How UX Helped Increase Electronic Recycling
by Samuel Clare, Nic Hill, Kaitlan Rawson
The Problem
We were tasked with the challenge to help raise awareness of electronic recycling and donation. Electronic products are made from valuable resources and materials, including metals, plastics and glass, all of which require energy to mine and manufacture.
Recycling one million laptops saves the energy equal to the electricity used by more than 3,500 United States homes a year. For every million cell phones recycled, 35,000 pounds of copper, 772 pounds of silver, 75 pounds of gold and 33 pounds of palladium can be recovered.
Objectives
- Conduct interviews to discover the consumer pain points.
- Find common pain points.
- Design a solution based on data.
- Test design.
Research
As a team we create assumptions to help us identify the problems users had. We assumed that people currently do not donate because:
- It seems inconvenient, no gain, inaccessible, and hard to find.
- The process is too complicated. (sending back a box, etc.)
- People worry about privacy issues.
We assumed that people currently donate because:
- It makes them feel good to put products to good use, instead of throwing away.
- Helps them Clean up/ Declutter.
- Want to find value/purpose in letting family or friends use there unused electronics.
- Tech compensation, trade in old electronics to go towards a new device.
Survey data
The most common problems, were that people did not know where to recycle or donate and data security. Over 90% of the people we talked to, were unsure about donating devices because they were scared of information on their device being stolen.
Most people update electronics often. If the item was new enough, or in good condition most people preferred to sell it. Others found such little value in selling their old electronics they hold on to them, or give them to family.
Based on our interviews we found that most of our assumptions were accurate.
Persona and Scenario
Based on the data we received in our research we developed a persona. At age 28, Joe Sullivan is a successful business consultant in Salt Lake City, Utah. Joe enjoys playing video games and admits he spends a lot of money on personal computers and console equipment. He holds on to his equipment, but he has given several unused devices to his nephews. He is unsure what to do with the others.
Scenario
You have unused electronics. You want to declutter, but are unsure how to get rid of them. As you turn to the internet you find “www.electronicsforhope.com
This is were the user experance begins:
The user should be able to find answers to there questions and donate to a cause or recycle within minutes. They should feel confident that their device is being used for good, and that their information will be kept safe.
User Story Map
Based on the persona and scenario we put together a user story map to help us understand what the user needs to see and be able to do.
As a group we found a big stumbling block here, as all of us had different perceptions of how the user narrative would be. After trying to sort it out for a few hours we decided to take a break, and revisit the user persona. When we came back to the user persona and goal, we were able to figure out the narrative pretty fast. With a narrative down we started wireframing and creating mid-fidelity mockups.
Design
After testing several different iterations, we landed on our final design. Our final site was built with one main focus, a simple platform that would be able to aid local charities and school drives with electronic reuse. Our design was made to help create empathy and trust with our users. Color tones and images were selected to support that goal.
Landing Page Design
This page has been changed and redesigned several times. We wanted to create empty and show that we are different from our competitors.
Landing page
We added several main calls to action. Four different ways to donate your device from the landing page to meet all the needs of our users.
Recent Causes
We work with local charities to help host donation drives in the area. Our design was built to show you the most recent causes in your area, in the sub-text we included name of the charity, and how many more devices they needed.
Donate or Recycle?
Every donation button was designed to help you determine where or how your device could be used best. It would then help you find the location nearest you to drop off or print you off a shipping label.
Prototyping
Once we had our final design we created an invision prototype to test. Here is the prototype for you to see:
With our final design we used Silverback to record our testing. Silverback was helpful to make small minor details with our design, such as button color and locations to help the user flow a little easier and find what they needed fast.
We were very pleased to find out that our pages and questionar were easy to naviagate. Everyone we tested enjoyed the feel of the website.
Conclusion
Many challenges our team faced in designing this website are industry wide. Working through those challenges were very rewarding and needed to get the site where it is now. Among all the lessons learned, the most important for me was “design for the persona, the user” not yourself. Most challenges come when, we as UX designers, design for ourselves and not for the user.
Thank you for reading- Samuel Clare
