Recycle Right
An Efficient Recycling System for Residents of NYC
Knowledge Areas:
System Design
Design Thinking
Graphic Design
Inclusive Design
Methods Used:
Ethnographic Research
Ideation
Prototyping
User Testing
Tools Used:
Mural
Adobe Illustrator
Instagram
Google Forms
Background
This project, completed over the course of 5 months was the final deliverable of the Design Thinking for Problem Solving class I took as an elective at New York University while pursuing a graduate program in Management of Technology. The course was taught by Anne-Laure Fayard, Associate Professor of Management.
My Team
I was teamed up with five classmates from the course. The six of us worked together and had weekly progress discussions. I maintained the best interest of all team members during ideation and led the prototyping and user testing phase.
Problem Statement
The ask was to think about plastic waste and how it can be reduced such that it does not pollute our environment. We were given the freedom to go in any direction we pleased as long as it catered to improving sustainability and reducing the negative effects of plastic waste on the environment.
Research
The team conducted extensive research both individually and as a group. I conducted ethnographic research, as well as secondary research.
I was able to explore different ways companies and organizations around the world have been able to repurpose plastic. This included an indepth study of how recycled plastic can be used to fix broken roads and also how recycled plastic can be used as a fabric to make bags.
"people are (recycling) when it's convenient”
“Depending on where you are”
“My parents taught me (to recycle) when I was very little”
“put them (plastic bags) in a drawer to use them later and then never do”
“I've always done that (save plastic bags), my parents did that, my roommates do that and very occasionally they are useful"
“(paper vs plastic bags) It doesn't make that much of a difference to my life, as long as it contains the product that I am buying”
I also thought it would be a good idea for the team to explore the different (or common) methods that bulidings, schools, gyms, and public areas use to get people to recycle. We uncovered a pressing issue here, that most places used a different form of delivering information. On interviewing people, we developed a hypothesis that this inconcistancy led to confusion amongst people and inturn inefficent sorting of recyclable items.
Insights:
Plastic recycling is a matter of convenience for most people. If it is accessible, people are motivated to recycle and if it is not accessible, people do not care too much.
Even if recycling is accessible, people are not aware of the right methods and practices.
How Might We deliver information effectively in order to increase the convenience of recycling?
Ideation
Due to the forcable movement of opperation to a remote setting due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we carried out all ideation over Zoom and Mural.
Prototypes and User Testing
Since we were in the middle of a pandemic, and locked in our individual homes, we had to come up with innovative ways of making a prototype and conducting user tesing.
Adobe illustrator was used to make a graphic mock up of the concept, and Instagrap stroy quizes and google forms were used to conduct user testing.
Key Performance Indicator
We had various iterations of our prototype and user tested each one of them. The metric we used to measure the success of the proposed system was the success rate of the average user to get the product in the right bin.
Success rate = (number of correct answers in each category) ÷ (number of quiz questions)
First Prototype
This prototype was used to explain the concept to team members and was developed during the ideation phase.
Existing System Test
To compare the user tests of our developed prototypes with the existing system, we tested our user base on instagram by quizing them to place an item in bins based on the infographic NYC currently uses.
Results of User Testing:
Success Rate of Existing System: 64%
Second Prototype
Blue marked packaging goes in the blue bin.
Green marked packaging goes in the green bin.
These images amongst other similar ones were posted on all team member's personal instagram accounts stories along with the quiz sticker. Context for the experiment was provided, but no other explaniation on the method to use the system was provided.
We also did a similar test using the existing standard infographic used in New York City and compared the results.
Results of User Testing:
Success Rate of Second Prototype: 69%
There seemed to be an increase in the success rate, but it was marginal and nowhere close to our desired goal of atleast 85%.
We decided to further interview people by searching for the outliers and developed the next iteration of our concept.
Third Prototype
To improve on the second prototype, we considered adding more information on the lables that were stuck on the packaging of products. We also added shapes in order to improve the accessability of our design.
To make sure we didnt do user testing with the same test group, we created a google form with questions and circulated it amongst residents of New York City.
Results of User Testing:
Success Rate of Third Prototype: 88%
Conclusion
With this design, we were successfully able to accomplish our goal of creating a system that tackles the problem of inconvenient and ineffective recycling. It addresses the problem by creating a seamless and efficient color coding mechanism for sorting items that need to be disposed. We are able to confirm this based on the increasing success rates of our user tests.
