Leading the way to greater sustainability by setting good examples
As part of the SwissEnergy program run by the Swiss Federal Office of Energy, Y&R Group Switzerland has developed another tool for the Energieschweiz.ch website. «Turning Old into New» uses various examples to illustrate the positive impact that building renovations have on both a property’s economic efficiency and its energy consumption.
On the one hand, Energieschweiz.ch offers visitors an additional possibility to find answers to their questions about the energetic refurbishment of buildings. On the other hand, owners and architects can submit their projects themselves via a profile area and thus help shape the content.
On the introductory page you can quickly see how big the external changes can be. The cross-fade effect applied to the photos shows the difference of the buildings before and after the modernization.
Clarity in back- and frontend
The Entry page allows visitors to easily narrow down the entries according to their interests with the help of four filters, e.g. annex of the canton or the building type. The examples include modernizations of e.g. residential buildings, schools, offices or industrial buildings.
On the detailed pages of the respective properties, the tool provides clear information about general project information and which measures were carried out on the building envelope or technology. It also contains additional background information.
Dynamic bar charts provide detailed information on the profitability of the respective project and show the change in energy consumption. The special feature: The bars are controlled by the inputs in the profile area.
Via the home page, visitors who wish to register their object will reach the "Turn old into new" Profile area. When designing the tool, particular attention was paid to user-friendliness: The large amount of information that needs to be entered was divided into five steps to ensure clarity and create an incentive to provide as much of this information as possible.
Umbraco as technical basis
The website of SwissEnergy is based on Umbraco 7, a very flexible content management framework. The frontend for the website as well as for the "Make new from old" tool was realized in AngularJS. It accesses the database containing details about the projects via a JSON interface. It is a single page application, through which the user experiences a better user experience, because the tool behaves similar to a desktop application.
The objects are also sent via an API to Building program.ch made accessible and can be seen there with immediate effect.
Responsible at the Federal Office of Energy: Project support: Claudio Menn (building specialist). Responsible at Y&R Group Switzerland: Rigobert Mihle (Backend), Robert Seidl (Frontend), Louise Zöckler (Creation), Karl Badde (UX/UI), Jessica Otto (Consulting). Content implementation, conception: Effienergie, Christian Dürrenberger (Management & Processes IT).
