THE EXCESSIVE USE OF PLASTIC IN THE CAMPUS​​​​​​​

The project addresses the problem of the ever increasing consumption of plastic in the university campus. How could we offer student new services that enable to reduce the consumption of plastic? Are there solutions which can make the campus plastic free? 

The challenge was to frame the problem, find opportunities and finally offer a possible solution in terms of new services that could be offered in the campus.

The team followed an approach similar the the one of the double diamond. In a first phase, the general topic of plastic consumption was explored and a reserach about the topic made the team aware of different perspective on the problem and an area of design opportunities has been spotted. The team decided a direction, thus a positioning of the service among different cases studies that have been analysed. Finally, a service concept was developed and the user experience of the service was studied.

Battle-storming was used as a preliminary tool to extract and organize the group’s preexisting knowledge about the topic “plastic free campus". The team, composed by 6 designers, was divided in 2 parts. Half of the group brainstormed problems, the other half brainstormed existing or potential solutions to the problems. At the end, the ideas were organized and categorized into macro topics. 

Case studies were used to understand the emerging problems around “plastic free campus” that would be relevant to our project. The selected case studies were specific, contextual, and complex. They informed the team about the opinions and practices of various communities and they were crucial towards understanding how and why others were trying to solve similar problems.

3 “How may we” questions emerged and an the team ran a quick brainstorming session to narrow down to one final question to focus on.  Different potential solutions and project directions were analyzed in order to understand which questions had the greatest potential.

All of the case studies were plotted on a matrix style positioning map. Multiple iterations were taken to define the axes. Different possible service concepts were put onto the map to understand whether they were alligned or not with any existing trends. At the same time, the positioning map was useful to spot empty opportunity areas. 

Right after the positioning map, the embrional service concept has been better defined and so "Plastic drop" was born. The service envisioned encourages those who eat lunch away from home to use reusable containers by incentivizing the use of personal containers or providing convenient service-owned containers. Plasticdrop is a service that connects cafeterias and restaurants with users to allow them to get take-away food in reusable containers. The service relies on food providers' participation. Food providers agree upon offering a discounted price to users in exchange for the minimized use of plastic resources on behalf of the food provider (cutlery, packaging, bottles, ...). Users sign up on a mobile App and interact with stationary kiosks in order to obtain and return take-away containers. They then bring these containers to restaurants to be filled.

To get the data to create the personas, in person and online surveys were conducted. The outputs were then analyzed and organized into archetypes.

Journey maps were defined for each of the user personas. From this exploration some areas of potential problems for the service were highlighted, so the service has been redefined and some functionalities were added.

Finally, the user interface of the app was prototyped and the project was shown to a jury through a desktop walkthrough and the working prototype of the app.