E-Turn

E-turn is a location based app that allows to search electronics - recycling center nearby. This was an academic project for the course "Interaction Design Practice".

Role

Researcher

UI/UX Designer

Tools

Qualtrics

Adobe XD

Figma

Timeline

Sept 2022 - Oct 2022

Teammate(s)

Mandar Bhoyar

Saransh Gupta

Pranav Mirkad

Problem Space

Electronic recycling is a major problem in the United States, so much so that people do not consider recycling their obsolete or defunct items, and 70% of total recyclable items just stay in storage. Most of the states don’t have proper legislation that handle disposal of e-waste. Given how big the problem is we decided to interview people about their experience with e-waste recycling and found out two main issues- Accessibility and Awareness.

Solution

We believe that building a digital solution, like a website, which focuses on showing users where to find recycling centers and spread awareness would be ideal and to the point considering access and awareness were the main constraints that held customers from recycling.

But Why?

A Google search would do the same right?…Google doesn’t show all the info about the recycling centers, and even though it shows all the recycling centers it doesn’t show what they accept and also some recycling centers have different policies of what they accept this is a cumbersome task just to recycle something. Our website will let them find a location and search on the basis of what they recycle and various other filters.

The Process

Data Collection

Interviews and Surveys

For this project we decided to conduct surveys and interviews of local residents to understand what their views are on recycling. If they recycle electronics what motivates them and if they don’t what is hindering them from recycling. In total we conducted 8 interviews (2 per team member)

View Interview Protocol Here

What we learned was that most people -

Don't recycle often, they'd rather give stuff away or hold onto things.
Are not aware that electronic recycling was a thing and what items can be recycled (60%).
Lack of clarity for recycling locations and no nearby recycling centers (68%).
Don't repair/recycle electronics due to poor repair and replacement policies by companies mainly inconvenience and cost (52%).

Field Visits

We visited nearby recycling centers and e-waste collection facilities to get a fair idea on what the recycling process looks like and how e-waste is handled after collection.

What we learned -

There is no fixed recycling location where users can drop electronics and if there is they are not listed on google.
Recycling drives are held in specific locations where people can drop their old electronics.
The electronic items are then sorted and taken to a big facility for recycling.

Analysis/Problem Synthesis

Identifying Challenges

What we found from our collected data was that people were not aware of any recycling facilities and in general about recycling of electronics. They were also concerned about ethicality practiced during electronics recycling. Accessibility was also a major concern.

With our affinity diagram we sorted the interview and survey data into core challenges that people face.

Major Challenges

These were the major concerns based on their order of severity from high to low

Accessibility
Lack of Information
Awareness
Government policies
Laziness

Thematic Network

Thematic Network was chosen as the ideal diagram to express our qualitative data because it allowed us to visualize various data points into themes that connect into one specific goal that our solution aims to solve.

Thus, everyone in our group converted their interviews and observations into action-items. These items were then discussed to identify the following core themes from the user’s perspective.

Main Themes

Poor Electronic Recycling Literacy
Sub-Par Public Electronic Recycling Initiatives
Concerns Regarding Electronic Recycling
Accessibility Issues

Personas

These personas were created based on interviews and surveys. While these are fictional users, they represent an ideal target audience who would recycle. These helped us to remain focused throughout the brainstorming and ideation phase.

Design Direction

Areas of Interest

We conducted three sessions of brainstorming, two with our team and one with another team, just to get a bit of diversity and no recurring ideas. This also helped us get other peoples view on our previous ideas. We decided on the following three solutions:

1 An information section on where to recycle electronics

This design direction will allow us to address one of the key user requirements identified through our data analysis. Our sample showed that people did not know what and how to recycle. Thus, by creating an information section, we can provide the necessary information to get people started and engaged in electronic recycling.

2 A community platform to discuss E-waste (Future Scope)

We designed the community platform to be a thread-based discussion section for our users. With this, we not only aim to increase people’s awareness about electronic recycling but also generate discussion about other ways to reuse and adapt electronics through DIY methods, thus extending the life of an electronic and keeping it away from landfills.

3 A reward system to motivate and appreciate recycling efforts (Future Scope)

We found that the “feel good” feeling was a key motivating factor in people who recycled electronics. While we cannot forcibly generate that feeling, we can, through appreciation and competition, get people to recycle and hopefully lay the foundation for the “feel good” feeling to come up. Rewards such as gift cards or discounts are always a great way to entice someone to participate.

Storyboards

We created six scenarios which highlight the use of our product and conveyed them using storyboards, which would help us better visualize the final product.

Scenario 1

Users can get reward points for recycling that they can use to redeem gift cards or fuel points to fill up gas.

Scenario 2

If the user doesn’t want to recycle then he can simply reuse it, he can ask the community forum for suggestions on how to reuse old electronics.

Scenario 3

Users get rewarded for certain milestones or items that they recycle, this can lead to a sense of achievement that the user can then share on social media to motivate others to recycle as well.

Scenario 4

Certain users don’t know how and where to dispose or recycle old electronics, this feature lets you find the nearby recycling facility and helps users with recycling.

Scenario 5

Users can look up for recycling facilities and also see what electronics do they accept for recycling, it also has the contact info of the recycling facility in case user has some doubts.

Scenario 6

Users can use the community forum feature to spread awareness about recycling and also ask others about their opinions

Sketching & Wireframing

Sketches

We created rough sketches followed by wireframes to get a MVP design ready. Different page layouts were tried and we fixed upon the best suitable solution for our design direction.

Wireframes

I created a rough outline of all major screens of the application and labelled them before we started Hi-Fi design and prototyping.

Design System & Prototyping

Design System

We chose a color palette based on the electronics theme rather than sustainability as everything sustainable is green and we wanted it distinguish them from general recycling.

Color Palette

3571DE

D5E6FF

F2F8FF

D7FEEE

707070

2A2B2A

Typography

Heading 2

Gilroy Bold

35px

Body 1

Gilroy Medium

25px

Body 2

Gilroy Regular

20px

Screens

These are the screens we came up with to make a MVP and at the same time tackling our three main concerns that is awareness and accessibility and lack of information.

Landing Page

Users can enter a zip code to search nearby recycling centers.

(Keeping privacy in mind, we avoided the use of full address and location detection)

Search Results with Map View

Users are shown a list of nearby recycling centers based on zip code. They can use filters to get exactly what they are looking for.

Users can choose between two views that is a map view or grid view where they can just take a look at the available recycling centers.

Detailed Card View

Pins on the map can be clicked to get more information about the corresponding recycling center.

Recycling centers can register themselves to show up on search results.

Prototyping

We used XD to prototype our final design, the minimum viable product is presented below, it contains fewer screens and not all concepts that were highlighted in our brainstorming. Other ideas like rewards and discussion forums were reserved for future scope.

We created 50+ screens and connected them to create our prototype. Please checkout the working version of the prototype below!

Usability Testing and Results

We did usability testing including think-aloud sessions and cognitive walk-through with 6 participants which helped us identify the user-friendliness of our design and if there are any particular problems with the solution. Here's what users had issues with -

The type of icon used for displaying GPS coordinates

Request for city name to be used for search instead of zip code

Hover vs click of map button of a location

Overwhelming nature of the final information page

Needed more filters for searching like size and type of electronics

Larger search radius options

Challenges and Learning

This was a research based project where we spent majority of part analyzing the market and understand what keeps people from recycling old electronics.

We visited recycling locations and talked with the people there which helped us determine the current process for recycling electronics.

This was my first in-depth research project and helped me learn research methodologies like thematic network graphs and usability testing methodologies like think alouds and cognitive walk-through to determine usability of our solution.