E-Z E-Recycling: Making Electronic Recycling Easier For Older Generations
By Caroline Freer, Yun Hou, and Leah Robison
Problem and Solution Overview
The problem we are going to be addressing is the wastefulness of older generations not properly recycling their old phones, since these devices can end up in the trash or stored away for years, which is not being resourceful and thus affects sustainability. Our solution is an application that targets wiping your devices’ data on your own and being motivated to recycle your old devices. Our application will help users wipe their data by walking them through the wiping process and letting the user confirm each step along the way. For example, one step could be wiping all photos and the user can go and see for themselves that all photos are cleared, thus giving them peace of mind. The application will also motivate the user to recycle their old devices by sending them notifications every month. For example, “Start the month off right and recycle now!”. Additionally, we will offer a monetary incentive by paying users for the parts of the device the recycle center can make a profit off of, similar to Apple’s trade-in program. Finally, we will have a mail-in service that makes it convenient to recycle devices, thus keeping users motivated.
Design Research Goals, Stakeholders, and Participants
Our target user group is older generations (~50+), since they are not educated on how to recycle their old electronics and worry about their data being stolen. Older people are more targeted in cybercrime, thus correlating to 44% of them being afraid of their data being stolen (techbusinessnews.com). However, more than just older people are involved. Another stakeholder in our design is recycle centers. Thus, we interviewed Best Buy’s recycling center to get more insights on how often people recycle and what they think could make it easier for them. Additionally, we interviewed two parents, as these people are in our target age group and are easy to access for us. These individuals have a background of growing up without electronics, often making them more wary of this technology. Caroline’s mom and Leah’s dad constantly worry about cyber security, making them prime candidates for our interviews. We interviewed both of them on Zoom. For surveying, we asked our friends and fellow students to send our survey to their parents to gain more insights from users in our target age group and also younger generations to compare results and properly target our target group.
The first design research method we chose was interviews. We chose to do interviews because most of the data we need cannot be observed and must be collected from people’s opinions. For example, it would be more helpful for us to talk to someone about why they don’t recycle their old devices, rather than watching them recycle an old device.
The second design research method we used was surveys because, again, most of the data we need cannot be observed and must be collected from people’s opinions. Additionally, surveys will allow us to reach more people than interviews, thus making our overall research more thorough.
Design Research Results and Themes
The question that we think revealed the most information on our survey was “What, if anything, would make you more likely to recycle?”. The answers to this question are super important when thinking about our solution, and a lot of the responses were ideas that we hadn’t thought of ourselves. A common answer was closer recycling stations and also recycling stations open on the weekends, since most people in our target group are working during the week. This emphasizes the idea that convenience is important. Additionally, from interview 3 we learned that some recycling centers cost money to recycle, which seems backwards tous. Another response to the above question was “A monetary incentive”, which makes us think that a solution that is free and/or pays the user for recycling would be a good incentive for recycling.
Some themes revealed to us through our design research include:
People want electronic recycling to be convenient.
From both the survey and our interviews, it is apparent that if recycling electronics is not convenient, then they won’t be recycled at all. From interview 3, we learned that local pop ups happen twice a year, but the interviewee still held on to an old tv for over a year until the pop up was at a convenient time for her. Additionally, in the survey when asked what would make someone more willing to recycle, they answered “closer spots”, “ease of recycling”, and “recycle event close to home”.
People want their data to be secure.
Of people in our target age group that responded to our survey, when asked how concerned they were about their electronics’ data security, all of the answers ranged from 8–10, which is very high on the scale. Additionally, in interview 3, she admitted to us that she is very concerned about her data security in the sense of recycling old devices and in her everyday life. She listed off multiple practices she does to keep her data secure including only having her location on while using apps, changings passwords often, having personal data only on her iPad (which doesn’t leave the house), and more. These are all good data concerns to keep in mind while designing our application. Finally, in regards to recycling, she mentioned wanting to know her data is for sure cleared by trying her old password/fingerprint and seeing that it doesn’t unlock.
People want electronic recycling to be free or be paid.
When asked what would make you want to recycle more, multiple answers included “no charge”, “free recycling”, and “a monetary incentive”. We also learned through interview 3 about how many recycling services cost you to recycle old devices. From the interviews, we learned that people are more likely to do a trade-in program, like Apple’s, where you can get money for turning in an old device, rather than having to go to a recycling center and pay.
Proposed Design
Our final design is an application that targets wiping users’ data and keeping them motivated to recycle devices. Since people are already not motivated to recycle devices, they would most likely want the most convenient solution as well, which is an app. Additionally, we can make an app very simple and clear to keep the user focused on recycling their device, so they don’t get distracted. We chose removing all personal data because we have been focusing on data security since the beginning of the quarter, and it also led to our motivation to target older generations. Thus, this is a task we definitely wanted to include. Finally, not being motivated to recycle devices is one of the main reasons people don’t recycle, as learned through our survey. Thus, a solution that makes electronic recycling more convenient would be very beneficial.
