Target Users
Our target users will largely be people between the ages of 25 to 35 interested in “sustainable living”. As keeping track of your waste requires commitment, the users must have enough time in their day for personal activities. This age range ensures that the user has enough capacity to actively change their lifestyles by interacting with our interface. A younger age range may be more focused on getting stable or gaining control, while an older age range has less energy to change their established lifestyles and less familiarity with technology, leading to more issues with learnability.
To keep the scope of the project feasible, they must also be residents of Greater Chicago. Additionally, they must have access to waste management services and a computer or other device with internet connection, as well as the basic capability to operate such a device.
User Goals
There are two main user goals Carbage will be tackling:
1. The user will be able to keep track of current waste disposal over time. The user can input waste types and amount of waste thrown away as well as view their carbon footprint.
2. The user will learn how they can make better disposal choices. This includes learning about relevant recycling centers or reusing techniques for the respective object, and see how their actions can reduce carbon emissions.
Example Tasks
To give an idea of what specifics Carbage will tackle, a few example tasks that the user should be able to complete with our application include:
Adding nine plastic water bottles and two cardboard boxes
Seeing where plastic water bottles can be recycled nearby
Calculating how emissions would be reduced by choosing to recycle plastic bottles
Looking at alternative uses for cardboard boxes
Viewing total carbon emissions
User Scenarios
Scenario 1
Tim is a 28-year-old male graduate student who shares an apartment with two other graduate students. He and his roommates plan to move closer to the university. In the process of moving and cleaning, they use a lot of cardboard, and would like to dispose of certain waste such as damaged electronics safely. They use Carbage to look for nearby electronic recycling facilities and dispose of them successfully. They also find out that they can donate their cardboard boxes and do so.
Scenario 2
Sarah, a 30-year-old female elementary teacher notices the large amount of teaching materials thrown out every week. She is having trouble budgeting for her class and wants to track her waste to see how to cut down her expenses. She opens Carbage and tracks how much waste was thrown over the week, and notices most of it is either paper worksheets or food. She uses Carbage to learn about tips to cut down on food waste, and makes classroom rules accordingly. To lower the amount of paper thrown away, she stops using stickers on worksheets and starts collecting papers in a recycling bin. She uses some as scrap paper for art class and drops the rest off at a recycling center near school.