This is what I would describe as the fun part of the design process: ideating and brainstorming. In other words: at this point we’re not just thinking in problems and frictions anymore, we’re thinking in solutions. The last sprint brought us the problem definitions (think of: people don’t know where to recycle their old phones). We already have a document wherein we dumped all the big (and smaller) ideas for solutions, now we take a look at the different problems and see how existing initiatives and our ideas address these problems. To get an overview we mapped the relations between our ideas in a visual way to be able to see overlap between the potential solutions.
After some debate 4 ideas came forward as promising. We made some simple drawings of how the interfaces would look, and the next day we discussed them with Sander Hermsen a behavioral design expert. He gave us valuable insights on the different levels of behavior we’re trying to address with our solutions, so lets give a small overview of the concepts we’ve got (and the difficulties that come with them).
Redrawer
Creates an incentive. It’s a service with a responsive website that enables you to donate your old (smart)phones to a charity of your choice. For people who don’t want to donate the whole value of the device there is a build-in slider that makes it possible for you to decide what percentage of the value of the phone you would like to donate. After you make your decision you’ll be able to request a pickup service, and we’ll send a messenger that will come and pickup your device.
Difficulties: New smartphones that are bought below 100 eu are worth very little when they are a few years old. In this case the pickup service could not be cost efficient.
SparePhone
Addresses the problem that there is a lack of knowledge amongst smartphone users where to recycle their old devices, simply put: where do I bring my old phones? Not everyone is aware of the places surrounding us that take in old phones. If these places could be made insightful with an application or website (integrated with Google Maps), people would be better informed and – at least – they would know where to go with their old and broken devices.
Difficulties: The idea is not rich enough on its own, it doesn’t create an incentive outside informing the user, maybe it could integrated as a feature of an other app.
(Battery) Lifesaver
A solution focussed on the technical shortcomings of your smartphone, after a year or two of using your phone the battery might run out more quickly, this is a big reason for people to change their device. How can we extend the life of the smartphone battery, and with doing so extend the life of the smartphone itself? The answer is Lifesaver, an app that brings all the features on your phone together that contribute to saving battery.
Difficulties: are the battery saving features we propose (like turning down the screen light during the day or putting on airplane mode from the app) possible to access from a third party app? (Ian from team Bangalore for example already explained that accessing the airplane mode from an app is not possible.)
iSeeThrough
This concept aims to educate people about what’s inside their smartphone. The app wil take you on a tour through your own phone. It will seem as if your smartphone screen will turn transparant, and it will give you the option to interact with the components laying underneath the screen (such as: the battery, processor, circuitboard etc.). Tapping on a component will enlarge it and give you information about how its produced.
Difficulties: It provides information, but doesn’t give the user the chance to act on this information. Therefore it could also be a feature of an other app.
We’re a few days away from the peer/partner pitches, and at this point we’re working on turning all prototypes into clickable interfaces, by doing so we can already show our partners and peers some stuff they can interact with. So let’s get to it!