ZeroByte

While the majority of respondents were aware that digital activity carries an environmental cost, 78% reacted with cynicism rather than action. To intercept this gap between awareness and behavior, the project repurposes the format of a rhythm game.

ZeroByte: Lighten Your AI Byte-weight

In this experimental game, your rhythmic taps are translated directly into real-time carbon emissions data. In an ironic twist, the better you play and the more data you generate, the more the digital system overheats—simulating the real-world collateral damage inflicted on the planet.

When the game ends, the player is confronted with a Digital Receipt: the carbon cost of every single tap, contextualized into like equivalent cups of Americano. By forcing players to share their receipts, ZeroByte brings them face-to-face with their personal digital debt.

78% cynical. Then they played. 65% committed to change.

Based on 34 survey responses, the ZeroByte campaign during Earth Week proved more effective at driving awareness through its promotional video rather than the static posters. However, nearly half of the respondents still showed cynicism when it came to sharing their digital receipts. This highlight a critical need for a more compelling or forceful mechanism to trigger actual behavioral change.

For ZeroByte Sustainability, Campaign Touchpoints: Intercepting the Campus

To seamlessly embed the movement into the daily lives of UAL students, the campaign extends across both digital and physical campus environments.

1. The campaign's code of conduct, including prompts such as "1-Hit Prompt," would be displayed as screensavers on printers and computer login screens within the UAL campus. 2. Real-time data such as "The carbon saved this week by UAL students through AI prompt dieting equals OO trees" will be displayed on screens on the main page of the UAL student portal.