Partner: Metro Vancouver

Place: British Columbia

Themes: Recycling, Making Decisions on the Move

Local FuturesMaking Sense of Streetscape Recycling

Faculty: Louise St. PierreResearch Assistant/ ongoing Project Lead: Andreas Eiken Dates: Summer and Fall 2013

Metro Vancouver is a governing body that oversees 22 different municipalities, one electoral district, and one treaty First Nation. There is currently no consistency in recycling approaches.

System Complexity: Metro Vancouver

In Fall of 2013, municipal coordinators, administrators,solid waste managers, technicians and sustainability specialists shared their insights in a series of workshops.

The design project provided the impetus to bring municipal and industry representatives together to talk about shared issues.

Class Activity: Systems Map

During a class activity we mapped out the broader system of recycling and realized WKDW�GLIIHUHQW�SXEOLF�DUHDV�UHTXLUHG�GLIIHUHQW�UHF\FOLQJ�QHHGV��:H�LGHQWLŵHG�3 different categories based on distinguished needs and decided to split the class into groups so that possibilities for each area could be explored.

Nicolene McKenzie

Students quickly realized that designing for ease of recycling meant more than good signage. They followed through with contextual research, models, and on-site testing to further the discussion.

DESIGN ROLE

Research Insights

• People are primarily focused on where they are going; “the next thing in my day.”The opportunity for recycling is when people pause; perhaps a moment of transition. Is this where we should provide affordances for sorting?

• People usually are engaged in a series of events while they are on the streets. Can we place advance cues strategically to prompt psychological preparation?

• At times, events take place that constrain the possibility of sorting for recycling (such as grouping dissimilar materials from lunch into a single bag). Can we flip this around, and set the conditions for easy sorting instead?

Research insights

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Should the design highlight the need to recycle?

Impetus to Recycle?

This project will develop over a period of years under the leadership of MDes Candidate Andreas Eiken (ECUAD), in collaboration with the Department of Social Psychology Program (UBC), and the Brain Attention Research Lab (BAR Lab, UBC)

Next Steps