ELECTRONIC WASTE
A UX CASE STUDY
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problem
While most people knows about regular recycling and the benefits to that, there is a disconnect when it comes to electronics recycling. Which results in people having a lot of devices collecting dust until they're thrown away - and might up on a landfill where they are polluting the environment.
challenge
How might we motivate people to donate or recycle their used electronics?
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Provide a solution for multiple devices
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Educate people about resources
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Identify a convenient and simple way to donate/recycle/sell
my role
This was a team effort, and we spent a lot of time on research. But we're I took the reins was in our visual design; creating icons, color scheme and typefaces.
deliverables
Competitive analysis
Surveys
Personas
Interviews
User Story Map
Low fidelity wireframes
High fidelity prototypes
Usability testing
50
Survey Responses
8
Interviews
2
Personas
100%
Steam ahead
Competitive Analysis
At the beginning of our research we spent a lot of time analyzing our competitors
We realized that we could stand out because the competitors focus more on selling and working with only one device at a time, or they focus more on education and finding recycling locations. We also found that there was a lot of work the user had to do themselves.
Opportunities
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Add multiple devices
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Skip the educational route, there is plenty out there
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Simplify the donation/recycling/selling process
Surveys &Interviews
We sent out a survey via Google Forms where we received around 50 responses and conducted 8 interviews.
Key Insight on why people were not recycling their electronics
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Data security
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Inconvenience
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Nostalgia
Personas
Based on our research we set up two personas. We referred to them throughout the entire product development process.
After looking through the answers in our survey we realized that there were two types of personas that emerged; one that was more focused on data security, and the other that kept their devices because of nostalgic reasons.
Pain Points
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Inconvenience
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Data security
Goals/Motivations
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Wants to set a good example
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Wants to declutter
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Less wasteful
User Story Map / Feature Map
To understand how customers find and interact with the service we created a User Story Map.
We identified that we would
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Help sort one or many devices into donate, recycle, and selling categories
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Prepare devices by backing up data and resetting the devices
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Walking users through the steps for donating, recycling, and selling their devices
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Providing a simple way to get the devices to the right place
We decided on creating features that would
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Help users find the value of their devices
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Have an easy sorting process
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Walkthrough the user to back up data and reset their devices so they are comfortable giving their device away
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Provide info about recycling
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Offer trade-in for money or for another used device
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Let the user choose a charity to donate their device
29
Iterations
59
Screens
150
Cups of coffee
Sketches
We started the design process with sketches
Our sketches helped us to easily iterate through a few different design options swiftly.
My group was on the same page with how the website would look, so we found ourselves move quickly through this process to start working on the design in Sketch.
At the beginning of our design process, we created wireframes for testing purposes.
This was very useful to get our initial ideas out to start working on the prototype and the usability test. It was really challenging to keep the design basic and low fidelity, but crucial so we knew that the usability of the product was good.
Low fidelity wireframes
Usability Testing
Before launching the product, we did a testing round in order to reveal possible usability problems.
We conducted the usability tests both remotely, unmoderated, and in person. The goal for the usability test was to validate that the flow was clear and that the user had no issues navigating through all of the different routes.
We asked our testers to complete the following tasks
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Go through donation, recycling, selling
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Find FAQ, about and user account
Feedback from our testers
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Too many instructions and reading
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Secure data had a lot of steps in the middle of the flow
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Video not clickable on home page
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No confirmation page for the recycling process
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Positive feedback about the encouragement we had along the way
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Really liked the reward system in place, found it motivating
The following changes were made after we received the feedback
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Shortened text, made it more visual
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Consolidated the “secure your data” steps to one page, also made it optional
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Made the video clickable on the home page
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Added a confirmation page for recycling
Brand guide
As a first part of the UI design process, I presented a couple of different visual guides to the group, and this is what we decided on.
We decided on slightly larger and fun icons to create a more personable and connected feel, for what can be a dreaded process.
We chose this color scheme with our key findings in mind. Blue represents trust, and the green represents nature/eco friendly.
Once we tested out all usability mistakes, we started designing the final screens in Sketch.
This was for me personally the most fun part of the project, since we now had all the data and resources to finalize the product - now we could focus on the visual parts of the design.
I feel like what makes our product stand out is that we made something that is considered such an inconvenient and painful process to be more fun and easy - while making people feel good because they are helping the environment and maybe even a charity. And that fills me with pride when looking back.
UI Design
Screens
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Home page
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Sorting page
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Charity page
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Security / Factory reset
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Order details
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FAQ
Tools used
During the design process we used Sketch for both low-fidelity and high-fidelity wireframes and Invision for our prototypes. We used Miro for our User Story Mapping and feature map and Lookback for our remote usability testing.
What I learned
I learned that it is really hard to motivate people to do something unless it is very convenient and maybe accompanied with an incentive.
At times I felt discouraged due to that because that was the whole idea of our product - to encourage and motivate people just for the sake of doing good.
However, we found that donating to charities can be a pretty decent incentive for many.
Throughout this project I learned that testing the small things, like the progress bar we had in the beginning, can have a huge impact on the whole outcome of the product. That progress bar was probably one of our biggest challenges, and we found that removing it until we could figure out a better option was for the best.
But I have not given up on it quite yet - we just need to do some more testing to validate its existence, since a few of our testers wanted to be able to track their progress in one way or another. To be continued!