Overview
As a part of my Human Computer Interaction and Design class in Cornell, a group of us had to find a problem that we would like to address. We identified that there was a lack of knowledge in waste management and that people took it lightly. We addressed the problem in stages, and designed a high fidelity prototype as our solution.
Contribution
I conducted user interviews, made session notes, created affinity diagrams and also gathered insights. We sketched possible solutions individually and then together as a team, we came up with an ideal solution that met with our persona’s goals. Further, I sketched rough screens for the solution and then created the final high fidelity prototype after various iterations with my team.
The Problem
Cornell students living in off campus houses and apartments in Ithaca need to more effectively manage their waste (sorting recyclables, compost, and landfill waste) than how they currently do, because their current solutions are inconvenient, skewed by the actions of naive roommates, environmentally detrimental with the amount of challenging waste they produce, and failing to fully utilize current waste management infrastructure.
Goal
We aim to increase awareness of proper waste management methods and waste management resources in Ithaca and also aim to generate motivations for college students to dispose of waste properly. We also wish to simplify and streamline the waste management process overall.
Target User
Our potential primary user group consists of Cornell students in Ithaca who have a hard time figuring out how to manage their organic/recycling/landfill waste at home, or who believe in the merits of recycling and composting, yet do not have the time or bandwidth to manually sort their trash themselves. More broadly, the user group could consist of any individual or community who cares about proper waste management but lacks the capacity to sort trash themselves.
User Research
As a team, we conducted around 10 interviews in total. Each of us conducted 2 interviews that were 30-40 minutes long. The interviews were recorded, and we created a descriptive session essay on each interview that describes the interview setting and process. Interviews were conducted either in person and in the kitchen of the person’s household. We gathered insights from the interviews and created an affinity diagram.
Insights
Inconvenience
Recycling > Composting
External Influence
Ideal Waste Management Solution
Having so much course load, students find it difficult to recycle or think about methods of garbage disposal.
Students are more familiar with methods of recycling. They feel composting gives an unpleasant odor and would attract insects.
Some students have the sense of peer pressure while living with roommates and would have to adapt to their waste management methods.
Students felt a system that integrates recycling into one’s life seamlessly while keeping convenience in mind would be ideal for many.
Identifying Persona
Click on image to view persona
From the interviews, I found similar responses. Then, we created a fictional persona that has characteristics of a group of users. Talia, a 21-year-old college student currently pursuing her bachelor’s degree in environmental science. The challenges faced by the persona are real issues that students are dealing with.
Ideation
We first conducted research on our solution space to avoid pursuing a project that already exists. We found that the solution space lacked providing all the needs to the user in a more comprehensive way. The existing solutions are helpful in monitoring waste status for commercial clients, providing large-scale pick-up services, servicing residential pick-ups in Ithaca, and providing information on recycling. However, they lack some essentials that are needed.
Cons of Existing Solutions
Most waste management services provide convenient packages mostly for large institutional or corporate clients, which is out of reach for a student living in off-campus housing.
In addition, most of the digital solutions only provide solutions to a fragment of the waste management problems students face, making it difficult to build healthy and complete waste practices.
The solution space is also missing solutions for coordinating trash chores amongst residents in shared living spaces, all-in-one platform for monitoring, communicating, and providing recycling knowledge.
Based on the solutions research, we discovered that current solutions are largely fragmented, and users have to download or contact multiple parties to get services for all steps of the process.
In addition, most solutions do not serve the average individual consumer (such as a student in off-campus housing), but rather larger groups (such as a family who owns/rents a home) or commercial clients.
After independently ideating in this novel solution space, we decided to pursue one specific solution: an innovative and interactive smart waste bin that connects to the user’s phone via an application.
Preliminary Sketches
We made several sketches for our solution prototype. One was a non digital prototype - our smart bin, and another was a digital prototype - the application connected to the smart bin.
In conceptualizing the design of this app, we decided that it should accommodate a set of five tasks.
Our first task is the user throwing the trash in the bin as and when they produce any kind of waste.
Our second task is viewing trash insights on the garbage bin screen for that day.
Our third user task is going into the app to see what day/time trash is picked up.
Our fourth task targets adjusting trash sorting preferences of the appliance to the region that the user resides in, according to their nearby available facilities for landfill, recycling, and compost collection as well as local regulations.
Our fifth user task involves the user getting notified on their phone that their bin is full and needs to be emptied.
Storyboards
We created storyboards to speculate on how the app and physical prototype would function in the daily lives of people in our target audience.
Paper Prototypes
We created a paper prototype and asked users of our target audience to participate in usability tests. We noted down the user feedback and then proceeded to create our mid fidelity prototypes.
Mid to High Fidelity Prototypes
We used the insights from the usability testing feedback to inform the creation of our mid fidelity Figma prototype. After the design critique, we made changes to our colour theme and various screens making it more visually appealing, leading us to a high fidelity prototype. We performed heuristic evaluations on the prototype based on Nielsen’s 10 heuristics for user interface design. Finally after our usability testing on the final prototype, we made a few moe iterations so we can match the goals and needs of the users.
Mid fidelity prototype
High fidelity prototype
Challenges Faced
We didn’t define a proper UI kit that all of us liked. This made us reiterate on the colour theme of the application a number of times.
Since everyone worked on the figma prototype, it was hard to coordinate and maintain consistency. We had to go over each screen a number of times to check if every icon, spacing were consistent.
Coordinating meeting timings and coming up with so many iterations in a short span of time was challenging.