Project “I wish…”

This idea started out between two designers who wanted to get some practice in research and design. We brainstormed using our daily pain points - those powerful moments of “I wish…” - to come up with a problem we could tackle creatively and reasonably within a 2 week time frame.

Establishing the Research Plan

The problem of recycling is bigger than a single product can feasibly address and solve. To understand where we could make an impact, we made the following research plan:

• To understand current recycling habits and pain points

• To understand users’ process for learning how to recycle

• To understand the factors that influence users’ motivation to recycle

Due to our 2-week sprint constraint, we focused on collecting qualitative research insights through user surveys, user interviews, market research, and competitive analysis.

For the full deep dive into market and user research, please visit my case study here.

Recycling Industry Overview

The recycling industry is one that has been exhaustively tackled with multiple solutions including simplified recycling management (LeBlanc, 2020), state-level recycling refund systems (NCSL, 2024), and community-pilot programs (Bryan, 2022), all to try and increase the rate of recycling among the American population. It is an industry that is as complex as it is highly interdependent, and despite the overall positive impression of the practice, 1 in 5 people have doubts about its effectiveness and practicality (Schussler, 2022).

Analyzing the Competition

With the current market already oversaturated with mobile apps and resources, we weren’t sure if there were any remaining opportunities left for us to target. Our competitive analysis focused instead on understanding their purpose and audience, and how well each competitor addressed the goal of increasing individual recycling behavior.

From our initial review, competitors focused on specific target audiences that are already receptive to recycling habits or are in a position to do so. Most competitors provide both drop-off location information as well as comprehensive recycling guidelines, but we hypothesize that simply making information available does not mean it is utilized or consumed effectively. Below are my final thoughts on each competitor:

It is worth noting that a fifth company, RecycleBank, was among our top considerations for competitors but unfortunately, the app was bought out and made obsolete in 2019.

Gathering Live Insights

As we conducted our market and competitive analysis, we simultaneously sent out a survey to our family and friends to better understand how a small sample of our target demographic (anyone capable of recycling) tackled the issue of recycling in their everyday lives.

Survey Results

We received a total of 48 screener survey responses and we conducted in-depth interviews with 8 of those participants. They were asked to identify:

• Residence: states where they live currently and in the past

• Recycling frequency and confidence: how often they recycled and how confident they were in doing so

• Information lookup: whether they’ve needed to search for guidance when recycling and how often

Interview Selection and Synthesis

We selected 8 participants for an in-depth interview based on three criteria: 

1. Must have resided in multiple states: our intention was to understand how individuals adapted to different recycling systems and rules

2. Must have looked up how to recycle items: we wanted to see what kind of resources people relied on for accurate information

3. Must be willing to have an interview

After compiling our interview notes, we created the preliminary affinity map below, followed by a more thorough synthesis that led to the following key takeaways. 

5 Research Findings:

We categorized our observations into 5 takeaway categories:

1. Barriers that prevent people from recycling more include uncertainty and inconvenience

2. Habits and assumptions are influenced by peoples’ settings

3. Establishing a system around recycling helps form habit

4. Digestible information and feedback need to be accessible

5. Motivations include incentive, social pressure, and personal fulfillment

We observed a recurring pattern where convenience consistently took priority - until a greater incentive was present to justify the inconvenience of recycling. In addition, existing habits were difficult to modify even with the right incentives, but some were receptive to changing if presented with convenient options. Lastly, we realized that individuals who refrained from recycling were mostly led by their attitudes and assumptions about recycling and were unlikely to shift their behavior with or without incentives.

The current market addresses the problem of recycling information access, but seems to have overlooked the issue of recycling motivation that drives their users to action. This realization led us to pivot our research focus towards identifying user motivation. Based on these observations, we re-evaluated our problem statement and formed a hypothesis that narrowed in on addressing user motivation rather than user behavior:

For the full deep dive into market and user research, please visit my case study here.

Key Motivation Needs

To put this hypothesis into practice, we designed three distinct personas:

In our secondary research we realized that most of our competitors’ target demographic are those who already recycle (ie. Daniel). For our concept app, we want our features to address those who need incentives to shift behavior and persuasion to shift existing perspectives.

Features to Reward and Educate

After reviewing all of our work thus far, we started to identify features that would be crucial for our three personas to accomplish their goals within the web app. We took inspiration from competitors as well as non-competitors with similar business models that we felt would benefit our users. Once we gathered a comprehensive list, we focused on the ones that specifically targeted user motivations.

Feature: Gamification and Rewards Points

One thing we really wanted to incorporate into our features was the idea of education (or re-education) content that would provide users with some sort of personal achievement. Gamification coupled with a rewards incentive would encourage continued use of the app, and therefore maintain or increase user exposure to recycling guidance.

Challenge:

The challenge we faced was to figure out how the points system would work in terms of providing monetary incentives for our users. Our initial idea was to allow users to redeem points for certain rewards (such as gift cards or discounts with brands or retailers) - this model resembled very closely to RecycleBank’s business model, and has seen success with other apps such as Fetch, a receipt-upload rewards program. The difference was identifying the value that brands and retailers could gain from our users.

To earn points:

• Answer daily quiz questions and participate in polls (Recycle Coach) - this would affirm correct recycling practices and provide insight on recycling behaviors

• Answer branded quiz questions or complete branded surveys (Terracycle) - users would gain a clearer understanding of how to properly dispose of specific products, fostering confidence and a positive brand affinity

• Watch educational videos on eco-friendly practices (Recycle Coach, Earth911) - this would validate existing user knowledge and/or foster exposure to new practices/knowledge

• Interact with a “Community Post of the Day” - this wouldpromote user engagement and connections with a local like-minded community

• Refer the app to a friend (Fetch)- this would utilizes social influence to encourage users to align with social norms

Feature: Choose-Your-Own Product Life Cycle Adventure

Feedback from interviews and secondary research revealed a widespread lack of understanding on what happens to items after they’re dropped off for recycling, which contributes to doubts about the industry’s effectiveness. To combat this we believe lifting the curtains on the recycling process will empower users to recycle with confidence. This Recycled Product Life Cycle feature will allow users to select a recyclable item and follow it along its recycling process.

Challenge:

Users’ apathy mostly stems from not knowing where their personal recycling ends up - the most direct way to address this is to ensure an accurate process flow based on their local municipality. However, recycling processes vary greatly from location to location, making it challenging to include all variations in a single database and highly impractical to implement. Potential solutions might be to set geographical limits or generalize the recycling process based on most common process per state. Implementing this feature will require significant research and effort to ensure its feasibility.

How it works:

• Users will select a common recyclable item to start their journey, and experience the physical transition from the user’s home to the end destination, with multiple user prompts to decide where the item ends up

• Prompts may include questions such as “What is the size of the item you chose?” or “Which item will you be made into next?”; also included can be general learning questions such as “Which plastics are recyclable?” to test information retention

• Users will be able to backtrack and select different prompt answers to see where the item might end up

Research Lessons

• Scope pivots may sometimes be necessary, as the original scope did not adequately meet the user needs that emerged during the research phase

• A team of perspectives and experience is invaluable - especially in fields (such as business models and development) that affects the end product’s feasibility

• Learning to address users’ physical problems with a purely digital product solution was a process that relied heavily on user research

Next Steps

• Design prototypes and conduct in-depth usability testing to verify features address target audience as intended

• Continue to build out additional features

Recycling Suggestions

• Setting a physical bag or box for recyclables at home will help mentally differentiate it from trash

• Tangible reminders such as visual cues (piling up) or app reminders (for collection) help in maintaining the habit

• Taking the time to learn how to recycle common items will reduce the general stress caused by recycling uncertainty

For the full deep dive into market and user research, please visit my case study here.

Sources

Bryan. (2022, September 14). From around the internet: 10 schools running fabulous recycling programs. https://blog.thecrayoninitiative.org/from-around-the-internet-10-schools-running-fabulous-recycling-programs

LeBlanc, R. (2020, February 3). Single-Stream recycling and the future of waste. LiveAbout. https://www.liveabout.com/an-overview-of-single-stream-recycling-2877728

NCSL. (2024, March 4). State Beverage Container Deposit laws. National Conference of State Legislatures. https://www.ncsl.org/environment-and-natural-resources/state-beverage-container-deposit-laws

Schussler, E. (2022, August 3). First-of-its-Kind Recycling Confidence Index: Not surprisingly confidence is heavily impacted by communication and support. The Recycling Partnership. https://recyclingpartnership.org/first-of-its-kind-recycling-confidence-index-not-surprisingly-confidence-is-heavily-impacted-by-communication-and-support/

US EPA. (2023, November 22). National Overview: Facts and Figures on Materials, Wastes and Recycling | US EPA. https://www.epa.gov/facts-and-figures-about-materials-waste-and-recycling/national-overview-facts-and-figures-materials