I've always been the type of person that worries a lot about environmental and animal concerns. I like to take walks instead of using a car, I don't have a car, and I recycle and reuse everything I can, I also like to and I'm enthusiastic about world change causes, and It was no different when, doing the Interaction Design Specialization course at UC San Diego, I was challenged to deliver the complete design of an app. It all started with a need-finding process, and the first step was to observe people. Therefore, I decided to observe people's habits around recycling and the preservation of the environment.
<aside> 📋 Role: UX Designer | UI Designer | UX Researcher |
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<aside> 🛠️ Tools: Figma | Balsamiq | Miro Google Forms | Interviews | Direct Observation | User Testing | User Journeys | Personas | Wirefaming | Prototyping | Nielsen Heuristics | Product Discovery | Benchmarking | User Stories | Miro
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My observations centered around the design brief for Change although it also merges slightly into Glance. I wanted to learn about the habits of people around recycling, taking care of the environment, and how they participate in initiatives to preserve the environment and the animals. I asked my 3 participants to walk me through their daily routines in relation to how they deal with the trash they produce, how they relate with and treat the environment around them if they recycle, and if they do so, how they organize it, and what are their motivations towards the preservation of the environment and the animals. In short, the intention of the observation is to understand what motivates people to practice good deeds, especially in relation to the preservation of the environment and animals.
I assumed that I would find at least one participant who already recycles, but I was surprised to find that two participants already recycle and one doesn’t recycle anymore.
Ursula going to work with her colleagues.
Úrsula is 44 years old, she’s a public forensic psychologist and spends most of her time outside her apartment, working on the court of justice of her city. She’s the person responsible for keeping her home clean and organized, although a cleaning lady cleans and organizes her home every 15 days. She lives with her two daughters, Ana and Isabela.
Ursula wakes up every day at 6 am, she takes breakfast and then, before going to work, she takes out the trash from the bin that’s located in the kitchen of her apartment. Ursula does not separate recyclable waste from common waste at her home, although there are two bins on every floor of the building where she lives, one for recyclable waste, and one for common waste. There are two apartments per floor in the building, and it has 10 floors.
She thinks that separating recyclable waste from common waste takes a lot of time and is complicated, in addition to taking up a lot of space, as she would need two bins, instead of the only bin she has today in her kitchen. But despite all the obstacles, sometimes Ursula recycles a part of her house-produced waste.
At her work there are few recyclable bins across the entire building, some of them separate paper from plastic, from glass, and from common waste, but most of the recyclable bins do not separate the recyclable waste between the types, they gather glass, paper, and plastic, all in the same bin.
Inside her workroom, there is only one recycle bin for the entire room, and she is one of the few people that throw recyclable waste in the recycle bin. People don’t get motivated to do so and find it very confusing to recycle. They also throw common waste in the recyclable bin. Ursula gets very frustrated when she sees that people throw common waste in the recycle bin, this makes her demotivated to contribute, but she keeps doing so.
Ursula would like an app to help her learn about recycling and to help her control the trash she generates and recycles.
Marina is 32 years old and she's the CEO of a big tech company. She lives with her spouse, Arina and they love to help the environment and are very concerned about environmental and animal preservation causes and support most of them. Marina wakes up every day at 5 am, has her pre-workout meal, and walks to the gym, which is 1 km away from her home. On the way, she observes the space around her, and if she finds recyclable waste thrown on the street, she picks it up and disposes of it at some recycle bin on the street, or keeps it and throws it in the recycle bin at her house. She finds it difficult to find recyclable bins in the street.
Marina collected glass she found on the street.
At her home, Marina has a common waste bin and a recycle bin that separates the types of recyclable waste between paper, glass, and plastic. She recycles everything at her house and is very concerned about the way people recycle the trash at her company.
At Marina’s company, which has 10, 000 employees and it’s installed in a 15-floor building, they have 2 recyclable bins and 2 common trash bins, on every floor of the building, but the employees keep throwing common trash on the recycle bin and vice-versa. They are not recycling as much trash as they should, as they are not recycling enough waste to meet the company’s target for waste to be recycled. This is upsetting Marina, although she makes a lot of campaigns at her company, about the importance of taking care of the environment, she’s now thinking about a way of motivating her employees to recycle.
Marina would like an app to motivate people to recycle and protect the environment and that indicates recyclable bins around her city.