Second Life Composting: Capstone Case Study
Encouraging people to reframe how they think about food surplus and waste.
The primary reason I created Second Life Composting is due to households being the #1 producer of food waste in the US. Food waste is a multifaceted issue from production, to consumption, to waste. About 30–40% of the food supply in the US is just not consumed. (USDA) On average, that’s about 219 pounds of food per person per year. This impacts waste management as well. Around 40 million tons of food waste go right into landfills. (EPA)
So what if we were able to divert our waste from landfills and support our communities, local farms, and community gardens by composting?
Organic landfill waste produces Methane, a greenhouse gas, via anaerobic decomposition. It’s a slow process to break down the organic material. Methane is 28–36 times more effective at trapping heat than Carbon Dioxide. Landfills can also contain chemicals and low-grade radiation. (EPA)
On the other hand, composting is generally done via aerobic decomposition, meaning it has access to free-flowing Oxygen to speed up the process. Compost reduces the need for chemical fertilizer and can yield a higher amount of crops. On top of that, it also aids in water retention and can help with reforestation and restoration of land. (EPA)
With that discovery, I came up with my topic:
How Might We…
…elevate the food waste that households produce to give them a greater purpose other than “waste”?
View the Prototype Here
Audience
My audience is households who regularly throw out food (primarily produce) that has gone bad, primarily because they forgot that they had it but would have otherwise used it. I created a screener survey to search for participants who are over 20 years old, go grocery shopping regularly (regardless if it’s online or in-store), and sometimes accidentally forget a fruit or vegetable from time to time. I sent it through various channels such as Instagram, Reddit, and Facebook and had 17 responses, of which I conducted 4 interviews + 1 interview with a Composting SME.
Scope and Constraints
The initial discovery research and design phases took place over eight weeks. As both phases took place during the COVID-19 pandemic, most interviews took place over Zoom. Both interviews with Farmers took place in person, but were socially distant, masked, and I made sure all parties involved were fully vaccinated.
Process
I broke this project down into 4 phases:
- Strategy and Preparation
- Discovery
- Design
- Prototyping
Discovery took the longest as I wanted to create a tool rooted in realism. This way it’s something people could realistically use.
Discovery Research
Interviews
Based on my interviews, I had a few main points crop up. The Composting SME felt that educating people on how to deal with food before it goes rotten was the most important topic to cover as it prevents waste, and cuts down on spending, which then is answered by the farmers who’ll need to make less produce. Both farmers said they needed external sources of compost. One of them got to the point where they went dumpster diving behind a grocery store. One of the consumers preferred if it was a communal pick-up, this way they have a drop-off point in their apartment complex so that they don’t have to worry about scheduling a pick-up. The other consumer, who had previous composting experience, mentioned people would need different sized bags for composting as different household sizes have different needs. They also explained a ticket system that some states have with farmers' markets to give produce to seniors and low-income individuals/households.
Affinity Map
I used Miro to make an Affinity Map to log all the interview responses and to help look for patterns amongst my participants. The Farmers’ patterns were that they:
- Do their best to create as little waste as possible
- Use compost for both crops and animal bedding
- Don’t want to do anything that could put their Certified Organic status at risk
Consumers’ patterns were that they:
- Do their best to eat/prepare everything they purchase, but some things do end up falling through the cracks
- Would like to learn what they can and cannot compost
- Would also like to learn what else to do with their food before it goes bad as long as it is low-effort
Competitive Analysis
Based on my interviews, I looked into companies that were mentioned to gain an understanding of their successes and faults. Here are the Top 3 that I learned and gleaned from:
Community Compost Company
They collect specifically food scraps from residential and commercial spaces for compost. What I liked about them was that they have communal drop spots for composting. This led to my idea for working with community gardens to help supply them with compost and potentially act as a drop-off/pick-up point for larger farmers.
Atlas Organics
Atlas Organics is a membership based compost pickup service that collects compost from residential and commercial spaces. Their educational section on their website inspired me to add the Recipes section of the tool so that people can share their recipes and knowledge with the larger Second Life Composting community.
Food Rescue Us
Food Rescue Us is entirely volunteer based. They pick up food donations from local donors (grocers, restaurants, caterers, etc.). They seemed very decentralized since they are volunteer based and work in food “rescue” this way the food is given a purpose before being turned into “waste.”
Lean Canvas
Based on initial research, secondary research, and interviews I set up a canvas so I could see what ideas came to me and could guide me through the rest of the project.
User Personas
From there I created two user personas, one for Farmers, and one for Consumers.
Meet Oliver MacDonald. He needs organic compost and wants to get rid of his Grade 2 produce that grocery stores won’t buy off of him and that he feels bad getting rid of. He mainly uses technology surrounding agriculture as he gets frustrated with any other digital tools/products.
Meet Corrina Brennan. She wants to use up her produce before it goes to waste, and if it does go to waste, she wants to give it to a composter so it’s less harmful to the environment. She’s very comfortable with technology as she’s practically terminally online anyway.
User Journey
Due to time constraints, I focused on Corrina’s Journey through Second Life Composting.
Her journey follows a procedure for when she has ingredients to cook but doesn’t know what to do with them. She ends up looking stuff up hoping someone’s been in a similar situation and has already solved her problem. And finally, she’s confident with what she can do with her scraps so that they don’t end up as “waste.”
Information Architecture
I broke all the Information Architecture down into three separate pages:
Compost
Which hosts everything related to your composters you’re following, what you can/cannot compost, and scheduling a pick up for your compost.
Recipes
This section is dedicated to user-created recipes for food, crafts, booze, or anything else related to food scraps that one can conceive of.
Profile
Lastly, you have your profile where you can see the posts you’ve created, posts you liked/saved, and tickets you’ve earned based on how much you have composted.
Sketches and Wireframes
Important note: I started sketching in mobile with the intent it would be built out on desktop as 3/5 of my participants said they’d most likely be on their computers when (1) looking up recipes, and (2) when they’d most likely schedule a pick up for compost.
Initially, I also had an idea to create a digital fridge to accompany the app to give recipes based on receipt scans the user logged. But that idea sadly had to be abandoned for the sake of time. It is added and more fleshed out in the Next Steps section below.
Here is a more built-out lo-fi mobile wireframe set of Second Life Composting. The first is the initial concept for a dashboard, which eventually became the Compost page of the web app. It also includes the flow for how a user would order a pickup for their compost bag.
The second image was my first draft of a recipes list, in the web app it changed to be friendlier and less compact by using cards.
The final image is the profile page that includes posts the user has written, saved posts, and their fridge (which evolved into the Tickets section)
Branding
Based on my research, most environment-based companies chose green or blue as their brand color, so I knew I wanted to stray away from that. So I chose yellow because it’s a fun and cheerful color, and it also is a very hopeful color. For my secondary colors, I brought back the green palette to keep the environmentally-conscious message back into the brand.
For the typeface of Second Life, I chose Poppins as the round corners emphasized the friendliness of the brand and it’s also an accessible and legible typeface. Most color and text color combinations meet WCAG AAA standards, with the stragglers meeting AA at an absolute minimum.
The logo is a mix of compressed, regular, and expanded fonts of Akzidenz-Grotesk Pro. I really wanted to give it an off-kilter rhythm because most organic things tend to have their own rhythm and patterns.
Prototyping
Check out the prototype here.
Introducing the user to Second Life and allowing them to pre-select composters in their area that they might be interested in
The Compost page functions as the home page where the user can see how the composts are doing as well as their next pick-up’s status. This screen also explains what can and cannot be composted and why. It also leads our users to a composter management screen where they can follow/unfollow composters and check the statistics on the composters in the area.
The Schedule Pick Up form allows users to pick a time, date, back size, and drop-off location for their compost bags. The more they donate, the more tickets they can earn for their next farmers' market.
In order to “save” their food. Users can look up user-generated recipes so they can give their produce and other ingredients a… Second Life!
Their profile is where they can look at their posts, previously saved recipes, and farmers' market tickets.
Key Findings
I found that a lot of people do want to compost and waste less food, but are fairly unsure of how to go about doing it. My personal opinion is that there needs to be a whole reframing of people’s mindsets about what’s truly considered “waste”.
I also found that a lot of farmers donate their unsold produce to pantries, or are bought by organizations that create food boxes for low-income individuals/households.
I ended up starting with a different project, so switching gears around Week 2/3 created hurdles. Given more time, I would like to have conducted more initial interviews with Consumers, as they are the #1 producers of food waste. I’d also like to have been able to interview food pantries to ask about their processes.
I also underestimated how long certain tasks would take, so moving forward I’ll know to add extra time to certain activities.
Next Steps
The next primary step is to go through user testing with multiple participants for the Consumers’ side.
I would also like to build out the Farmers’ side of the platform for where they can order compost and/or animal bedding and list what’s available for tickets.
Future Features
Assuming all goes well with the testing and subsequent iterations, here are some features I think should be added to Second Life:
- Ability to take a photo of their receipt and add the food to a digital “fridge” to let you know when your food is about to turn
- With the digital “fridge”, Second Life will be able to recommend recipes based on what you have (and tell you what you’d need to buy)
- Ability to connect with local food pantries/ community fridges/ other local organizations to see what they’re in need of and how you can help them
