Interaction Design - Bin.Go!

A desktop UI for council workers to manage garbage collection by autonomous collection robots in designated areas.

Interactive Design - https://chlwogh97.github.io/jaehochoi.github.io/companion_site/companion.html

Context

Garbage disposal is something that everyone living in a household has to do - even at least once in their lifetime.

The current garbage collection system is ran by councils in charge of areas, where they allocate specific time and day where bins are collected from households.

Our aim of the project was to design a more effective and efficient garbage collection system using autonomous vehicles that saves time, reduces noise pollution and clears up roads on busy times. It was mainly targeted to stakeholders including but not limited to:

- Residents

- Council executives

- Council workers

The final aim was to create a high-fidelity prototype that was coded to function.

The Team

Jaeho Choi - UX Research & Design, UI Design & Prototyping

John Antonios - UX Research, Coder

Han Yi Peng - UX Design & Prototyping

1. Background Research

2. Ideation

3. Prototyping

4. User Evaluation

5. Wireframing, Final Iteration

Background Research

The first step of the this project required a solid background research, including:

- the current garbage collection system

- existing solutions that uses autonomous vehicles for garbage collection.

- talking to current council workers who are involved in the garbage collection system (Operators, Truck Drivers, Garbagemen)

After initial background research, we then proceeded with utilising methods such as:

General Surveys

Focus Groups, and

Card Sorting

to identify current user satisfaction towards the system to find desires and motivations, we asked questions like:

"How satisfied and open to change are you with the garbage collection system?"

"What are some pros and cons?"

"How are you effected by the system and how does it impact your way of living?"

Using the results provided, we categorised them into qualitative and quantitative data through scores, insights and comments.

Ideation

The ideation process included creating personas, creating storyboards in regards to their user needs, and creating sticky notes to identify some key issues that they face in the current system.

The next step involved narrowing down key insights from user research that we tackled down.

After eliminating and combining similar responses, the process left us with 4 major elements:

Not eco-friendly

Routine

Inconsistency

Effort/Inconvenience

Prototyping

Gathering all the information, we moved onto creating initial ideas, including:

Autonomous Robot Bin Collector

Personal Autonomous Bin Collector

Autonomous Chute & Drone

Garbage Robot Booking System

After internal discussion within the team members, we thought Autonomous Robot Bin Collector and the Booking System were the most realistic idea to implement.

We then created a storyboards, then hand drawn sketches on how the UI for the vehicle can be implemented, and a user flow chart to visualise the function of the UI.

We took a step ahead and tested the initial sketched prototype with users. Several evaluation methods involved:

SUS - for users to score their experience with the system, helps identify issues and help the system to be user-centric

First Click Testing - allows to evaluate the effectiveness of the system structure

CTA (Concurrent Think Aloud) - providing realtime feedback and provides how users feel when they use the interface

Results were obtained from 10 participants

We then decided to think outside the box, and thought the user could be on the other side of the spectrum - the council operators!

We ideated a Garbage Robot Booking system for the council operators in order for them to operate the 'autonomous garbage collecting robots'.

We repeated the same process that we did for the first concept - storyboard, sketch, evaluate.

Refining & User Evaluation

After gaining results for those two chosen concepts, the group chose to refine the second concept: Garbage Robot Booking System because...

Allowed for a better solution and control of the autonomous bins

User participants found it more interesting

UI Interaction was more dynamic

Rich in data

Now it was time to create a high fidelity prototype and code it. We refined the prototype by implementing user feedbacks and add/deleting settings to improve its functionality and aesthetics.