UX Research Case Study On Green@Community (綠在區區)
Title
How might we motivate HK citizens to have a recycling habit through Green@Community?
Introduction
Is “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” just a slogan? We are told this is the golden rule for waste management but this isn’t the case in reality. A study from Environmental Protection Department showed that the amount of municipal solid waste recovered from recycling decreased nearly half from three million tonnes in 2011 to around 1.5 million in 2020, which is considered to be a setback compared to the goals that needs to be achieved.
In recent years, the Environmental Protection Department launched a programme called Green@Community to build up a new community recycling network, including recycling stations, recycling stores and recycling spots with a view to building up the recycling initiatives across the district level and promoting the green living culture in the community. From this case study, we will figure out how to strengthen the recycling habit from it.
The Green@ Community Recycling Station
Recycling Store
Recycling Spot
Research Plan
The Green@Community falls under one of the six major areas of the government’s Waste Reduction plan. The purpose of Green@Community is to strengthen the community recycling network to aide in waste separation.
Our goal is to find out if HK residents are aware of this new campaign, how do HK residents feel about recycling and what measures can be taken to help HK residents recycle more.
Methodology
Primary Research
85
Survey
Responses
19
Interviews
Secondary Research
Competitive Analysis
Research from The Internet
Our Research Findings
Apart from the secondary research, we conducted our primary research through interviews and surveys to uncover some pain points/findings that are reflected from their behaviour and their opinion towards recycling so that we can come up with ideas that can motivate people recycling through Green@Community.
We collected 85 surveys of people from a wide range of different age groups about their recycling behaviour and interviewed 19 persons. 3 main findings have been revealed.
Pain Point 1 : Inconvenient location discourage interviewee to recycle
Research showed us that more than half of the respondents would recycle whenever they are convenient. We further asked about the pain point of recycling in the survey.
Nearly 50% of the respondents thought an inconvenient location is the pain point for them to recycle and 80% of interviewees might have higher motivation if the location is close to them.
From our interview, 13 out of 19 interviewees were also concerned that inconvenient location is the main reason for not recycling.
Pain Point 2: Inefficient and complicated recycling process caused trouble
80% of the respondents will handle their waste in recycling bins which seems to be the most efficient way to them. 78% of the respondents thought an efficient and easy recycling process facilitates them to recycle as some of them considered recycling is time-consuming.
From the interview, nearly half of the interviewees thought they have limited time to take extra effort to sort the trash. inefficient recycling process discouraged them to keep the recycling habits.
Pain Point 3: Not enough space to store the trash which hygiene problems concerned
My home is too small to keep the trash until recycling!
“My home is too small to keep the trash until recycling! ” a direct quote from one of the interviewees. This revealed that sometimes they ignore recycling because they don’t have enough space at home to store until recycling, and they are concerned of the hygiene problem if they store the items for a long time.