MSI Mastery Capstone • 2022
RE: is designed to make it easier for Millennials interested in sustainable living to determine how and where to recycle properly. It incentivizes users to dispose of items properly by offering points that can be redeemed for rewards at participating local & eco-conscious businesses.
My Role:
UX Research + Design
Design System
Team:
3 members
Duration:
12 weeks
Tools:
Figma
Adobe Illustrator
Miro
North America is home to less than 5% of the global population, but we generate 14% of the world’s waste. Recycling has become very expensive for municipalities in this country, and has led many cities to incinerating recyclable material. This has created not only environmental health issues, but has also furthered racial disparities, as these issues particularly affect Black & Latino communities.
That being said, many Americans are interested in changing their behaviors, once they know how!
We followed the Double Diamond framework shown below as we researched, designed, and iterated.
To understand the exact nature of the problem, we conducted preliminary, exploratory research.
COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
We started off by examining other technology solutions that address sustainability by looking ateight competitors. Some questions we wanted answers to:
COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS INSIGHTS
Incentivization:Action-oriented products focus on environmental impact or rewards.
Gamification:Products are gamified using points, tokens, & leaderboards.
Personalization:Personalizations are based on users location.
Verification:Points are either self-verified or tech-verified.
INITIAL INTERVIEWS
PARTICIPANTS
INTERVIEW INSIGHTS
There are concerns about affordability sustainable living (e.g. buying no-waste products).
The best way to reach consumers is through working with local business & government.
How to dispose of different types of plastics is a source of frustration.
People are motivated by (1) friends, (2) their wallets, and (3) seeing tangible impacts, both positive & negative.
To start brainstorming ways of tackling these problems, each team member sketched a concept to address the needs exposed through exploratory research methods.
To further assess what pain points and concepts we wanted our product to address, we used formative research methods.
SURVEY
PARTICIPANTS
SURVEY INSIGHTS
Behaviors: Recycle always/often via curbside single stream.
Pain Points: Confusion about what, where, & how to recycle, lack of options and time.
Motivations: Discounts on local and eco-friendly products and services, want to see personal impact.
DESIRABILITY TESTING
METHODOLOGY
Participants were shown lo-fi wireframes of two different concepts and were asked to select three words that best describe how they feel about it. The study was conducted remotely with 48 participants.
RESEARCH QUESTIONS
DESIRABILITY TESTING RESULTS
👍🏽 Clear (30)
👍🏽 Understandable (24)
👍🏽 Useful (18)
👎🏽 Uninspiring (5)
👍🏽 Clear (32)
👍🏽 Understandable (21)
👍🏽 Useful (19)
👎🏽 Confusing (3)
Many Millennials (age 22-35) living in major U.S. cities are often frustrated by
confusing location-specific recycling rules and don’t know how or where to dispose items that
can’t go in their curbside bin.
Further, when these barriers are resolved, our users lack the motivation to sort and deliver their items to the proper location.
We created a user flow in FigJam to organize our features and interactions into 3 streams. This helped us visually conceptualize our idea, and later on create wireframes (zoom in for more detail).
Based on the user flow, we then constructed basic wireframes using Figma.
Using an existing design system, we implemented components so that it would be easier to modify their instances in the hi-fi prototyping stage. Using peer and professor feedback, we made slight tweaks/clean-ups to the user flow.
To test ensure usability and assess our target users' feelings about the app's features and interface, we conducted evaluative research.
USABILITY TESTING
METHODOLOGY
Three usability tests were conducted with Millenials within the ages of 22-35 with an interest in sustainable living. Participants were given 5 tasks to complete within recycling, rewards and community.
TASKS
Recycling
Rewards
Community
DESIGN IMPLICATIONS FROM TESTING
USABILITY TESTING INSIGHTS
ACTION ITEMS
📌 Update labels & icons for recycling action button
📌 Specify confirmation of recycling
📌 Separate goals & rewards; make them editable
📌 Add community challenges
📌 Clarify what community posts are for and who makes them
We created a design system to maintain consistency through the app. Because this app is targeted towards
Millennials, we wanted to use fun colors, while still keeping with the sustainability theme.
The logo was also designed based off an illustration from the Blush plugin, and is a combination of a recycling bag, and a gift bag.
😶🌫️ Invisible UX
In mine and many of our testing participants experiences, the reason less thought was put into
the waste diversion process was because it was inconvenient for users to spend time thinking about how, where, and what to recycle.
In designing this app, we had to put a lot of thought in ensuring that its usage did not make recycling more cumbersome than it already is.
Obviously there will always be room for improvement, but I think we achieved that from a high level.
♻️ Recruiting
I got a big breadth of experience with research methods through this project. So, recruiting had to happen pretty frequently.
Huge shoutout to all testing participants! Lots of repeat participants really enjoyed seeing the evolution of this project,
and our team really appreciated and applied their feedback to coming iterations.
