Hey Neighbor! is a concept proposed to the city of Manchester, as a way to combat the city’s persistent litter problem. Its a social network with a neighborhood focus, that serves as a medium to address a variety of community needs. While these include neighborhood clean-up, Hey Neighbor!’s broader appeal reaches a larger swath of the community, than a solution narrowly focused on litter reduction which would mainly appeal to those already mindful. As a local centric network, it serves not only as a virtual bulletin board to post lost pets, job postings, contractor recommendations, but is ideally suited to facilitate community activities such as neighborhood patrols, block parties or cleanup events. In terms of combating litter, Hey Neighbor! facilitates grass roots efforts to improve local surroundings, through beautification projects, litter-picking drives and resource sharing, helping to create a more tidy Manchester.
ROLE
I was primarily responsible for user research and participated extensively in ideation exercises. The concept we ultimately produced and our product name were my contribution. I also scripted and co-presented the client pitch, employing storytelling elements to illustrate our products features, by following two fictional characters as they overcome challenges we gleaned from user research. This project was a highly collaborative effort where all team members were onboard within every stage of the design process. That said, each of the 4 members focused on a specific area, based either on prior experience or desire to explore new areas of interest.
HIGHLIGHTS
RESEARCH
Given the short timeline of this project, guerrilla interview tactics provided the quick feedback necesary. Being the most extroverted member of our team, I was best suited to approach people on the street, at bus stops or in cafes. Extreme cases were explored by interviewing the homeless and joining a litter-picking club. I conducted longer in-depth interviews with 2 local residents, who provided historical context, and shared valuable insight regarding prior attempts to address this chronic problem
low fidelity prototype
PROTOTYPING
Returning to the street to test a paper prototype, I discovered the limitations of low-fidelity prototypes, as users were unable to grasp our products features or purpose without detailed explanation, so this did not help validate our initial concept. Once we developed a high-fidelity digital prototype, user feedback was more useful in improving our concept.
DESIGN
Our original concept was Trashure Hunt, a litter picking game where neighborhoods compete to see which discards the most trash. Ultimately, it was decided that this relied too heavily on city agencies that we could not count on to provide support, so we shifted to a user facilitated solution. Hey Neighbor! is loosely based on nextdoor, a popular social network in the US that had not yet reached the UK. Its casual name reflects how friends and neighbors converse.
PITCH
Storytelling creates a more meaningful message than powerpoint. Instead of heavy use of charts and graphs, the scrip I wrote weaves our product’s key features into the story of two city dwellers trying to manage waste. The offer of free lunch inspires Alex to join a litter drive, sponsored by a local business, while Taylor locates a neighbor who can use the stuff she must discard quickly.
rubbish everywhere
PROBLEM
Manchester is best known for world-class football teams, large student population and vibrant nightlife in the Northern Quarter, but a visit to this Northern city surprises visitors with streets strewn with rubbish.
CLIENT
Keep Manchester Tidy (KMT) has set an (perhaps overly) optimistic goal to achieve Tidy City status in one years’ time. This small government agency is responsible for an annual litter drive is hugely successful, attracting thousands of volunteer who collect tons upon tons of rubbish. However, these cleanup events are insufficient to keep the streets clean for long, since they fails to address the root causes of habitual behavior. KMT reaches out to the UX master’s program at Hyper Island to develop innovative solutions that could modify littering behavior .
BRIEF
Find ways to alter ingrained littering habits, in order to transition to a tidy city.
STAKEHOLDERS
As filthy streets impact everyone living or working in the city, there are multiple stakeholders. Major categories we considered are the government (elected officials, councils, sanitation and health agencies), businesses, community (schools, churches, volunteer organizations) residents (locals and commuters) and tourists. As out primary goal is to modify behavior, we gear our solutions to the individual.
TOOLS
Otter transcription software, affinity mapping, personas, crazy 8’s, multi criteria evaluation analysis, low and hi-fidelity prototypes.
double diamond
PROCESS
Employing the design-thinking methodology which is particularly suitable for developing a user centric solution, our team relies heavily on the British Design Council’s double diamond as a road map of iterative process. The diamond’s convergent and divergent shape illustrates the nature of design, which is initially expansive in the development of new ideas, before funneling down to identify a core problem for which to solve.
stage 1. discover
Desk research is the initial step undertaken to gain familiarity with the problem, and outcomes of prior solutions attempted in Manchester and elsewhere.
OBSERVATIONS
Incentives for appropriate litter disposal have been shown to be highly effective
Environment stimuli such as the availability of trash containers and antilitter messages discourage littering
The degree of cleanliness influences littering, so that cleaner areas remain tidy while dirty areas get dirtier
Most smoker’s tweet the streets as their ashtray, with cigarette butts constituting 39% of all litter by weight
Regular cleanup events raise awareness, but fail to produce long term improvements
It is difficult to determine what lasting outcome if any comes from one-off cleanup attempts
Neighborhoods are unequal. While some have pride of ownership, others that are poorer and more transient are badly trashed. Industrial zones with few residents are drowning in rubbish, showing zero care by business owners
PRIMARY RESEARCH
As none of the members of our team are local, our first foray outside is to conduct a visual analyses of the streets and alleys of both residential and commercial districts. To determine the biggest offenders, we maintain a running count of every type of rubbish we encounter. For our team which represents the US, Sweden, Holland and India, the degree to which streets are littered is rather shocking. Given the severe state of disregard, we wonder if such an ingrained problem is indicative of a public that either no longer cares or has perhaps grown numb to this huge eyesore? Our initial research effort is to determine if local residents actually wish for a cleaner city. We conduct a brief survey, which asks:
Are you interested in improving the city’s litter problem?
And If so, how might you be willing to contribute?
Survey results indicate considerable interest, encouraging us to continue to look for what might motivate city residents. Our brief time frame (3 weeks) calls for obtaining research data quickly, so we employ gorilla interview tactics to learn how litter impacts Mancunians. Of my teammates, I am the most comfortable approaching strangers, so this task falls on me. I stop random people on the street in hopes of getting them to share their experience in regards to litter. To learn from extreme user’s needs, I interview a rough sleeper (the local term for homeless) and attend a litter-picking event to meet clean-up activists. One-on-one interviews are conducted with several residents offer the depth necessary to uncover frustrations an. Pain-points and unmet needs offer ripe opportunities, and solving for them directs our design challenge.
OBSERVATIONS
Many people are willing to do something about litter but don't really know how, when or where to go about it
People are busy and need a way to find activities that fit their schedule
Some interviewed have participated in clean-up drives before, but don't know enough neighbors to suggest a cleanup on their own street
ACTIONABLE INSIGHTS
Based on the large turnout for Keep Manchester Tidy’s annual litter drive, we know that many residents are willing to participate when properly motivated. But in the absence of a planned event, there is insufficient follow through. They are either unfamiliar with how to locate or organize a local cleanup or unaware of the shared interest in cleaner streets. Others might be willing to participate if they could easily fit into busy schedules.
PRIMARY RESEARCH
We approached city residents to learn if they would be willing to participate in tackling the city’s litter problem and if so, what they would be willing to contribute.
INTERVIEW TOOLS
Adhering to a scripted research guide which specifies time limits assures uniformity between interviews.. We experiment with ping pong, an online research platform that locates interview candidates within our target group, Interviews were transcribed using otter transcription software, freeing interviewers from the distraction of taking notes during an interview, while also providing the opportunity to replay the recording. Interview findings were assembled into a download matrix, which we posted while working from distance on mural, a virtual whiteboard. Unlike post-it notes which eventually get removed or fall off, a digital board can be revisited and amended indefinitely.
download matrix
User interviews
Questions asked in one-on-one interviews with 6 young women include:
How often do you clothes shop?
What is clothing’s main purpose?
How important is being stylish?
What do you do with clothes you no longer want?
FEEDBACK
Resignation, hopelessness or disinterest are apparent in some responses:
“The city's condition reflects the state of the world, and there isn’t much you
can do about it on a mass scale. We are all conditioned to accept it.”– Kate, 25“The litter makes me uncomfortable I guess, but I don't think it
will change, and it doesn't matter to me much” – Dennis, 29
Others are more optimistic and show a willingness to participate:
“Visually it does put out a negative impact on the city, but educating people,
starting more programs or social activities around it might help” – Ammar, 16“I do participate in few drives, like last year I did a beach cleanup” – Kara, 18
“There are community clean-ups but only on my street,
don’t know if they happen everywhere” – Caroline, 41“Everybody wants to recycle and set a good example, but not many
people want to take action on it because of time, feasibility etc.” - Joli, 42
TAKEAWAYS
insert text here
stage 2. define
AFFINITY MAPPING
Affinity mapping is used to synthesize interview data, in order to identify key themes, where frustration, challenges and pain pints are sought after, as they identify potential opportunities.
FINDINGS
How and where to organize or participate in a community cleanup is unclear. Many residents wish to help, but are uncertain how or where to begin.
Contemporary urban life suffers from a lack of connection within their community. People don't know enough of their neighbors to even suggest a cleanup event on their own street.
There is a lack of awareness in the shared interest to clean up Manchester. Residents are unaware that neighbors share a desire to improve the poor conditions they live in.
People lives are already quite hectic. Cleanup efforts must be easy to schedule and conform to resident’s busy schedule.
TAKEAWAY
While some residents are complacent with how things are, many others would support a clean-up effort if sufficiently motivated, knew how they could participate, and provided they can find the time.
PROBLEM STATEMENT
In a city that is so badly littered, residents cannot see how their contribution makes any difference.
Manc’s perceive their actions as insignificant. Very simply, whats the point?
FRAMING THE PROBLEM
We begin to understand that citizens lack drive, as they cannot envision the impact of their actions. They must first feel empowered to gain the sense that their actions, both individually and collectively, impact the condition of their city. To arrive at an actionable opportunity, we reframe this notion into :
How might residents see their actions as making a difference?
stage 3. develop
Our design challenge is to develop a user centric solution to the problem we articulated, by searching for ways to show the collective value of individual actions.
IDEATION
The ideation phase of the design process is expansive, where we look to explore the widest range of concepts, that we will later narrow down later. We experiment with visualization exercises are used to imagine the manifestation of empowerment (a view from above), insignificance (climbing uphill) futility (going the wrong way on an escalator). To adopt a solution mindset, we propose several how might we questions based on the actionable insights we uncovered to remove obstacles. Mind maps allow us to visualize the many wild ideas produced in brainstorming sessions. Later, we use dotmocracy, a voting method where team members draw dots to identify the ideas seen as most promising,
How might we lower barriers.
How might we create significance.
How might we democratize litter, so that residents share responsibility with the city.
Brainstorming techniques include mind mapping and crazy 8s. The strongest concepts are selected to be illustrated on storyboards. To remove our egos, someone other than the originator pitches the concept to the team. To help us to weigh the pros and cons of each concept, we employed a decision matrix analysis which produces a visual tally of strengths and weaknesses, so that a winner is obvious.
The concept we selected is a mobile game named Trashure Hunt that is inspired by Pokemon Go. This is a cleanup competition where gps is used to identify litter. Color-coded trash bins determine which team has collected the most trash. Our client seemed intrigued, but city collection agencies proved to be an obstacle, as they would not change their routes, nor weigh the trash collected. We determined that this idea relied too heavily on support from city agencies that we could not influence, so we turned to more user driven concepts. Our revised direction drew its support not from the government, but from the community. Hey Neighbor! is the concept for a social network based on communal affiliation By providing a platform to address shared needs and pool resources, local affiliation is tapped to facilitate beautification projects and resource sharing within ones community. Ultimately, this app acts to empower individuals to feel like their actions make a difference.
(picture of lo and high fidelity prototypes)
KEY IDEA
It takes a village. As lack of community is a recurring theme, we see disenfranchisement at the root of the problem, so building community must the core of a sustainable solution.
personas
PERSONAS
The purpose of this tool is to personify the needs of distinct types of users, so that different individuals needs are reflected in our solution. Based on feedback, we created personas to capture the sensibilities of two distinct varieties or residents, to consider the needs and frustrations of those more and less motivated to to participate in efforts to tidy up. Joli represents an older more community centric resident, while Dennis represents a younger less affiliated one.
“not many people want to take action on it because of time, feasibility, etc” – Joli
“I don't think it will change, and it doesn't matter to me much” – Dennis
stage 4. deliver
Changing course provided a great new concept but reduced the time we had to develop our product adequately through testing and iteration. Despite having created a functional high resolution prototype, it was first rolled out at the product pitch. Questions raised by our client regarding the functionality, should have been discovered ahead of time. Lesson learned: skip testing at your own peril. Of course this is not what we had intended, but by failing to prototype, our solution did not meet our users needs or expectations. While the concept had great potential, it needed reworking, and ultimately, was not selected by our client.
PROTOTYPING
Testing can actually begin prior to the prototype stage, using pretotyping to validate an idea before committing time or resources to develop an initial prototype. When we were still in the conceptual stage, we employed this method to gauge interest by placing an ad on Facebook, which essentially faked the existence of our product. A 6.45% click through rate (CTR) validated interest in the topic.
A deeper level of commitment can be tested by requesting that users put skin in the game in the form of an investment of money, time or effort. We tested this by asking respondents to our ad to take a survey, as their participation in an engagement conveys a higher level of interest. Despite having learned that our product was ‘under development’, 10% of respondents took the time to complete our survey. These encouraging results provided the assurance to continue with our concept and produce an actual prototype.
LOW FIDELITY. Mock-ups are built as a quick and inexpensive way to get user feedback. The quickest and cheapest is a low fidelity version drawn on paper. Marvel Pop is an app that allows us to take our simple hand drawn screens and animate them, so that users can test functionality on a phone screen.
paper prototype
MEDIUM FIDELITY. The next level mock-up was a wireframe, which allows users to test the proposed functionality and flow, but uses placeholders for photos and text. Testing of this bare-bones layout measures clarity in the structure and navigation or flow..
wireframe
flow chart
HIGH FIDELITY. This prototype is pixel perfect in appearance, and gives the illusion of a finished product, only without any code. Adobe XD is used to give these non-working prototypes the appearance of full functionality.
hi-res prototype, built in adbe XD
FEEDBACK
While there is no set rule for the number of iterations a design requires until it is ready to ship, every pass in front of the user brings the design closer to addressing user’s needs by incorporating feedback provided. Our users input alerted us to several potential features not originally considered.
“People, myself included, forget what they have, and go and buy something new and then realize I've got like a million of the same” – Tor, 23
NOTIFICATIONS. Users informed us that pairing a wardrobe assistant with shopping capabilities would be substantially more impactful. While there was initially discussions within our team weather this would dilute the sustainability goals of our app, we realized that our app could promote sustainable consumption through reminders of what we already have. In what we refered to as the ‘mother’ function, notifications would inform users if they or one of their friends own something similar which could be borrowed.
MARKETPLACE. Testers confirmed that our borrowing feature was popular, but suggested that users have the ability to buy and sell clothing, so we included a market feature to sell second hand clothes.
“In the morning I am often in a rush and forget to check the weather” – Rachel, 23
WEATHER. The need to know how to dress for the weather was raised by several users, prompting us to add a feature creating dual touch points, with weather and wardrobe information provided in one place.
As we incorporated additional features suggested, our concept expanded to satisfy more of our user’s needs. Iterative process allowed the direction of our product to shift slightly from digital wardrobe manager to a mindful shopping assistant.
solution
AWEAR is a wardrobe app whose greater mission is to help users develop more sustainable shopping habits. By neatly categorizing what users or their contacts already own (and may have forgotten) it taps underutilized resources as an alternative to shopping for something new. This enhances the value of clothes, and gives them the possibility of a second life. By encouraging consumers to consider other available options before buying new, it looks to reverse the trend of throwaway fashion.
Rather than being exclusively aimed to environmentally minded people, it is designed to address the needs of a much wider community of consumers who struggle to make sustainable decisions. Recognizing that most people love to shop, and always will, it attempts to provide more sustainable options. Sharing functions facilitate the environmental and budget friendly option of looking through friends closets for something new to wear. Not exactly new, but new for the user.
It’s not about people getting more sustainable clothes but getting clothes more sustainably.
When users wish to shop at online retailers, the ‘mother’ feature gently reminds them of similar items they already own or can easily access through their network. And when users opt to shop for new items, they can set filters for minimum sustainability requirements they are comfortable with. Rather than to try to force users to only shop sustainable brands, AWEAR hopes to gradually minimize consumption by building awareness. In doing so, it answers the “I’ve got nothing to wear” dilemma on several levels.
MICRO. Personal stylist
A digital wardrobe helps users locate specific articles and pair items together to see the finished look. Maintaining an inventory enhances the value of what users have, while keeping articles in the back of the closet from being forgotten. Keeping inventory helps users determine if they really need something new, or if they already own something similar.
MEZZO: Community building
It is very natural for close friends to browse through each other’s closet for the possibility to borrow clothes. Users are encouraged to connect with friends who share a similar fashion sense. The option to borrow rather than always buy, nudges users towards to reduce consumption.
MACRO: Enlightened shopping
By offering the ability to shop new and borrowed, this app increases knowledge of options, helping users develop smarter purchase decisions. Users not wishing to borrow have the flexibility of shopping for new clothes rated for sustainability by an independent agency.
VALUE PROPOSITION
CITY
Become known as leading sustainable fashion label
BUSINESS
Become known as leading sustainable fashion label
RESIDENTS
Unites neighbors
Supports communal activities
Promotes reuse of resources
Accountability leads to more tidy streets
Visibility of a beautified area can inspire a ripple effect for nearby communities
Builds community engagement
Powerless replaced with empowerment
Making it fun and easy to shop more midfully can extend the life of clothing, saving time, money and guilt. Consumers are able to tailor their own shopping experience, while learning to make smarter acquisitions, either through better management of their own wardrobe, sharing of clothes with friends or by considering the sustainability ratings for new purchases.
PLAN
However influential, PVH cannot expect to significantly influence shopper’s behavior in a solo effort. Achieving the scale necessary for significant impact will require significant industry cooperation. To accomplish this, we propose AWEAR as a white label platform, rather than limiting use to PVH consumers. This app could be hosted by a common initiative such as Fashion For Good, in order to unite the industry against wastefulness.
2021. Minimum viable product tested and iterated using PVH brands.
2022. Marketing campaigns and social media are vehicles to popularize the app among shoppers.
2023. Invite other brands to participate on the platform.
2024. Cross-cultural consumer research conducted to improve user experience.
2025. Fully transformed into a new market position, encouraging other fashion labels to join.
REFLECTION
Meaningful and impactful experiences are possible when designers consider human needs and desires. UX moves away from the “build it and they will come” mentality which relies primarily on a designer’s intuition to guess what will please consumers, rather than to simply ask them.
TEAM
Team Looop is a diverse team representing Sweden, America, India and the Netherlands. Consisting of a programmer, a project manager and two visual designers ranging from early 20s to late 50s, this varied background and experience proved widened our exploration significantly, but was also quite challenging at times.