Waste Warriors
My Role
Position: UX/Web Designer,
Tools: PHP, HTML, CSS, Figma, SQL, MariaDB, Google Login API, Google Calendar API
Project Type: Capstone Project
Timeline: 6 Months,13 Sprints, 2024-2025
Problem Statement
Problem: People want to live more sustainably, but they struggle to build long-term eco-friendly habits due to lack of motivation, information, and social support.
Solution: Waste Warrior is a gamified web platform that helps users track their sustainable actions, join challenges, compete with friends on leaderboards, and visualize their environmental impact making sustainability fun, social, and achievable.
Initial Research, Pivot, and Planning
Our First Idea: Foraging App for Bloomington
We began our capstone project with a strong belief of creating a mobile app to help Bloomington residents forage for wild food.
However, our preliminary research from competitive analysis and surveys changed our direction.
Research That Prompted the Pivot
1. Survey participants expressed concerns about over harvesting, habitat destruction, and the violation of cultural norms around foraging etiquette.
"DO NOT do maps of foraging locations; not everyone forages sustainably. telling everyone where something is on Google maps is a guaranteed way of wiping out species"
2. We found a strong competitor already offering detailed foraging maps.
Insight: We realized the idea wasn’t viable. It contradicted the values of our potential users and could cause harm to the environment. So, we pivoted.
New Research
After we pivoted, we needed to conduct more research to deepen our understanding of sustainability and how to help others form sustainable habits.
Sustainable Habits Survey
Our survey revealed that most participants already engage in basic sustainable actions, but they struggle to maintain these habits due to:
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Inconvenience
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Cost barriers
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Lack of information or clarity
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Zero awareness of local sustainability programs
When asked what would help stay engaged with sustainability, many participants responded positively to ideas like:
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Friendly competition
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Visual progress tracking
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Receiving rewards or feedback for their actions
Video Ethnography
We conducted secondary research through 10+ video ethnographies across sustainability topics to ground our product in accurate, actionable insights. If we were going to build an environmentally conscious app, we needed our facts straight.
Personas
Based on our survey participant demographics we developed 4 personas.
User Stories
We developed 15 user stories, each inspired by our personas goals, frustrations, & motivations. These stories helped us prioritize features that aligned with user needs.
Unplug Reminders
User Story #4
"As a user, I want to receive reminders to unplug my devices when they are not in use so that I can reduce my energy consumption."
Acceptance criteria:
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Users can set up timed notifications to support consistent unplugging habits.
How this Shaped our Project
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Implemented Google Calendar API so users can add reminders to their calendars. This created a seamless way for users to integrate energy-saving habits into their daily routines.
Leaderboards
User Story #13
"As a user, I want to view leaderboards by different categories so that I can see how I rank in each sustainability category."
Acceptance criteria:
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Users can filter leaderboards to see their progress compared to friends and global users.
How this Shaped our Project
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We developed a multi-filter leaderboard that allows users to toggle between sustainability categories and compare scores globally, with friends, or individually. This directly supports our goal of turning sustainability into a social and engaging experience, addressing the lack of motivation and community that users cited early in our research.
Wireframes & Epics
Based on the acceptance criteria from our user stories, we created 8 wireframes for each epic.
Database Design
With our epics defined & visualized, we began to plan how the data should be organized.
Final Concept: Waste Warrior
A gamified sustainability platform that empowers users to:
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Track and log eco-friendly behaviors (food, transport, energy, shopping, recycling) that contribute to an overall sustainability score
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Earn badges
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Join challenges and complete quizzes
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Compete on leaderboards
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Visualize personal impact
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Add friends
Activity Tracking
Users can visualize their sustainable habits & earn points by logging food, clothing, transportation, & recycling activities.
Log different items or activities
Review & edit entries
View challenges & quizzes related to your sustainability category
Social Engagement & Leaderboards
Users can search for friends & check friend requests received/sent.
Leaderboards allow the user to view rankings on a global scale, between friends, and isolate their own scores.
Challenges & Quizzes
These features give the user the chance to test their knowledge & compete to earn points towards their sustainability score.
What I Learned
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Agile Development
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mySQL
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PHP
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API's
What I Would Do Differently
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Standardize design elements across all pages.
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Take more time during each sprint