Denver Recycling
Conceptual Mobile Design
Overview
Team: Clara Smyth (PM/UX),
Colleen Keegan & James Boynton (UX/UI)
My Role: UX/UI Designer, UX Researcher
Tools: Apple iOS HIG,
Sketch, InVision
Timeline: 2 Weeks
Background
The Denver Trash and Recycling mobile app wanted to facilitate and compel customers to recycle trash. With that goal in mind, we made the following improvements to the existing mobile application:
Better identification of goods for both composting and recycling
Better understanding the impact of recycling and composting.
Item recognition to improved support to sort recyclable items
Provided personal accountability to track progress
The Goal
The goal for the redesign of this mobile app was to improve the usability of the app while adding features that would encourage and guide customers towards more recycling and composting.
Improve on the interaction and visual design
Educate people on recycling and composting
Provide people with motivation, incentives and accountability for improving recycling habits
Improve guidance and informational support for recycling and composting.
Research
Understanding the Recycling/Composting System in Denver
As it turns out, the Recycling/Composting system is complex and works differently in Denver than in other states. In order to really understand what the mobile application was lacking, we needed to do a little informational digging to find out how the system works and where customers may be dealing with pain points.
Denver Recycling customers mostly include residences. Most businesses, apartment complexes, townhomes & condominiums do not receive services.
Denver receives $33 per ton of recycled materials picked up from the city, over and above customer payments. In contrast, it costs $13 per ton to remove general trash.
There are numerous specifications/levels for both recycling and composting
Customers must pay more for composting services (includes biobags, special bins for maintaining conditions for composting)
Special pickups (appliances, electronics, furniture, hazardous waste, etc.) are picked up separately and have their own separate pickup programs; some of which are costly and confusing to schedule.
Interviews
Most customers do not use the composting service
Many customers (roughly 30% of customer base) are not aware of composting service.
Those customer who are aware do not agree with the service charges.
Customers have expressed confusion with regard to rules for sorting recyclables and compostables
Customer surveys have shown that recycling customers do not feel that other people are making an effort.
Ideate
Personas
We decided we needed to create these personas when we began to understand the complexity of the existing application and the many user paths an individual may go down. One persona is a novice to the recycling and composting processes, living a busy lifestyle and skeptical of the process. The other persona is an avid recycler and composter and would do anything to help the earth. Click either image below to enlarge.
Customer Journey Map
Because both Recycling and Composting are such big complex issues, we decided for an MVP that we needed to narrow our scope to working with one or the other, so we chose recycling. We created a journey map for one persona (the recycling customer) to understand the impact of our changes on the customer experience and to get stakeholders to understand these positive impacts. It was very helpful to foster empathy for the customer throughout the recycling process. This actually helped in isolating gaps in the customer experience and showed us where we needed to focus our efforts.
User Flow
We needed to simplify the number of steps users take in order to fulfill desired tasks. We decided to create user flows for our two personas to help aid the simplification process, making the users journey through the application more straightforward.
Recycler User Flow
Design
Wireframes - Our Process
Each team member designed wireframes for different user flows in parallel to save time. We focused on screens that provided customer guidance and support (Customer Service, Live Chat, FAQ, Photo Identification, Personal Progress Tracking, etc.) and screens that would compel users to recycle. We tested sketches to ensure that they supported the users’ recycle tasks and then iterated sketches to low fidelity mockups. We continued to test and validate mockups to higher fidelity until we had enough detail in the design to create prototypes. All screens were designed to match the “look and feel” or style of the existing app as well as compliance with the iOS Human Interface Guideline (HIG)
Medium Fidelity Mockups
We wanted to build off of the apps existing functionality and visual design. With regards to the UI, we kept in line with the basic layout, but made some changes with spacing, tweaking the color scheme, adding iconography and better functionality. We added a lot more helpful features to make the users experience easier and more enjoyable.
Photo Identification
Sorting through recyclables and compostables can be a little confusing and time consuming. We wanted to assist users in getting those answers quickly and hassle free through a photo capture feature. While the technology does exist to capture any item and identify it, we decided to keep it as identifying plastics by number for the MVP.
Help Center
The original help center had a couple of good functions such as the report a problem, but other help sections were harder to find. We wanted to give users a few more options such as Live Chat, FAQ and Contact Information all in one place. We also created a slightly different iteration of the original Report a Problem function. Reporting a problem was part of the original app, but we changed the information architecture as well as making the form more straightforward.
FAQ and Live Chat
FAQ gives users another route for finding answers to their questions quicker and easier than through calling the hotline. We used progressive disclosure to optimize the most popular topics of concern.
We added the option for live chat due to the high volume of reports and calls Denver Recycling gets, allowing users to get their questions answered faster and Denver Recycling to be able to handle higher client volumes.
Personal Metrics and Schedule
While more research and user feedback would be necessary optimize gathering metrics, we thought a good place to start would be by allowing users to see their progress and how much of an impact they have made as well as how much improvement the city of Denver has made.
We wanted to improve the schedule, as the information was a little congested. We also wanted to give users the option to schedule push notifications to remind them of pickups.
Location Services
The original mobile application had this functionality, but did not give customers the information they needed if they were not in range of services. We wanted to add additional information for all users, in range of services or not, as well as kudos for those who apply to recycling services.
Education and Partnerships
We really wanted to dig into what might motivate residents to recycle more.
Validate
Due to the short timeframe of the project, we were not able to perform routine usability testing. If we were able, we would have liked to perform A/B Testing on our last iterations of the mobile application with at least 8 subjects. In the time alotted, we decided to focus on creating more features and focusing in the places that would be most useful to them by suggesting more viable solutions.
Next Steps
The following is a list of recommendations we made to support customers in their recycling efforts.
Conduct research with customers on motivational incentives for recycling
Design additional functionality that would compel and support customers in their recycling efforts
Manage profile data/sponsorship opportunities aligned with government regulations
Recycling symbol vs. Amazon identification of photo identification