Too busy to recycle.

Today, a lot of people are concerned with our environment here on earth. I know I am! As an exercise, I wanted to see what I could do in my role as a UX designer to make recycling easier and something that everyone can do!

The big problem is that people think recycling takes time and want it to be easier, but they also struggle to find find where the nearest to recycle bin is and how to recycle. This is very important for people to know so that we all can help the environment.

• Make recycling easier ♻️
• Make recycle less time consuming ⏱
• Find recycling bins near you 📍

UX-research, UX-designer and designer.

I did a survey that I sent out to friends and family, with different questions depending on if they were recycling or not. I then interviewed a few of them to get more information on their recycling habits.

People would recycle more if:

• If it did not take as much time.
• If it was easier.
• If they knew where the recycle bins were.

• 📱 An app that show you where the nearest to recycle bin is and what you can recycle there, to make it easier for the user to recycle.
• 📅 Show what you can recycle at your nearest recycling station so that you can plan what and when to recycle.
• 📷 Tells you how to recycle items. By taking a photo of the item in the app you get a quick answer in which recycle bin you should put it in.
• 💡 Find information about what happens with the stuff you recycling - easy and quick way to learn more about recycling.
• 🏆 Rewards when recycling, like coupons. It is hard to motivate someone that doesn’t recycle, but a reward for doing so can help. Using rewards is a good way of creating new habits. It works like this:→ User sees plastic container (trigger)→ User recycles (action)→ User gets a coupon (reward)and over time, a new habit will be created.(The rewards should be things that have minimal impact on our planet)

I created some initial sketches using pen and paper to quickly figure out what the user journey would be like. I then moved that over to a low-fidelity prototype. When I was happy with all the flows, I created a high-fidelity version using Sketch.

• Learned about the environment and recycling.
• I got so excited that I started to design before user research - then I needed to go back and do the user research. I learned once again to do the user research first - the excitement should go there.
• Improved my Sketch skills.
• It takes time to change peoples mind - it’s hard and frustrating trying to get people to understand their impact on the environment - go Greta!