DartGreen

Role: Research, UX, UI Design

DartGreen is a mobile app prototype that promotes and encourages the practice of recycling on our college campus. Studies have shown that a majority of college students in the US don’t recycle their waste items and many don’t know what items ought to be recycled.

In the spring of 2019 I partnered with the Sustainability Office at Dartmouth to create a solution to tackle this problem and encourage students at Dartmouth to recycle their items efficiently and conveniently.

 
 

Initial research

We looked at statistics provided by Recycle Across America that highlighted the urgency of bettering the recycling practices used by Americans today and we felt that college campuses are a great starting location for this process because of the educational and logistical resources available.

 

  • The U.S. recycles less than 22% of its discarded materials. When U.S. recycling levels reach 75% it will be the environmental and CO2 equivalent of “removing 55 million cars from U.S. roads each year”.

  • Americans throw away 2.5 million plastic bottles every hour. Recycling one ton of plastic bottles saves the equivalent energy usage of a two person household for one year.

  • Inconsistent labels on bins cause public confusion about recycling and have resulted in millions of tons of garbage being thrown in recycling bins.

Creating an educational platform that allowed students to recycle easily was just one step in the right direction, but we believed it was also important to bring the environmental crisis to the forefront of conversation on campus and would hopefully lead to further initiatives.

 

Initial design questions

I focused on three HMW (how might we?) statements when designing the solution.

 

  • How might we make the application educational?

  • How might we make the application more accessible?

  • How might we encourage repeated use of the app?

The app prototype was to be coupled with new sensor technology on “recycling ports” distributed all over campus that would record the recycling activities of students and collect data. The idea of the app was not only to increase recycling on campus but also increase education and awareness on the recycling process in general and how different materials are recycled. This would consequently encourage students to recycle more in their daily lives, even when they are off-campus.

 

User research

For the purposes of learning more about potential users and their preferences, we conducted interviews and handed out questionnaires that were filled out by more than 30 students. These students were from varied backgrounds and majors - but we made sure that there were at least some students with majors such as Earth Sciences or Environmental Sciences, who could give more nuanced insights.

 
 

The questionnaires asked students basic questions about recycling and how much students value recycling, as well as questions about college-specific initiatives. We also interviewed them about potential app features and gathered insights on recycling ports and how they can be made more accessible. The following data stood out the most:

 

  • Over 70% of students thought that recycling rates in the U.S. are much higher than they actually are.

  • Many students were not aware what exactly was recyclable on campus and where it can be recycled.

  • When told about new recycling ports, students felt knowing exactly where on campus these were located would make it easier for them to take part in this initiative.

  • A couple of students added that including social aspects to the app (social media, user communication etc.) would make students want to use the app more.

 

After interacting with students, we realised that our users are busy college students with tight schedules, so it was clear that we had to create an experience that was intuitive and convenient. We looked at other campus facilities (such as GreenPrint, which are campus-wide printers located at multiple locations on campus) and how accessible it is for students to access them.

 
 

Creating a recycling app

Initial brainstorming and ideation tackled educational and social aspects, as well as accessibility.

 
 
 
 

We decided to name the app DartGreen. Users would have social profiles and through a menu they could manage their history and saved articles. The home page would consist of a list of new articles on the web about climate change, environmental awareness and recycling that users could save or share with others.

 

The app would have information about recyclable materials, including Dartmouth specific items (bottles, food containers etc). The information would be constantly updated to accommodate new items on campus.

 

An interactive map of the Dartmouth campus showing all the locations of recycling ports, including user location, with integration with geolocation tools (such as Google Maps) to make navigation even easier.

 

The app would have some sort of a point system where students could earn points by doing certain activities (like recycling/sharing educational articles with others) and participate in leaderboards.

 
 

Bringing it to life

User flows and initial wireframes got positive feedback, especially the social features and interactive maps. I created high fidelity screens on Figma to create the prototype.

 
 
 
 
 

Styling

The app was designed with colours that signified a green initiative and different shades of the colour green were used for that. For fonts, we decided to go with sans-serif fonts like Montserrat and Bangla Sangam for clean and clear readability and friendly typography. Icons were created with the intention of being simple, explanatory and prominent.

 
 
 
 
 

Reflections

I had a really great time working on this project because this was my first real UX project that was going to have actual users. I also learned a lot about the need for recycling during the research for this app and would urge anyone reading this page to do as much as possible to recycle their materials.

The Sustainability Office was pleased with the design and they released the beta after a few months of my work. I hope DartGreen can show the importance of the design process, especially phases regarding user research and ideation, because in a way the users dictate how different app features come about and designers must implement feedback to ensure a good user experience.