A sustainability campaign with an iOS application that encourage people to reuse one shopping bag to protect the environment.
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Have you ever grabbed a bunch of plastic produce bags and put fruits and vegetables in them?
Have you ever gone home with a lot of plastic bags of groceries?
Our initial challenge is "How to solve the environmental problem of plastic bags in grocery stores?"
We found that there are many alternatives currently, which might be a solution to this environmental problem.
🤔️ But are paper bags really an environmentally friendly alternative to plastic? ♻️
The conclusion is "It's less about what material you use for your carrying needs and much more about how much you use it." The Environment Agency (EA) found that in order for a paper bag to have a global warming potential impact less than a single-use carrier bag, it would have to be reused 3 times. You know what that means? If you’re using a paper bag in a shop and you recycle it after just one use — it’s less environmentally friendly than a single-use plastic bag. If you use a bag for life, you’d have to use it 4 times. How about a cotton bag? 131 times! [1]
OVERVIEW
PROBLEM
Here we were curious about whether people reuse their shopping bags in daily life. We administered 52 questionnaires and learned that 74.1% of people usually reuse paper/plastic bags only once and 57.1% of people feel it not easy to remember to bring their own reusable bags to grocery stores. It indicated people's awareness of reusing bags for enough times is not much high, which is our problem to be solved.
OVERVIEW
SOLUTION
MuMu is a convenient, easy-to-use and environmentally friendly sustainability campaign, which encourages people to reuse the same shopping bag to protect the environment and get shopping rewards at the same time, in order to form a habit of environmental protection. This sustainability campaign is ran by a union of various grocery companies to reduce shopping carrier pollution. The more you use the same shopping bags, the more contribution you devote to the environment, and the more you will save.
Through the reusable model and the reward system, MuMu benefits both of our stakeholders, customers and grocery stores. Customers can get shopping discounts and save money, as well as form a habit of environmental protection. As for grocery stores, MuMu will help them establish an environmentally friendly image and enhance customers' brand awareness, thus increasing the sales.
My Role
UX Designer
Duration
1 month (Aug 2020 - Sep 2020)
Team Members
Lu Wei
Wenjing Zhang (UX Researcher)
Shijie Luo (UX Researcher)
Tools
Figma / Adobe Illustrator /
Adobe Photoshop
OVERVIEW
PROCESS
Curious about how we got the solution? We used Double Diamond in our design process, which helped us to focus on key points from research and execute iterative design based on user feedback.
How to join MuMu
OVERVIEW
THE SOLUTION
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UNDERSTAND THE PROBLEM
Current Solutions - Focus Only on Bags
We first explored whether the material could change the environmental value of a bag and make it more environmentally friendly alternatives to plastic. Various types of retail bags are adopted by different grocery stores to replace single-use plastic bags. However, the economic cost of retail bags does not only occurs in the production process, but also in the landfill phase, which means it increases throughout their whole life circle. From this perspective, a single-use plastic bag is the most environmentally friendly option, due to its lowest economic cost compared to other types of bags. [2] Therefore, the environmental problem cannot be simply solved by retail bags of a different material.
Current Solutions - Focus on System
During our secondary research, we found that IDEO had done the research on the same topic. However, instead of focusing only on different types of retail bags, IDEO shifted its focus on system thinking and conceived future scenarios, which gave us a lot of inspiration. IDEO defines the challenge as "How might we transport goods from retailer to destination in a way that is compatible with diverse retail systems, delivers ease and convenience for customers, and reduces environmental impact?" And currently, most companies' innovation relying on 3 directions: Innovative material, Reusable models and Bagless solutions.
We chose the reusable models, since the Environment Agency (EA) found that it is less about what material people use for carrying needs and much more about how much they use it [1]. In addition, among these three directions, reusable models are the most feasible, with the lowest implementation cost, and closest to near feature scenarios.
Our ultimate design goal is to deliver convenience, ease and environmental friendliness for customers, as IDEO suggests, through reusable models, in order to help people to form the habit of reusing shopping bags.
UNDERSTAND THE USER
Interviews & Questionnaires
We interviewed 4 people who always go to grocery stores and administered 52 questionnaires, in order to learn more about people’s thoughts and behavior while shopping.
Here are our key findings:
1. Among all interviewees, 2 people said they were willing to protect the environment, but did not know how to do that. They need more environmental education and instructions. 1 person said he did not know much about the meaning of protecting the environment, lacking of the motivation to do so.
2. Around 60% of people do not know it takes decades for plastic bags to be decomposed, which indicates people's awareness of environmental protection should be further enhanced.
3. Older people always bring paper coupons and paper shopping lists to grocery stores, while young people prefer to use digital coupons and direct cash back.
4. Young people are willing to try something new and cool, like a new kind of rewards to save money, although their busy daily life did not allow them to spend too much time on new things.
5. Nearly half of the people did not bring their own reusable shopping bags to grocery stores due to their poor memory.
Target Users' Needs & Pain Points
Then we concluded 2 personas as our target users according to the findings from interviews and questionnaires. Our 2 target groups are people who care about saving money and people who care about sustainability.
UNDERSTAND THE COMPETITOR
COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
We concluded the incentives for our target users as Savings + Value + Convenience. Then we researched how current grocery stores incentivize their customers, including CVS Health, Target and Walmart, etc [3].
What we found was that grocery stores always have loyalty programs, which are a marketing strategy designed to encourage customers to continue to shop at or use the services of a business associated with the program. For grocery stores, the loyalty programs can help increase sales and customers' brand awareness, while for customers, the loyalty programs can help reduce grocery bills. We used the affinity mapping to extract some key features of loyalty programs that we could apply to our design as our reward system.
Key Features of Loyalty Program
SOLUTION
IDEATION
We designed Mumu, a sustainability system with the core of a mobile app and other companion elements including customers, MuMu bag and a union of various grocery stores (Closed Loop Partners: CVS Health, Target and Walmart, etc. [3])
MuMu encourages people to reuse one shopping bag to protect the environment and get shopping rewards at the same time, in order to form a habit of environmental protection. The more you use the same shopping bags, the more contribution you devote to the environment, and the more you will save.
Since the mobile app connects the entire sustainability system, we focused on the user experience design of the app as our next steps.
SOLUTION
DESIGN GOAL
We defined the primary goal and secondary goal according to target users' needs and pain points and key features of current loyalty programs, and prioritized the primary goal as the minimum requirement for a MVP.
SOLUTION
CORE FUNCTIONALITY
DESIGN
WIREFRAMES
EVALUATION
MEASURING SUCCESS
We did a usability test on 5 people with a lot of shopping experience, and 2 of them have the experience of using coupons. At the same time, we asked them to fill out a questionnaire after finishing test tasks, in order to quantitively measure the success of the design. The metrics include the degree of convenience, ease and environmental friendliness. Here are the results:
EVALUATION
USER FEEDBACK
Energy Page:
1. Users were confused with the total energy in Home page and the level info in Rewards page, which are similar.
2. Users did not want to make a choice among similar rewards and felt confused with the difference among all rewards.
3. Some users hoped that the form of donation and rewards could be more convenient, without too many troublesome steps to use these functions and redeem rewards.
2. Users did not want to make a choice among similar rewards and felt confused with the difference among all rewards.
3. Some users hoped that the form of donation and rewards could be more convenient, without too many troublesome steps to use these functions and redeem rewards.
Shopping List Page:
1. Users felt it inconvenient to delete a shopping list, especially when they need to use a new shopping list every week.
2. Users thought the whole processes were too troublesome, too many steps to finish writing a shopping list.
2. Users thought the whole processes were too troublesome, too many steps to finish writing a shopping list.
DESIGN
REFINED INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
According to the primary goal, secondary goal and user feedback, we re-drew the site map of the mobile app to clarify the framework of the entire app. This is to ensure that all components are placed where users expect them, while making the experience more smooth.
DESIGN
REFINED USER FLOW
We refined the user flow for Karen. The purpose of constructing the user flow is to determine the pages and operation steps that our target user Karen goes through in order to achieve her respective expected goals based on the user feedback. This allowed us to focus not only on the operation steps of her, but also on the specific functionality when designing the interfaces to provide a better shopping experience.
DESIGN SYSTEM
MOOD BOARD & LEGIBILITY TEST
ITERATION
ENERGY PAGE
1. Redesigned the info architecture and combine similar functionality (energy & level info) together in Energy page.
2. Redesigned the reward system: unlock a certain number of rewards every week, reducing the available options. Designed detailed rewards and made information more clear.
3. Unlocking a certain number of rewards also helped to add convenience for donation and redeeming rewards.
2. Redesigned the reward system: unlock a certain number of rewards every week, reducing the available options. Designed detailed rewards and made information more clear.
3. Unlocking a certain number of rewards also helped to add convenience for donation and redeeming rewards.
ITERATION
SHOPPING LIST PAGE
1. Redesigned the info architecture of a shopping list card. Deleted less important info and made the delete function more noticeable.
2. Simplified the whole processes by reducing the Shopping list page to only one page, without cumbersome restrictions, which provides users with maximum freedom to edit the shopping list.
2. Simplified the whole processes by reducing the Shopping list page to only one page, without cumbersome restrictions, which provides users with maximum freedom to edit the shopping list.
ITERATION
ACCOUNT PAGE
OTHER USER INTERFACES
FUTURE STEPS
1. Consider more edge cases
There might be some edge cases when people add a new MuMu bag, such as QR code scan failure, QR code scan timeout, repeated addition, input ID error, etc. Adding a new MuMu bag is an indispensable step to use our sustainability system, thus we should consider more edge cases to optimize the user experience of this step.
2. Achieve the secondary goal
We only achieved our primary goal and part of our secondary goal currently, which are encouraging people to reuse bags and facilitating the shopping experience. However, increasing people's environmental awareness is also our secondary goal. Therefore, we will take this goal as our overall design goal in the next step.
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Reference
[1] Kitiara, P. (2019, June 28). Are Paper Bags Really an Environmentally Friendly Alternative to Plastic? Retrieved from https://medium.com/@kitiara.pascoe/are-paper-bags-really-an-environmentally-friendly-alternative-to-plastic-26fe51d79986
[2] OpenIDEO. (2020). A New Way Home. Retrieved from https://www.closedlooppartners.com/beyond-the-bag/a-new-way-home/
[3] Closed Loop Partners. (2020, July 20). Closed Loop Partners Launches Groundbreaking Consortium with CVS Health, Target and Walmart to Reinvent the Plastic Retail Bag. Retrieved from https://www.closedlooppartners.com/closed-loop-partners-launches-groundbreaking-consortium-with-cvs-health-target-and-walmart-to-reinvent-the-plastic-retail-bag/
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