Clean My City!
Anthony S. Protho
An idea
“The Amazon is burning!!” Shouted protestors on the fronts of San Francisco’s streets. They yelled for the attention of others to take notice, and asked my friend and I, while we were walking, “What are you doing to help the amazon?”. Our Planet’s health has become a large problem, and from my research -out of my other interests- I found that San Francisco had dirtier streets than even that of some 3rd world country slums. That alone was incredibly sad, but leads on to show a map of human feces on the streets that can cause airborne diseases. Because of this, I’ve decided that I wanted to try to help our planet in any way I could.
Economic gain as well as international ignorance has been the main cause for our planets state, and we are told time and time again about the severity of our situation. Because of the amount of people who want to help our planet, and for those who need a bit of encouragement, my idea surrounds this topic and hopes not only to help our smaller scale cities one at a time, but the planet as a whole.(Pollution Issues)
Politics
More than half of all american political parties agree that products under 50% biodegradable material should be banned. Showing support for less waste and more “Earth safe products”. The party that shows the most support is the Green’s Party, which believes that objects made of less than 75% biodegradable material should be outlawed. These parties are supportive of the domain, and can help product stability in the future. The Green party being most stable on their policies, are very unlikely to change their opinion about helping our planets needs, and will be the largest place of support.(ISideWith)
Economics
Farmers can be greatly affected by littering, as well as other businesses who have spent an amount of money in order to help keep their environments clean. The only people that truly benefit from littering are cleaning businesses. Supporting economics includes government spending on cleaning, and giving money to those who turn in plastic to recycling centers. Making economic gain only minimal through donations or special use of the application.(Rodriguez, Destina)
Social
All over the internet is a trend to help save our planet, with many advertisements featuring eco-friendly products, and posts to help spread awareness and concerns. Some like instagram showing a small clip of a crow doing recycling, telling the viewer that “If a bird can do it, so can you!”. People want to care for our planet, but don’t quite have the will to actually do so. With some incentives people may be more likely to help throw away garbage and recycle instead of littering. Creative things such as “Cigg Seeds” and Coca Cola’s recycling arcades, give people the incentive to recycle with some type of reward(In these cases being able to throw your cigarette butts on the ground and them having a chance to grow a tree, and recycling a plastic bottle in order to play a video game)(TrendHunter.com)
Technology
Different from other eco-friendly apps, in which either help you preserve water or other utilities. My ideal app is designed to clean the messes made by others rather than reducing the amount of waste made. This app will encourage users to clean up, or easily report places that need to be cleaned. They can also earn gifts for helping. Reducing trash not only city streets and parks, but amounts of pollution that can find its way to our oceans. At ACUA they have created a very similar idea to mine, in which helps gather volunteers to areas who can help clean largely populated areas. As well as getting many people to adopt a highway through ad campaigns, while making it easy to join their movement. It’s simple to join and help out one’s own community. However, I have never heard of this until doing some amount of research. I really like the idea of a before and after picture for the area such as done with their program, and I wish them the best of luck in growing their organization. However, I must stress my concerns that I wish no one gets hurt or sick from touching anything they shouldn’t. On that note, if there is any dangerous objects on the ground users should be prompted to report it to the city or cleaning industries to properly handle these situations. But just make things easier on them and throw away your own garbage!(How We’re Using Technology to Combat Litter)
Growing the idea
In order to get better insight as to what people think, I took to the streets as the protestors did, and tried my best to talk to people about how they felt about our planets health. And more specifically, I asked how clean their hometown was compared to San Francisco and if they had any thoughts as to how to solve this.
Let me just say that as a college student straight from high school, user interviewing was very hard, and rejection therapy is the absolute worse! But I got some answers -out of the many people who just passed on by. Hearing others’ opinions is very important when coming up with a new idea, because we are creating for others, not ourselves. So the users must be able to be happy with your product and how it works.
Many exclaimed how dirty the streets of San Francisco was and how their hometown of Minnesota, Switzerland, and many other places were a lot cleaner. They also mentioned applications that I haven’t heard of before meant to help clean up or prevent waste from being polluted.
I attempted to create a mind map as to expand off of my ideas relating to my domain. And it brought a good perspective as to the many ways I can tackle this problem. This brings more ideas in mind such as community builders in which all environmentally inclined people can chat across, or seed bearing products in which are highly biodegradable and helps grow more trees.
My Idea
The idea is simple, but the journey is hard. The app will help two different types of users (the ones who create tickets and those who want to volunteer), clean our planet by cleaning one city at a time. It will be supportive of larger get togethers and events, let others donate to the cause, and go up the leaderboard for the users acts towards helping our community. Volunteer events can be funded by and supported by the app, but this app is purely for helping the planet so there will not be much economic gain. This can also serve as a cleaning company finder to help others get things cleaned by calling up a professional . However a major difference is adding an incentive to those who want to volunteer and help, such as free food or money back for their time. Another idea is giving a way to contact cleaning businesses, to clean larger or more toxic waste that shouldn’t be handled by any regular consumer.
User Jounery
The user will see a dumping in an alley on their way to work, but because they are too busy to clean the mess themselves, they will instead create a quick ticket in which other users can see, and will clean up the mess. This main concept will guide my product into being something everyone can use, and gives everyone a way to help, whether they have the time for it or not.
What now?
This started to sprout ideas, and it became clearer as to how I wanted to create this application. So I made a wireframe in order to give me insight as to how the product would work. Then I did more user interviews to see if they could understand my idea, and if anything should be changed right away. This saved me an awful lot of time and coding, and helped me understand more about what users were looking forward to, and what they wanted. I hope to start this product by creating the first 3 pages (numbered in the photo) and I hope to add in a user identification page so that users can sign up/sign in and their private information is kept secure. I may ask for help from others about my product and if they would like to take part in the creation of this application. Though it probably won’t be the best thing in the world, I hope that this will be a great start to a very beneficial product that helps our planet become a better place.
References:
“29 Creative Anti-Littering Campaigns.” TrendHunter.com, TREND HUNTER Inc., 2 Sept. 2014, www.trendhunter.com/slideshow/littering-campaigns.
“How We’re Using Technology to Combat Litter.” Blog: How We’re Using Technology to Combat Litter, www.acua.com/community/blog/acoblitteraters/.
“The Political Parties Stances on Environmental Issues.” ISideWith, www.isidewith.com/political-parties/issues/environmental.
Pollution Issues, www.pollutionissues.com/Pl-Re/Politics.html.
Rodriguez, Destina. “Economic Relationships in LITTERING:” Prezi.com, 6 Mar. 2015, prezi.com/qlutsx_8n27p/economic-relationships-in-littering/.
