A mobile app that supports people to recycle waste more effectively and reuse them.
THE CHALLENGE
In recent days pollution due to waste disposables has increased a lot. Even most of them can be recycled, but due to negligence, they are ending up in landfills.
https://www.epa.gov/facts-and-figures-about-materials-waste-and-recycling
From the above graph data, we can conclude how much waste has been recycled and how much waste has ended up in landfills in the past years. If the numbers of waste filling the land goes up there will be a dangerous effect on the environment, human life, and aquatic life too.
Aside from this, there is an issue in locating bins in cities and recycling centers. Due to unable to locate the bins people end up throwing garbage waste in an open land which leads to increasing the waste filling up the land.
During the research initially, my question was “How can we encourage people to recycle more for sustainable living”.
MY PROPOSAL
Recycle is a mobile application that helps people to recycle and reuse waste for sustainable living. It guides the user to recycle and reuse waste. It also helps in locating the bins and recycling center for recycling the waste. My main goal is to encourage recycling in a simple informative way.
OBJECTIVES
The main objectives of this mobile application are
- Reusing- Reusing the items by making simple DIY’s.
- Instant Information- Find information about how to recycle and reuse waste items.
- Instant location- Locating the bins and recycle center according to the type of the product.
- Impact- Sharing the achievements of recycling and reusing which encourage others.
RESEARCH
During the research process, I have gathered a lot of information from people. One thing can be concluded that “most of the people don’t care about nature” and have less knowledge of recycling. A few questions which I asked them are:
- What makes people stop recycling waste?
- Do people understand the effect recycling has on the environment?
- What do you do for a better sustainable life?
- How much knowledge do you have on recycling?
After collecting the data the main points to be considered are:
- “Most of the people have less knowledge on recycling”
- “They can’t locate bins and unable to identify the bin types”
- “Only a few people make DIY products out of waste by reusing them”
USER PERSONA
WIREFRAME AND PROTOTYPING
Main Goal
The main goals which are kept in mind while designing are :
- Simple user interface
- Instant information about 3R’s
- share user achievement’s
Flow chart
Below is the map of all the interactions involved throughout the app.
Sketches
Wireframe
FINAL DESIGN
After Wireframe and prototyping, I have worked on the final design. Before doing that, I created a style guide to follow. For the overall style of the app, I have used green color that resembles nature.
Style guide
Onboarding
Onboarding screens gives a simple overview of how the app works with some illustrations.
Tutorials screen
As users face trouble in knowing about recycling and its benefits for living a sustainable life, tutorials contain a set of articles and videos of how to recycle and reuse the waste which helps users in recycling. Users can also share their articles and videos of their new ideas of recycling.
Rewards screen
Users get Recycle points as rewards based on their recycling activities. This is a way to further motivate people to recycle more. Users can redeem their points with the products available.
Location screen
The main issue is, people have trouble finding bins and recycling centers. so, location helps users to find bins near to them. It also helps to segregate the bins according to the waste(wet waste, dry waste, electronic waste).
Final Thoughts
Every year tons of waste are generated due to mankind, every item can be recycled and reused but that action is not taking place accurately only a small amount of the waste is recycled and reused. The remaining waste has ended up filling the land and oceans. Now the waste percentage filling up the lands and oceans is at an alarming rate if this goes on increasing it becomes a dangerous problem for mankind and aquatic life.
The main goal of this mobile application is to encourage and educate people about the importance of recycling and reusing for sustainable living. It is designed in a manner where users get motivated by earning rewards when they recycle the waste and users can get instant information about bin locations in cities and new places.
I hope that this app will be encouraged and supported by users and communities for recycling the waste for a sustainable life.
What are the next steps?
- Usability test of the prototype with users
- Improve user flow
Future Features
- Adding information about the importance of living a sustainable life.
- Adding information about urban farming and gardening methods where users can start farming in urban areas.
