promises of Net Zero and what it means for whole societies, economies and cultures to transition into a low carbon future.

While there is a certain rebellion that the crisis evokes, I have constantly tried to infuse pragmatism into my practice as complex systems need diplomacy and tact to deliver tangible results. The three projects you see here explore major sources of greenhouse gas emissions- residential, industrial and supply chains.

While you can see designed artefacts like graphical interfaces, sensor boxes and guidebooks in these projects, they are not the endpoints of my design practice. I find human relationships & cultures as the real materials with which we can create systems that manifest design intent.

This intent initially was to reinvent the wheel and rebel against every injustice I see, to change the world so to speak. However, over the two years, I have come to recognise this approach as patronising and ignorant of the complex reality we live in.

Hence, I aim to only facilitate new ways of being, not dictate them. I aim to respect the choice, value judgements and dignity of humans that will eventually use and evolve the design to their needs.

The UK has set a net zero target for 2050. This includes all companies and SMEs, which make 99.9% of all businesses here.The emissions of SMEs are on average 5.5 times more emissions of their large corporate counterparts, hence there is slow pressure from large buyers to be sustainable. Our research spans several sources- including guides published by Carbon Trust and other similar organisations, conferences we attended by Carbon Disclosure Project and Ecovadis, and interviews with SMEs and companies.

The Problem – From our research we found that SME owners take pride in ‘figuring out’ new initiatives or schemes for their business and prioritise decarbonisation only when clear business benefits are visible and quantifiable. We also found that dynamic business needs and a lack of ownership make it hard to sustain decarbonisation, and the contextualisation of recommendations made to business owners is important to enable action.

The Service – Bijli is a subscription offering that leverages Energy Efficiency as a Service and an experiment-based approach to deliver energy savings & sustainability for small-medium sized businesses. Using a pay-for-performance mechanism, businesses don’t have to bear high upfront costs and risks of equipment purchase. With our on-demand sensors and vendor marketplace, business owners are empowered to experiment and find unique ways of being energy efficient whilst decarbonising their operations

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In Collaboration with:

Disha Mittal

Co-founder, inC2

The Challenge

Supply chain emissions (termed as Scope 3) account for greater than 80% of a company's overall emissions. Companies that are not actively tracking & reducing scope 3 emissions face regulatory fines, higher bank interest rate, low investor confidence and increased costs in supply chain risks.

Companies find it hard to engage with suppliers in the long tail since supply chains are complex and supplier count could range from anywhere between 1500 to 75000 suppliers.

There is a lack of knowledge on sustainability with less than 15% of Tier 1 Suppliers equipped to report footprint, furthermore suppliers are afraid that reporting will reveal sensitive business data that will make them less competitive in the market.

The problem is amplified by a lack of incentive and upfront capital for suppliers to undertake sustainability projects while procurement teams find it hard to verify & track efforts of suppliers in the network.

Our Solution

inC2 is an enterprise SaaS (software as a service) platform that helps a company 's procurement teams and their suppliers factor carbon footprint in business decision making enabling whole supply chains to go net zero. inC2 utilises an innovative carbon pricing model to help companies develop optimal procurement strategies that would push their suppliers to reduce emissions and also build collective intelligence for decarbonisation practices within the sector.

In Collaboration with:

Terra Carta Design Lab

Inspired by the Terra Carta, His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales and Sir Jony Ive launched the ‘Terra Carta Design Lab’ as part of the Sustainable Markets Initiative. The initiative has since invited some of the world’s most talented design students to design high-impact, low-cost solutions for Nature, People and Planet. In February 2022, 20 finalists were shortlisted. In April 2022, four projects were announced as winners of the inaugural Terra Carta Design Lab.

Retrofits are a major part of the drive to sustainability in the housing sector. For believe housing, the challenge was to get buy-in to the retrofit from the residents and change their behaviours to make all the retrofit investment a success. For the resident the challenge starts with lack of understanding and knowledge of the retrofits itself, making behaviour change even more difficult and time-consuming.

Studies show that without good energy habits, a retrofitted house consumes 2.5 times more energy than a non-retrofitted house. This is concerning, and hence a culture of energy efficiency is essential to make retrofits a successful. In addition, retrofit massively disrupts domestic rhythms of a person’s life. Therefore, believe needs a way to enable smoother transition not only towards the retrofit journey, but also energy itself. Design for an energy transition will enable a smoother retrofit journey.

BeGreen - Enabling Social Housing Retrofits, media item 3

At the heart of the scheme is believe residents whose diverse needs are catered for through four key components: a digital customer portal, an energy advisor team, community centres and BeGreen Volunteers.

There are four distinct service stages which help build momentum and encourage behaviour change; "awareness" introduces the energy scheme; "engagement" involves personalising energy-saving goals; "action" encourages users to maintain good habits and "feedback" stage is sharing and reflecting on energy-saving.

Phase one focuses on helping residents and the local community adopt energy-saving habits that can help reduce energy consumption and financial hardship. Phase two of the energy-saving campaign is only incited when believe decides to retrofit properties in a community; we realised that phase 1 would be a great primer for when believe decides to do retrofits and would help with buy-in and adjusting to new habits quickly. phase 2 would include additional events for retrofit.

Client Testimonial – The service was extremely well received by the staff at Believe Housing and is being piloted at a few communities with the view to expand it to 18000 residents over the next 20 years.

The project was conducted over 6 months

Co-designed with: Vridhi Aggarwal, Joanne Chiu, Linda Mutunga

In Collaboration with:

Believe Housing

believe housing is one of the largest housing associations in the north east that prides itself on putting tenants at the heart of their services. Under the UK Net Zero plan, they must retrofit 10,000 properties and aid 18,000 residents in transitioning to cleaner energy.

Anchit Som

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Royal College of Art