Turtle Savior

Turtle Savior is a student project that was created to provide an easy and quick solution targeted at users who are on the lookout for a digital concept for their recycling needs.

The project is currently at a low-fid stage but will be developed after conducting more usability testing and user research to start implementing the hi-fid solution.

Overview: Sustainability is a crucial topic in this day and time, the only time the world understood the magnitude of humans' daily habits on the environment was during the pandemic; now that we’re back to this routine; it feels like we have almost forgotten that the ozone layer was closed during our time in quarantine.

Timeframe: Two weeks.

Persona & problem statement: Sarah, a 26-year-old graphic designer is looking for a solution that will keep her active in terms of making contributions to recycling. She needs a way to stay informed on recycling initiatives and ways to participate so she can donate and recycle regularly.

Solution: A digital solution that will be available by the end of the 3rd quarter to the public to make recycling easy and accessible to everyone. 

I recruited 7 students who were available at the BIBF campus to conduct my research interviews, these interviews will help me further understand the users' daily recycling habits and the necessities they don’t have access to to make it easier for them to recycle. 

The synthesis we conducted through affinity mapping was an eye-opener to issues we weren’t aware of. Users who are actively looking to recycle in Bahrain have a couple of frustrations like the lack of government communication on the initiatives and access to recycling bins which are only available in some areas in Bahrain.

We first came up with a flow that will help Sarah choose between finding recycling bins by following the turtles on the map or recycling items by request; the process then gets into more detailed specifications if she chooses to recycle her items by request where she will set her preference in terms of what to recycle and by season if she’s mainly recycling clothes. The wire flows helped me understand how complex and misleading the turtle map action button could look. Therefore, we created wireframes with a more direct and simple approach.

The homepage has three action buttons, to find recycling bins that will directly take her to Google Maps, or request a home pick-up service and set a recycling reminder based on the date and time most convenient for her.

The home pick-up service option will give her the choice of recycling different items, from textiles to plastic and paper. Our findings on Sarah's recycling habits have led us to seasonal recycling; a feature that will help both Sarah and recycling companies sort the donated clothing by season.

I conducted the usability testing at the BIBF campus with 5 different individuals. The test tasks were as follows:

Show me how you would find recycling bins in your area.

Show me how you would schedule a home pick-up request.

Show me how you would set a reminder and navigate back to the home page.

My findings from the usability testing were as follows:

The users were not able to find the return button.

The users were not able to notice the add reminder button.

The users were able to schedule a home pick-up request within 20 seconds.

We updated our designs with a few simple changes based on our previous findings from the usability test, such as adding the word back next to the back button arrow and defining the lines of the add reminder box.