Design Challenge
"Design an inclusive third-party mobile app that facilitates and helps retailers educate, encourage, measure, and/or track recycling in their local communities."
RecycleNook
My team participated in Adobe XD's College + Target Creative Jam and won 2nd place. We created RecycleNook, an Animal Crossing-themed recycling app that creates an enjoyable, lighthearted experience to reduce confusion around sorting recyclables and motivate recycling habits.
UX/UI Design, Mobile Design, Conceptualization
Shirley T.
Adobe XD
5 days (Aug 2021)
Personal Team
Framing the problem
Global consumerism and capitalism has greatly impacted how we interact with and live in our environment on the individual level.
We easily indulge in materialism for a temporary bliss of enjoyment, while not realizing the lasting effects of our actions, nor does everyone feel the social responsibility or accountability to follow sustainable practices.
What are the key issues?
- Businesses feed the excessive consumerist cycle and should play a bigger role in sharing environmental responsibility.
- Lack of standardized and universal recycling programs or efforts makes it more difficult to enforce long-term change in recycling habits and behaviors.
How might we transform local retail stores into centralized recycling hubs that encourage better disposal habits?
- We blindly discard items in any available bin for our own convenience instead of placing it in the proper bin.
- Practice of “wish-cycling”: recycling items that cannot actually be recycled due to lack of knowledge or unfamiliarity with recycling symbols and materials.
How might we reduce the carelessness and confusion around sorting recyclable and non-recyclable items?
Why Animal Crossing?
Our app's goal:
Craft a warm, welcoming, nature-like atmosphere that encourages sustainable action and learning in a wholesome, stress-free manner.
Perfect concept!
Animal Crossing's idyllic, escapist, friendly vibes and emphasis on biodiversity and the natural world perfectly reflected our vision and goal.
Crafting the concept
RecycleNook integrates the Animal Crossing game experience - its visual design, color palette, characters - to create a niche recycling experience within and outside the app.
An integral part of our idea is RFID kiosk stations, inspired by Target's recycling bins and Uniqlo's self-checkout experience.
Recyclables have different rules and numbers, which can be confusing. These kiosks help the sorting process by scanning the item's RFID tag (smart barcode) to quickly inform users which recycling bin to use.
For recycling deserts (regions that have less investment in recycling infrastructures), retail stores can become central local locations for recycling.
RecycleNook Style Guide
We drew visual UI inspiration from two games, Animal Crossing and Pocket Camp, for the bubbles, typography, colors, and icons.
Hi-Fi Prototype
View prototype
Nook Phone Menu
Emulates the in-game Nook Phone menu.
Profile: recycling history, breakdown of materials recycled.
Achievements: tracks recycling progress and rewards badges for completed goals.
Redeem Points for Animal Crossing prizes at an affiliated store.
Map of stations
RecycleNook's recycling stations are located at participating local retail stores.
Stations are named after different ACNH characters who act as the station’s “mascot”.
Users can go to these stores to recycle items and redeem points.
Learn
Shows educational resources for users to learn more about recycling.
Find daily recycling facts, tips, and articles on recycling topics here.
Social Community
RecycleNook has a friendly competition model to incentivize recycling.
Rankings: based on # of items recycled weekly, monthly, or all-time by an individual, entire team, or at a RecycleNook station.
1 recycled item = 100 points.
Kiosk Scanner
Each recycling station has multiple kiosk machines that accept different materials.
This tutorial explains how to use the kiosk’s RFID system; users can also scan items with their phones.
Reflection
With RecycleNook, we aimed to transform individual daily recycling habits and increase business involvement, as both are necessary to achieving a long-term sustainable future. Through, RecycleNook exists in idealized conditions:
-
All manufactured items have RFID tags.
This is unrealistic - there are many logistics to consider, like standardizing manufacturing practices in the plastics and recycling industries. -
Big corporations (Target, Apple) host stations for free.
Industry players take responsibility without expecting a return profit. However, stakeholders have business needs, so we must examine how profitability and sustainability can co-exist.
Still, we won 2nd place!
RecycleNook became our little passion project, where we poured so much fun, love, and care into it. I want to thank Shirley for sticking with me the whole time and creating something so special together :D
