Project Turf

Better incentivizing people to recycle and clean up their communities

Fall 2019

Timeframe: 10 weeks

Group Members: Andrew Goodridge, Nick Taormina, Aparna Somvanshi

Primary role: Visual design, Vision video

This project was made for BC Hwang's Human/Computer Interaction class at SCAD. It was a 10 week project which went through the entire UX process. My group and I worked together in every stage of the process, however I was primarily responsible for the visual design(identity and UI design) and the vision video. For an entire process book of this, use the link at the bottom of the page.

Jump to final product

Research

After deciding to focus on the problem area of "Recycling in America", we spent multiple weeks going through extensive research, gathering as many insights as we could to help shape the digtal product we would eventually make.

Highlights from our general survey

General Survey: We first created a general survey to understand the general populations understanding and opinions on recycling. Some of the major insights we gather from this was that people are widely more motivated to recycle from the moral aspect than any monetary reward and that people are still very confused about recycling in general

Town watching data from Foxy Loxy Cafe

Town Watching: Multiple town watching experiments at various locations were conducted to analyze the behavior of recycling in public spaces. Our main insight from these tests were that there is often an issue with both classification of the receptacles and incentives to focus on the act of recycling, which end with people using which ever receptacles is easiest for them.

Ethnography: To further develop our understanding of the current status of recycling, we did primary and secondary research on how different cultures around the world recycle. One insight we found out was that most first-world countries further their seperation of trash beyond a general recycling bin.

Competitor analysis of different physical recycling products

Competitor Analysis: We researched both physical and digital products which were in the same problem space that we were in. We were not only inspired by the many innovative ideas which currently exist, but we also understood some of the major setbacks of the current products.

Forsyth park, where we conducted most of our user interviews

User Interview: As one of our last and most important research methods to our project, we went out in public and asked volunteers multiple questions specific to their opinions on recycling in public and what kinds of incentives would be most effective. We found out that an overwhelming amount of people want to understand and see their impact from recycling, both towards the environment and their community. They also agreed with the idea of having a competitve aspect to recycling, as it is generally a fun and natural incentive.

Affinity Mapping

After collecting all of our data, we created an affinity map to derive ideas and insights with what specific problems to solve and how to organize them.

Our final categories from affinity mapping

One of our "5 Whys" visualized

5 Whys: After affinity mapping, we did a "5 Whys" exercise in which we asked questions to try and get to the root of our problem.

Personas and Journey Maps

To visualize who are product should and shouldn't target, we created a collection of personas. We also created user journey maps to fully understand the scope of behaviors that our users will be having and any pain points with those behaviors.

One of our four personas that we created

One of our four user journey maps that we created

Wireframing

Once we understood our target audience and what solutions we wanted to create for the problems we were trying to solve, we started ideating, creating an information architecture and eventually wireframes for our app.

An intial sitemap for our app.

Inital lo-fi sketches and wireframes for our app.

User Testing and Mid-fi

Once we got feedback from our lo-fi interfaces, we created a Mid-fi version of our product and created a prototype of it to use for user testing. We also created a lo-fi version of our physical prototype and had users go through a mock version of the behavior a typical user would go through. We gathered many insights from these tests, which shaped our final product.

Mid-fi interfaces

Physical prototype and its mid-fi interface

Demostration and feedback from our physical process.

Identity

Throughout the process of creating interfaces, we also were developing an identity for our product. We wanted it to feel friendly and inviting so that those who walk by and see Project Turf recycling bins would be intrigued to join in.

Some intial ideas for our logo.

Background on why we chose the word "Turf".

Final Product

Project Turf turns communities into Turfs to make recycling easier and more captivating.

Splash screen

Your Turf: By looking into your Turf, you can find out more about your Turf's impact and current events happening in your area

Track your points: Track your recycling habits so that you can not only see your personal impact on the environment, but your Turf's impact as well.

Find recycling bins: Can't find any recycling bins in your area? Easily search for the nearest recycling bin in your area and see what kinds of materials it accepts.

Compete with friends: Go head-to-head against your friends to see who can get the most points!

Win rewards: Unlock personal rewards such as discounts and free prizes the more individual points that you get. Not only do you get points, but your Turf does as well. Turfs compete against other Turfs to win large scale rewards such as fundraiser events and concerts!

Process Book