Oaze.io
2020
Saas
Climate tech
Zero → MVP
My role: Lead designer
TL;DR
Challenge
Human-caused CO₂ emissions are rapidly warming Earth’s lower atmosphere, making life harder for people, animals, and certain plants. One way to respond is offsetting: funding projects that remove or avoid the same amount of CO₂ elsewhere, such as reforestation. Many companies are committed to it, but for SMEs, offsetting is expensive and can take months.
Solution
We built Oaze.io, a browser-based SaaS that lets small and medium-sized businesses offset their CO₂ emissions and become CO₂-neutral in 5 minutes. Our “5-minute journey” combines a simple CO₂ emissions calculator (asking only top-of-mind questions), preselected offsetting projects, and clear subscription packages, turning a months-long process into minutes.
Impact
The subscription-based offsetting solution showed immediate traction in early user tests and cold video calls. We'd planned a more precise calculator with certificates next, but when COVID-19 hit, we pivoted away from Oaze.io, figuring CO₂ offsetting would be the least of SMEs' concerns under financial pressure. Still, it was a privilege to work on a project dedicated to protecting the environment.
Early feedback showed we were rebuilding the complex offsetting process that drives SMEs away. I pitched selling offsetting like the SaaS tools they already use: a monthly subscription, bought in a few self-service steps. One workshop later, it became the “5-minute journey.”
First Design Hire · Early Concepts
When I joined Oaze.io in January 2020, the team already had some early solution ideas, so I began designing core deliverables (user journeys, screen flows, etc.) while we continued interviewing potential early adopters.
Why Existing Offsetting Solutions Fail SMEs
Even early feedback showed that we were recreating the same complicated process that drives SMEs away: endless footprint calculations, decision fatigue from hundreds of project options, large one-off fees, and occasional updates from the other side of the world, leaving companies unsure whether they were even funding something real.
Aha! The Subscription Funnel Insight
This led to my Aha! moment: SMEs live in a SaaS world of simple subscriptions and self-service, not heavy calculations and high upfront costs. I proposed replacing the “web-shop-like” experience and its large one-time fee with a short subscription funnel: a few quick steps ending in a monthly plan.
Impact · From Complexity to a 5-Minute Journey
After my pitch to the team, a two-hour workshop was enough to rethink the entire offsetting journey. The outcome: a subscription-based sales funnel (aka the "5-minute journey") that let SMEs offset their footprint in minutes, not months. It also inspired Oaze.io's tagline: "Make your company CO₂ neutral in 5 minutes."
Time to value · Minutes vs months
Comparing our 5-minute flow to a traditional offsetting journey makes the tradeoff immediately clear: less precision in the calculation, but instead of waiting months to get started, SMEs can offset within minutes.
Top-of-mind questions in the calculator
Getting started with carbon offsetting usually takes weeks of preparation. We wanted a calculator that gives a solid estimate from what SME leaders already know off the top of their heads. Less precise than a full audit, but accurate enough to start offsetting right away.
We made CO₂ offset glanceable
Turning a carbon credit purchase into actual CO₂ tonnes is a harder mental leap than it looks. After testing different visualizations for a company's carbon emissions, we landed on a donut chart. Progress and key numbers, all at a glance.
5 minutes journey - MVP
While we were validating our subscription-based offsetting flow with prospects, defining the calculator questions, and refining the CO₂-emissions chart for Oaze.io, I began feeding the engineering pipeline higher-fidelity designs. Within four weeks, we had the first version of the “5-minute journey” in production.
The landing page shows SMEs what to expect: you can make your company CO₂ neutral in 5 minutes instead of spending months on complex footprint calculations. It also previews the offset projects and features Twitter posts about Oaze as social proof.
1. Calculate the company’s CO₂ emissions.
Our online calculator uses a dozen simple questions that business owners can answer from memory and delivers a reliable estimate in minutes, enough to start offsetting.
2. Choose an offestting project
Users choose from three vetted offsetting projects instead of hundreds in other solutions, reducing decision fatigue. More options are available on request.
3. Choose your subscription
Users choose from predefined offsetting packages or a custom amount. Each package shows its real-world impact, like trees planted or glacial ice saved, making CO₂ offsetting feel tangible and worthwhile.
4. Register & Pay
In Oaze’s sign-up process, we merged registration and payment into a single screen. This removed an extra step from the journey, streamlining the overall flow even more.
5. Congrats!
Once users complete the previous steps, the company is already offsetting its CO₂ emissions. A certificate shows the offset percentage, which users can share on social media to help drive Oaze.io’s organic growth.
6. Track your progress
The company dashboard lets users track project progress, view updates on funded initiatives, and manage their subscription. This encourages returning traffic and engagement with Oaze.io.
Every step and detail throughout the subscription funnel is carefully refined to create clarity, reduce friction and gently steer users toward subscribing to an offsetting plan.
A live feed of tweets on the landing page did two jobs: it gave authentic social proof, and every customer who tweeted about going CO₂-neutral also spread the word about Oaze.
The offsetting stepper guides SMEs clearly from calculation to carbon neutrality, replacing long and time-consuming black-box processes.
Our carbon footprint calculator's questions are quick and easy to answer from the top of your mind. For SMEs without complex supply chains, it is accurate enough to start offsetting.
After several rounds of user testing, we used a donut chart combining clear numbers and emission sources to show monthly and yearly CO₂ emissions, making totals and drivers easy to understand at a glance.
When users select how much CO₂ to offset, we show simple comparisons like preserved glacial ice or the number of trees to make the impact easy to understand.
I used visual delighters to improve clarity and smooth the offsetting and subscription flow. Visualizing payment details on a card reduces cognitive load through instant recognition.
Mint: the UI Kit
Oaze’s UI kit, “Mint,” creates an engaging and delightful interface. Lush green imagery reinforces the importance of protecting our living environment through carbon neutrality. Its cool, natural color palette, smooth type scale, and minimalist UI create a clear, engaging experience.
“Mint,” our UI kit, started small: just the guidelines, tokens, and components needed for the use cases the MVP covered. But I built it to scale, so it could grow with the product.
Because the UI components were designed for a GUI built around a set of particular, well-defined use cases, I was able to streamline their look and feel into a clean, functional, and minimalist UI Kit.
In the color palette, mint green represents nature, turquoise represents melting glacial ice, and orange is the light in our environment. Cooler hues reflect the technical world we live in, while graphite text reduces eye strain on white backgrounds.
I chose Graphik by Christian Schwartz (2009) for its friendly, unassuming character and excellent legibility on screen and in print. Its elegance is reflected in its use by Condé Nast titles like Vogue and The New Yorker.
Custom icons in the stepper give the UI a distinctive character, setting it apart from SaaS products that rely on generic Google symbols.
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© 2026 Péter Muka | Please do not copy or steal my stuff; I worked hard to put this together.