BrightSide Materials Scoring
An architect-facing tool that is harmonizing material health and sustainability evaluations
with BrightWorks Sustainability
With more than 600 ‘green’ product labels on the market, designers need a simpler way to compare products and make better materials decisions. The BrightSide Scoring Tool does just that, acting like a Rosetta Stone to translate proprietary standards into a universal framework for comparison.
Working with Brightworks Sustainability, I have been collaborating on BrightSide’s development, advising on underlying scoring metrics, creating graphic systems and interface designs, and developing touchpoint elements that will be critical to empowering architects in practice.
A Holistic Context for Unifying Standards
The framework organizes product attributes into six primary categories of impacts, Health, Carbon, Circularity, Water, Waste, and Social-Equity. Each of these categories is further delineated by secondary and tertiary factors, and it is at this level of granularity that we are able to compare common elements across certification programs and establish equivalent benchmarks for scoring (see Reporting Threshold sample below).
These individual points of scoring are then added to create categorical scores and an overall total score for each product. The hierarchy in detail provides layers of metrics that are actionable and intuitive at a high-level, while also unfolding for more nuanced or targeted comparisons.
Empowering Designers in Practice
Simple and Actionable Metrics
Designers can seamlessly begin vetting products from their first point of contact using overall total scores. These early-stage considerations can set the design trajectory in a positive direction, identifying material types that are generally preferable and building a palette around healthier options.
When these considerations are addressed early on it avoids the possibility of backing yourself into an unhealthy corner, and instead allows you to continuously move forward while conscious of positive impacts.
Direct Product Comparison
Comparing products is often quite challenging without harmonized standards or rating systems. Different certification programs not only evaluate different variables, but also report in different units and grading systems. For example, how would you assume GreenGuard Gold compares to Cradle-to-Cradle Silver, or how might either of these stack up against BIFMA’s Level-1 or ILFI’s Petal-Certified?
BrightSide eliminates this translation challenge by breaking down the data from different proprietary standards and reporting formats and contextualizing them in one common framework for evaluation and scoring. Designers can then compare products across consistent categories of impacts, and with consistent metrics and rating scales.
Connecting Metrics to Meaning
There are typically two types of metrics that are available when it comes to evaluating materials. Disclosures are documents that report objective data, such as a product’s chemical composition, manufacturing processes, or assessments related to hazards and impacts. While this information is critical in driving progress and accountability, it is often not directly actionable to designers, as it can be difficult to understand the implications of specific details without context for comparison. Certifications, on the other hand, interpret this information and assign basic grades or seals of approval, often without disclosing the original data behind such assessments. While the simplicity of a certification may make it easier for designers to make quick decisions, it also leaves them simply trusting that a product is ‘green’ or ‘healthy’ without understanding the meaning behind the label.
BrightSide connects these two ends of the information spectrum, with high-level scores that are simple and actionable, and expanding levels of detail that contextualize the data behind the metrics. This hierarchy in information makes it easier for designers to understand both the general scale of a product’s impacts, as well as how a particular detail informs the overall whole.
Framework Customization
While the scoring metrics have been carefully considered to provide holistic representation of a product’s impacts, the tool also allows you to customize the framework and set your own priorities. Users can define the number of points that are allocated to any given category, allowing you to adjust the weight or emphasis to align with project or personal goals.
Users can also customize the scoring categories to match the lens of other frameworks, such as the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals or AIA’s Framework for Design Excellence. This process, commonly known as ‘crosswalking’, maps the assessment factors from BrightSide with the objectives defined by the given framework, allowing you to present the scoring metrics in terms that may be more familiar to others.