Overview

The U.S. recycles only 35% of the waste it produces, which exacerbates the issue of global warming. Americans don’t recycle due to confusing standards as well as lack of recycling bins. Mother, a recycling app, provides a solution by increasing the total amount of waste to recycling by utilizing location based features and customized information. My role was to research, design, develop, build and test a minimum viable product.

Context and Scope

My first UX/ UI project with Springboard. I was able to put my newfound knowledge to work with research, development, design, branding, testing and iteration.

Secondary Research

The effects of climate change are hard to ignore, it’s in the news, we feel the devastations of super storms, flooding, drought more and more. So what are we doing about it? A method we use to slow the effects is recycling. However, when we look at our recycling progress, it’s falling short. While Americans account for 4% of the global population, we produce 12% of the world’s waste. And only 35% of that waste is recycled. While there are recycling programs in place, where do Americans go wrong? Why is the recycling percentage so low?

Why is the recycling percentage so low in the US?

User Interviews with pre-screened Americans across the country

Clearly, something is amiss with the recycling process in the US, so I wanted to speak to Americans and hear firsthand what their experiences were with recycling. I virtually interviewed 5 pre-screened individuals from different locations wanting to find out the following:

What are the user’s pain points/ frustrations with recycling?
How consistent is the user with recycling?
What is the user’s recycling habits?
What is the ideal recycling situation for the user?

Interview Key Findings

Surprisingly, there were many similar sentiments echoed across user interviews despite all interviewees residing in different locations. After affinity mapping, I found the biggest sentiments being :

Not being able to locate a recycling bin when users are away from home.
Being confused on what is acceptable to recycle / lack of education.
Inconsistent recycling standards (which lends to user’s confusion on what is acceptable or not)

This information made me realize Americans have legitimate issues with recycling which lead to my problem…

The Problem

How might we increase the amount of recycling and clarify recycling standards in order to improve the experience for Americans?

To better solve my problem, I wanted to focus on the user I was designing for…

I put together Empathy Maps so I could understand what the user would think, feel, say, do. And from there, I was able to assemble 2 main personas. The 2 personas really helped me hone in on what features would be most useful to the user.

recycling rachel - updated.jpg — **Recycling Rachel (Primary Persona)** - She is time conscious but makes every effort to recycle properly; **she is frustrated when others don’t recycle correctly.** Rachel is **annoyed when she cannot find public recycling bins**, she will choose to carry her recycling around until she finds the proper way to dispose of her items.

**Aspirational Andy (Secondary Persona)** - He **craves convenience** and is even more time conscious than Rachel; while he is not entirely well-versed in recycling procedures, **Andy usually puts items in the recycling bin in hopes it will be fine**. He **will try to find recycling bins** in public, **but will also use a trashcan** if he can’t find one.

My Hypothesis

I believe a location based app that shows nearby recycling bins as well as local recycling guidelines will help Americans recycle more and empower them to make the right recycling choices.

Walking through User Stories to understand how the user would be using the app.

Since I had an idea of the best features to include, I wanted to understand how our user would be accomplishing their tasks with the app. The 3 main tasks I had in mind were:

As a user, I want to know where the recycling bins are.
As a user, I want a central location to find answers to my questions.
As a user, I want curbside pickup for all recycling.

Proceeding onto rough sketches and early testing using the Marvel Pop app.

I wanted to do some quick testing before moving onto low fidelity wireframes so I could find any issues early on. While the testing was not entirely helpful, it was good to find out firsthand. My test subjects were distracted with the rough sketches being too low fidelity for them to focus on the tasks I had asked them to do. To keep moving forward, I proceeded to mockup low fidelity screens to visualize a layout and then a high fidelity prototype to test.

After building my high fidelity screens on Sketch and importing into InVision for the clickable prototype; I virtually tested it with 5 recruited participants and found the following user issues:

Users wanted larger recycling bin icons, due to the business of google maps, they want a more distinct symbol.
For the recycling pickup section on the Home Recycling page, it is not clear users can scroll down to view the calendar. Users were expecting to tap in to find more information.
Users preferred the Settings icon to be on the right-hand side.

I iterated on my High Fidelity Screens taking into account user callouts and unsuccessful tasks.

The larger recycling bin icons were more easily noticeable.
Changing the recycling pickup to be tapped into was expected and successful.
After updating the settings icon to the right-hand side, users no longer called this out.

Conclusion

Though this was a fictitious project, Mother has simple but major offerings. Small actions such as finding a recycling bin or offering accurate recycling information has real potential to increase the positive impact people have on the environment. I know this app would help Americans recycle better and feel more empowered with knowledge. I’d also hope that it would help influence Americans to care more about consumption, and being more conscious about the waste / recycling that is produced.

If this app were to be built, I would want to test Mother further and see if accurate recycling information would populate, depending on the user’s geographical location. I would also want to explore a form of crowd sourcing in order to add recycling bin locations to the map.

View the prototype here.