Takeout Waste Minimised
How might we incentivise customers and restaurateurs to minimise food packaging plastic waste and creating delightful experience for recycled and up-cycled products
My Role
Timeline
Impact
I was responsible for brainstorming, research, ideation, information architecture, user flows, visual design, interaction design and prototype.
2 Months
Conceptualised a system to reduce and recycle plastic waste within an existing ecosystem
The Overview
Food delivery startups have resulted in the contribution of a major amount of plastic waste in the past few years. While a lot of eateries are increasingly using biodegradable packaging, a fair amount are still into heavy usage of plastic packaging. How can we incentivise them for the better? How do we get this space to not only replace materials of packaging, but also add to the betterment of the environment or economy?
The Ask
We were asked to design an intervention that would help reduce plastic waste caused by food deliveries. How might we incentivise customers and restaurateurs to minimise plastic waste. As alternative eco friendly materials turn out to be expensive, we had to think realistically as to how to solve this problem.
Introducing : Orbit
Orbit is a platform by Swiggy ( online food ordering and delivery platform from India) which allows users to purchase upscaled products made by recycling food packaging materials. Users are also able to sell the plastic waste they generate in exchange for points. These points can be redeemed in store against a product as a discount.
Orbit Logo motion graphics
How does it Work?
Just the way you order food online, similarly, through Orbit, you can sell off your plastic waste to Orbit. Based on the quantity of the items, you will get reward points which you can accumulate then redeem it in Orbit store. You can then shop on a discount.
What happens on Orbit's end is, after we collect the plastic waste from you, we would clean and sanitise the plastics and shred them down to small bits. Under high temperature and pressure, it forms a mosaic textured composite material which is as hard and durable as wood. It has multiple applications.
With this material, our in house product designers, design the packaging for restaurants and design upscaled products for our store.
Disposal
Use disposal to give away food delivery and other plastic waste to our Pick up partners. The more you dispose the more you earn! You can also compete with your friends and challenge them to beat your points record!
Notifications
Automation is key to convenience. Instead of adding individual items to Disposal, we can automate the process by integrating order placement with Swiggy.
Every time you order, the system recognizes the packaging used for the food item and sends you a notification for disposal, thereby simplifying your actions.
Store
Use Store to redeem your points and purchase eco friendly and green products designed just for you. We have also curated brands which promote environment friendly products and aim to reduce their carbon footprint.
*psst* click on cart for a fun animation
Visual Design
Swiggy uses colours Orange and White as their primary colours. As the mission of Orbit is complementary to the business of Swiggy, I wanted to use colours complementary to Orange which is Blue. Keeping in mind the eco mission of Orbit, Green was chosen as the secondary colour which is also analogous to Blue. As Orbit is a part of Swiggy, I did not want to drift away from their visual and aesthetic choice, which makes use of bold typography and clean layouts.
Colours
Typography
SF Pro Display is the font that has been used throughout the application. The font is legible from a distance and is a clean sans serif font which enhances the visual design of the application.
Design Process
Research
We compiled our Secondary and Primary research and grouped them using PACT framework. The framework helps designers understand contexts from how a technology should be improved and in what way, at large. A key way to understand a user and their problem is to observe them while using technology.
Observing the users in the parts of this framework will give a distinct value and an advantage in creating a meaningful and usable application.
Target Audience
Majority of the demographics would be young working professionals, students and or middle aged home makers who are familiar with online shopping platforms and find delight in discounts and being environment friendly.
18 - 45 year old
Regularly use their mobile devices
Students, Bachelors/Bachelorettes, Homemakers
Familiar with ordering via apps
User Persona
Service Design
To realise the product, we had to first create a service to avoid setting unrealistic expectations. We had to then identify all the stakeholders in the system. So we created an ecosystem that would connect all the players and help visualise the service.
Service Blueprint helps you understand all the processes, functions and activities that take place within a service. Having a strong blueprint is the first step to implement a service idea or business model.
Service Blueprint
Information Architecture
One of the biggest reasons I got stuck in my design process was that I was trying to do too many things at once in order to save time. I had not created an information architecture to streamline my content. Once I knew what content I had to create, the process became a lot simpler.
User Flows
Ideation and Concept Generation
Once I had the relevant information regarding my problem, I started jotting down my thoughts, questions and ideas. I again resorted to WH questions to frame my thought process.
Brainstorming
Benefit Mapping
Low Fidelity Wireframes
Conclusion
I really enjoyed working on this project. I got exposed to multiple prototyping tools. I also got to focus on the interaction design of the product. Micro interactions were really fun to create making the prototype feel life like. I also tinkered around with motion graphics for the logo.
I think there are a lot of things that can be improved upon and further polished to craft better experiences. I would love to work on the onboarding experience. There is a gamification idea where you can compete with your friends to get maximum reward points which I would love to flesh out more. The cherry on top would be actually coding it and building the real thing. Although today, I am no where close to that but one day I believe I could get there.
I mean, hey, whatever it takes to save the environment right?
Take Aways
CLARITY AFFORDS FOCUS
A lack in focus leads to lack in progress. I was so eager to create, that I lost focus on the problem at hand. I jumped onto designing the product without having a structure to it. Once I had my information architecture ready, it was a smooth sailing from there forth. Things are charted out in your mind, but it is only temporary, when you put it onto paper, you can always refer to it.
CONVERSATIONS, NOT INTERVIEWS
Interviews can seem very formal. As designers, we are not out there to collect answers but to listen to stories. Stories are a powerful tool which encompasses strong emotion. These conversations also reveal a lot about their interactions and attitude which are critical insights when designing.
MISTAKES ARE GOOD
We are often afraid to fail. As I designer, failing has taught me what not to do. During this project, I wanted to do crazy interactions and animations. They turned out to be counter intuitive for people to use. This got pointed out during a co-design sprint. I failed, but I learnt. It also pulled me towards the right path and reorient my focus.