BOTTLEROCKET
Founded in 2015, BottleRocket is the first direct to consumer recycling pick up service that rewards users for everyday recycling. Located in sunny Irvine, CA (right next to University of California, Irvine) our User Experience team redesigned the user experience to create a more accessible service.
PROBLEM & OPPORTUNITY
After user research with present and prospective users of BottleRocket, our UX team redesigned BottleRocket’s adaptive desktop website into a user-centered, interactive, and useful responsive website. The redesign features a user profile dashboard: a central location for users to schedule recycling pickups, redeem their recycling rewards, and measure their environmental impact.
DREAM TEAM / MY ROLE & APPROACH
Our UX team consisted of a well balanced batch of UX Designers: Kemy Lin, Amit Laskar, and myself. My role within this dream team was Head of User Research: I set out to dive deep into the minds of recyclers: I wanted to know what their patterns were, their impetus' behind recycling, and observe their recycling habits. To do this, I needed a strong categorized set of topics and questions to research and discover from users. (Before any interaction with users, Kemy and I collaboratively performed a heuristic analysis of the pre-existing BottleRocket website and experience.) Amit was in charge of creating the style guide and visually creating BottleRocket's UI.
KEY RESEARCH TAKEAWAYS
From our extensive interviewing of past users of BottleRocket, potential BottleRocket users, and Recycling Center Users, we distilled several key insights.
// Communication and coordination for recycling pick ups is spread across multiple platforms which creates barriers for participating in service.
// The process and function of a BottleRocket bin was unclear.
// Customers recycle out of habit and have a vague sense of wanting to be green but don’t have a clear sense of the immediate impact of their recycling behavior.
OTHER KEY INSIGHTS
// BottleRocket is a great incentive to encourage friends, roommates, and family to recycle
// Users found BottleRocket to beneficially facilitate their existing recycling habits
// BottleRocket is a convenient service that helps users who normally don’t have the ability to visit recycling centers recycle from the comfort of their home
// Users value the positive impact they are having on the environment over the reward aspect
PERSONAS
Synthesized from our user interviews and research, Maya and Brent were created in order for us to design with the user in mind.
WIREFRAMES
Our biggest challenge wireframing was figuring out what were the necessary on boardinginformation to be displayed for a new user.
Through usability testing, we came to the conclusion that asking for a limited amount of information was preferable and users were more likely to visit the website later to fill in the rest of their profile information.
Another challenge we faced during usability testing was that users were confused from the get go about how BottleRocket actually worked. Placing the How It Works section in an encouraging place so users would scroll down and read BottleRocket's procedure was imperative to empowering users.
