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Recycle Jungle

- A game to increase campus recycling

March -April, 2014

Have you ever wanted to recycle an item but couldn't find a recycling bin nearby? Recycle Jungle is a mobile app that guides you to the nearest recycling bin by using elegant augmented reality technology.

 

By using Recycle Jungle, you get the reward to grow plants or animals you like. You may even get to grow your own zoo or garden if you recycle a lot!

 

This is a course project of Interaction Design Studio at Carnegie Mellon University.

Teammates: Anna Molosky & Kelly Rivers

My Roles: Interaction Designer | UX Designer | Illustrator

Contributions: Interaction design| UX design | Illustration

Process: Literature Review | Interview | Wireframe | Prototype

Storyboard & Persona

We interviewed 6 college students of varying ages and backgrounds to learn about their recycling habits. We found that they all thought recycling was important because it can save the environment.

 

However, the most interesting thing we learned was that students did not recycle when it wasn't convenient, or when they couldn't see any recycling bin nearby. 

Research & Key Findings

An arrow with distance will direct you to the bin.

Enter the type of item you want to recycle and Recycle Jungle will show you the nearest recycling bin.

Choose what you want to do now... Search for a recycling bin or view your achievement.

I won't bother with searching if the recycling bin and trash can aren't next to each other

I don't have a bin ( for bottles ) in my office, and other recycling bins are never nearby.

Students want to recycle, but will not go out of their way

Based on our research, we used storyboard to illustrate the most common scenario that happens in college students daily life in which students would need Recycle Jungle. We also created a persona to characterize our target users. 

Increase campus recycling by playing a game.

Search or Achievement

Enter Recycling Item

Follow Guidance

You find the recycling bin!

Congratulations!

Plastic water bottle

Plastic water bottle

Enter item type here

Aspen is working in the university library with her friend.

She just finished a bottle of soda.

She cannot see any recycling bins nearby, but doesn't want to throw the bottle away.

According to our research, we also noticed that the manager of the system will want a way to analyze the success of the system. For this purpose, We designed a dashboard to allow the manager of the system to track the progress of the users' recycling practice. 

Dashboard & Persona

In order to help the team work together smoothly and make future development easier, we created technical and design specification to tell examples of how the design of the Recycle Jungle should be executed.     

Technical & Design Specification

We used interface flow diagram to model the user interactions and navigation flow of this app. This also enable us to gain a high level overview of the user interface of the app. Below are two different versions of the navigation flow diagram. 

Navigation Flow

We explored various patterns during the design of the logo. Below are some of them. The right one was one of the splash screen design options. 

Logo Exploration

We plan to implement the "getting rewards for your plants and animals" idea as one of the main features of Recycle Jungle. Below are part of the illustrations we plan to use in the future.  

Next Steps

Raise us
in the future!

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