AVV – Nul Skrald

 

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Designprocess:

Fieldwork – Recycle Station

Interview with exsisting Nulskrald users

Video Snippets

Object Theatre

Meeting with the client

Process

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Fieldwork – Recycle station

To take a closer look at where trash ends up, we went to a recycle station located in Nørresundby. The hope was to gather insight about trash – do people deliver it, sorted or not? If so, what types of people deliver their trash sorted and who doesn’t? These questions could help us to see if there is a problem and the possible the target group. It would also give us a better understanding of how trash is sorted.

Wednesday the 10th of September we went there. We took a look in the flammable containers (the ones that should only contain trash that can’t be recycled), and they were full of trash, that could have gone to other containers, recycled and therefore save resources. We asked a garbage-worker there. And this is how the small interview went (we were not allowed to film or record people out there, but a small video of the trip have been made).

Q: Is your impression that people in general are good at sorting trash?
A: Not at all, no one does it, not young people, not old people. And they try to cheat, if they can see we are not looking all of their trash goes into flammable.

Q: How do your company communicate with people outside the area? and inside?
A: We talk with them when they are here. We have to because their trash are unsorted. We don’t communicate with the outside at all.. are you thinking the homepage? because i actually don’t know what kind of info it haves.

Q: How do you learn people about sorting trash?
A: People know how to, its not hard to see the difference on wood and metal, but they cheat if they can, so its a behavior thing.

Interview with exsisting Nulskrald users

Who was interviewed?
We interviewed two different people involved in project Nulskrald: Ulla and Inge. They both live in the city of Tversted with their families – each family consists of two adults and two children.

What happened?
We were invited into their homes. Inge demonstrated how she sorted her trash and how she stored it in the hallway until they took it to the bigger central bins in the city. She also had several smaller containers for plastic bottles or batteries. She was interviewed on camera where she talked about the project including ideas and frustrations. Ulla also sorts her trash – she does however have a different approach for storing the trash. She gathers all of the trash each day in a box and in the morning she takes it to the shed and sorts it in different containers (paper, plastic, foodwaste etc). Afterwards she was interviewed on camera.

What did we get out if it?
We observed how a family sorts their trash – although they have different approaches, the basic idea is the same: they have containers where they store it until it’s taken to the bigger bins in the city. They are both aware of the many issues regarding food waste and recycling and incorporate it in their every day life. We got to see / hear a lot of their good ideas and experiences. The input came from people who are passionate and deeply involved in the project.

 

The video is recorded at a garbage station. In the video the message is to sort your waste. But there is a difference between to sort your amount of waste and minimizing your food waste. Reasoned from our meeting with the client, we chose to work with minimizing food waste.

How did we use this method?
Instead of arranging the many video snippets on an online board, we watched the interview videos and took notes. These were notes of what the person being interviewed said (with timemark) combined with an overview of problems and ideas.

How did it work?
This worked really well – it was easy to get an overview of the ideas and problems. And it was easy to find the video snippets from the original material again if we had to take a different look.

Object Theatre

In the first week we had some problems with grasping around the problems. Which way should we go? How do they relate to each other? Etc. Therefore we decided to attend the Object Theatre Workshop to get a new look on the whole thing. At first we wasn’t sure if the workshop would do any good, because it’s hard to understand on before hand how sand and funny figures can give us a better perspective, but we decided to attend with an open mind.

How did we use this method?
At the workshop we choose a lot of figures, placed them in the sand and still nothing new. But when we learned how to start seeing groups and categories based on colour, materials, animals etc. paths in sand, figures direction, the meaning of figures stand etc. the whole thing started to give meaning – we could actually see our case in a sandbox full of weird figures.

How did it work?
In the end it was actually a great tool to discuss the whole case, its problems, directions, actors etc. It also created a better understanding of all these things compared to each other. We went in a bit sceptical, but came out with a way better understanding of our case.

 

Meeting with the client

Monday of week 38, we had a meeting with our client. Thomas is a PhD student and in 2 years he followed project ‘Nulskrald’ on the sideline, to get inside information to his assignment. His assignment is about how to change people’s behaviour, in relation to minimize the amount of garbage. At the meeting, we went through our first week and reflected on the interviews we had. We also informed Thomas about our (early) ideas. We got some links and tools, which could be used as inspiration and we got help to find our focus and direction of the concept.

Process

Storyboard

We made storyboards for each video sketch to see which scenes to film. Here’s an example of one of the sketches. This is for the movie Container ReDesign.

Core Design

Time Management
We kept track of our tasks by making a scrum board with tasks in either to do, doing or done. These were written and updated each day, so everyone knew what people were doing.

Videoskitser:

Milk Design

Community Sorting

Container ReDesign

Save Money Video Series

Milk design – Sketch 1

We have named our video sketch for the “The Milk Design” because it represents the new generation of mortgage Machines. With a combination between new digital technology (touch screen) and the machine as we know it from the supermarket today.

What is the design problem depicted?
To give a satisfactory picture of our machine, we started to build a machine of cardboard boxes. By making this machine in cardboard boxes we could design it as we wanted to, and without limit in terms of imagination. We started out with the front of the machine, where we placed our digital screen with information in the right corner. In the left corner we placed two buttons that should provide the consumer, with a receipt and a knowledge button. The knowledge button would give the consumer the opportunity to get information about CO2 emissions. And also provide the consumers with a perspective on the problem of not recycling the milk cartons.

The message with the video sketch?
Well the massage is that in Denmark we use more than 750 mio. milk cartons every year. They are not recycled in today’s Denmark, and that is a problem in terms of the environment questions. This also raise the questions about our behavior as consumers. – Is it really necessary to use such quantities of milk! By getting money and knowledge for our milk cartons maybe that could change the behavior as consumer? and in the end minimize our garbage.

Which techniques did you apply?
Well we took some different images/photos of the actual process of making this Digital Milk Machine. We used an iPhone 5S to make the video sketch, which made an successfully results. all the video were edited in adobe premiere demo version.

Community Sorting – Sketch 2

What is the design problem depicted?
The project Nulskrald has a desire to minimize people’s food waste/garbage. The desire to minimize this implies that citizens are aware of their food consumption and purchasing. In order to reduce this, it is important that you are committed and willing to chance your habits, so new habits can be formed. The new habits will be a start, to reduce unnecessary purchases food with extra packaging but also to be willing to wash and sort their waste.
This is a problem, because it affects the environment and it waste energy when it is burned, rather than be recycled (Ændring af forbrugeradfærd, case fra AVV, U-CrAc 2014).

What is the narrative or message in the sketch?
Our focus in this approach is motivation. What can we do to motivate citizens to participate, and change their habits?
This possible solution is to focus on the occupant area. This could be an apartment complex. If all of the complex helped each other and motivated each other to sort and focus more on their food waste, then could the residents give each other tools and inspiration.As the sketch shows, it’s bad to throw away garbage that are of different materials in the same dustbin. If you sorted your trash, then you wouldn’t be throwing out large garbage bags, but instead less garbage which was also easier to get rid of.

The’ carrot’ in this sketch is when a week/month/year is up, and the residents’ garbage hasn’t reached the limit for the week/month/year of garbage, then they will be rewarded. It could be a new playground, new windows, flowers etc. To be rewarded for good work, gives a bigger motivation, and that is what this sketch is about.

Which techniques did you apply?
We have recorded movie on a Samsung Galaxy S4. All scenery is drawn and colored and glued together. We have used various sticks, string and small details to make the sketch more fun and alive. All parts of the film was shot in small clips that are put together, however, images is also used. During the composition of the film, we used various sounds and different tones of colors to separate the good and the bad in the film. The soundtrack and small effects sounds make little details more focused and active. It gives the sketch more life.

Container ReDesign – Sketch 3

What is the design problem depicted?
People are not aware that they by a single action can make a difference. Every time they throw something out instead of recycling they are participating in polluting because the waste will be burned. And what could potentially be recycled now has to be produced all over again from new resources – f.eks. recycled paper could be made into new paper materials. Beside there is the whole issue of throwing out food waste. The more food waste they throw out, the more food has to be produced in the world which also pollutes and take a strain on the world’s resources.

What is the narrative or message in the sketch?
This video depicts a young man living in the city. He takes out his trash like he normally do, and dumps it in the big shared bin for the apartment complex. But instead of a traditional neutral bin, it is now covered in an interactive screen that shows a jungle. When he dumps the trash, a branch of the tree breaks off. The more trash is put in there, the more barren the forest get. It is to show how much a difference the weight of the trash has. The less trash, the more forest.

Which techniques did you apply?
At first the video was hand drawn with the scenarios in a storyboard. A team member went home and filmed the sequence on her mobile phone. It was decided to act the sketch out in real life and have some ‘special graphic effects’ added in the editing. This was decided because we wanted to try different filming and editing methods for the four sketches, so we got hands on experience on as many methods as possible before making the final video.

The video itself is two simple video snippets of a guy walking down the stairs and throwing out the garbage. In the editing a layer of ultra key was added to the bin, so it would show the jungle (a still photo put in a different video layer). Because the bin is moving in the clip and the colour is grey, it was hard to make the jungle appear clear and smooth.

To visualize the change from the healthy jungle to the cut down jungle an extra clip was added. It showed a photo of the bin with a photoshopped layer of the jungle … it slowly morphed into a photo of the bin of the cut down tree. This was chosen so the client could see how the bin changed from the action of the actor.

In this process we learned that videos shouldn’t be filmed horizontally, several takes of the video would be preferred and if we have to add some layers in the editing process, a green screen would be a nice method.

Save Money Video Series – Sketch 4

What is the design problem depicted?
Here we tried to expose an exemple for an episode in a series (preferably on YouTube) showing the numerous benefits of minimizing waste. We used 2 caracters doing opposite things (that should be the protagonists in each episode): John representing the consumer, an unfavorable situation, and Ken, a social model, an environmental-friendly guy. We used the phrase „while paying for his stuff” to create cognitive discomfort, and later we gave the solution to minimize the distress „ken saves money by eating wild grown fruits or gardening”, and further, we emphasized the benefits of saving money „so he can then relax or travel” in order to get the message more persuasive.

What is the narrative or message in the sketch?
The message of the series is: minimasing waste will reduce the cost of living and increase the quality of your life! All with an emphasis on intangible things, experiences, rather than material things. The promotion of money saving, is NOT about “don’t purchase today this product, but tomorrow another one, perhaps more expensive” BUT: to escape the stress caused by debt, bills etc., get independent, travel more or other activities ( like in this video).

Which techniques did you apply?
As i’m really bad at drawing, i just wrote on google „cartoons making program” and after tring 100 different ones, i finnaly chose GoAnimate.com. So i did the cartoons in 5 minutes, but when i tried to save it, they would charge me 40$. Of course i wouldn’t pay, so i downloaded a program to record the desktop, then another one for the sound. Adobe premiere was used only to match/fit the video with the audio. Then i used a common program online to write the intro text in the begining, YTD (youtubedowloader) for the soudtrack, a common video cutter online, and the work was done.