Five days to design a more sustainable way to dispose of furniture

From this initial conversation our team decided on the design challenge:

Curbdivers is a mobile application that allows members of the community to post and find furniture that has been left on the sidewalk. The app allows users to update an item if it’s been taken or if the condition of the item has changed. By harnessing the power of the second-hand and thrifting community, we hope this app causes less furniture to end up in landfills. When the app is first opened, several on-boarding screens take users through how to navigate the app and also relay the importance of reducing furniture waste in our landfill.

After on-boarding, a user can find a piece of furniture that has been left outside, take a picture of it, and upload it to the application. It was important to us that this process be as easy and straight forward as possible to encourage members of the second-hand furniture community to post furniture for others to find. From the main map view, a user would tap the add furniture button In the lower right hand corner of the screen and a camera view would come up. Once a photo is taken, the second step asks a user to enter the category of item (couch, table, bed, etc.) and the condition the item is in (1–3 stars). Time posted and location will automatically be added to the listing once posted.

If someone is searching for a piece of furniture, they can use the filter button in the top left corner to search by neighborhood, category, condition, mile radius, or when it was posted. Once a user finds a piece of furniture they like in the list view, tapping on that furniture brings up a screen which allows them to see the item larger and provide an update to if the furniture is still available.

Curbdivers is sustainable. Furniture which would have otherwise ended up in a landfill is transferred to the ownership of others or to donation facilities that need it.

Curbdivers is efficient. Instead of searching block by block for an item, people can easily view what items have been disposed in a particular neighborhood.

Curbdivers meets a need. College students, DIY moms, thrift store owners, and thrifting enthusiasts, among others, already partake in the act of curb diving.

Before we came up with a final design solution, we had to conduct primary and secondary research which gave us the following insights:

We used the insights we gained through research to then ideate 30 sketches in 20 minutes. Once this was done, we grouped like ideas and found that there were three solid, stand-alone concepts. Curbdivers was an app to help people find unwanted furniture, Shop Swap allowed users to exchange furniture with one another, and Pick Me Up connected willing volunteers to people who were getting rid of furniture and those who wanted the furniture.

After presenting our three ideas to a larger group for critique, we received feedback that Pick Me Up might be relying on the altruism of people a little too heavily and that Shop Swap didn’t really use CSCW in a meaningful way. Curbdivers was the most unique design solution and so we decided to move forward with it after evaluating it based on desirability, relevance, and how excited we felt about it.

Desirability: Second-hand enthusiasts, DIY lovers, and environmentally conscience people already look to thrift stores and donation centers for their furniture needs. Curbdivers would simplify the second-hand furniture collecting experience.

Relevancy: Teams saw Curbdivers as tackling the issue of curbside furniture dumping most directly. Questions about whether it would encourage more dumping were raised. However, we believe those who would put their furniture on the curb are going to do so regardless of this application’s existence.

Exciting: People pick up furniture from the curb all the time but an app to make this process more streamlined doesn’t exist. The popularity of thrifting, DIY culture, and sustainability as a whole creates a need for an app such as Curbdivers.

We wanted to design our prototypes based on two different use cases—posting furniture and finding furniture. We interviewed four different people, one of which was a consumer of second-hand furniture already. We asked the following questions while having them navigate a paper prototype:

Results were mixed with some users saying they would just not use our application at all because they would never take furniture off the street. The user that is already a furniture thrifter offered the most interesting insight since she would be our target demographic. She was confused as to how to upload a piece of furniture that she found on the street and from this we realized the camera icon was not clear enough. Users were also confused about what the current location dot was.

Taking this feedback into consideration for our final design solution, we swapped out the camera icon with one that more clearly indicated you were adding furniture and we created a current location icon that people were already familiar with from other map-based apps.

If we were given the opportunity to pursue Curbdivers further, we would want to conduct additional testing with users who better fit our demographics, explore what incentives are needed for people with less motivation to participate in this community, and test voice functionality so people can use the app in different scenarios such as driving a vehicle.

As someone who has been out of a school environment for several years, jumping right into an environment where I was asked to constantly try something brand new and learn a new skill daily was challenging but ultimately very rewarding. At the end of the week, it was amazing to be able to see how far we were able to come having not even taken a single class in the MHCI+D program. In less than two weeks I went from dumping my couch on the curb, knowing it would end up in landfill but not having a better solution, to creating a design solution that solved that same problem.

Related posts:

Throw on this cotton t-shirt when you want a casual but unique outfit these short sleeve t-shirts will make people stop in their tracks to read the graphics that youre sporting, capturing the…