Vermi

Defining the Problem

The Problem Space

A staggering 70% of Americans do not compost. However, a survey conducted by the National Waste and Recycling Center found that 67% of non-composters would start to compost if information and resources were more readily available.

According to the World Wildlife Fund, improperly thrown out food waste produces as much methane as about 32.6 million cars.

Our Users

Our team chose to focus on improving the composting experience for college students.

From our preliminary research, we discovered that college students care a lot about their environmental impact, but are typically unable to compost when they are away at college due to lack of space, time, motivation, or collection services.

Product Opportunity Gap

Our product opportunity gap (POG) was refined as we conducted user research, value opportunity analysis, and competitor landscape analysis. We fine-tuned our POG to be as specific to our user base and team goals as possible.

Our method for selecting the final POG goes as follows:

Total POGs

5 generated per team member

Themes

from Open Card Sorting

Final POGs

from weighted matrix

Giving us our final product opportunity gap:

How can we make composting for college students communal, intuitive, convenient, and fun in shared housing?

Research & Synthesis

User Research

Research Methods

Direct Observation
Collected qualitative data on composting setups, frequency of composting, and collection & disposal methods.

Preliminary User Interviews
Collected qualitative data on composting setups, frequency of composting, and collection & disposal methods.Asked questions to understand why people did (or did not) compost, what motivates them, and what their pain-points with composting are.

Focused User Interviews
Focused on composting pain-points and how to work around them based on key themes from preliminary interviews. This included questions on smell, ease of composting, incorporation into small spaces, and time investment.

Key Takeaways

Composting is a privilege that requires financial and emotional stability.

Composting is not feasible for those living in municipalities where compost isn’t collected.

It is difficult to change habits in adapting to composting.

People don’t produce enough food scraps on their own to justify investing in a composting product.

Synthesis

Competitor Analysis

From internet research, we identified 3 main competitors, then analyzed their performance in pain categories outlined from preliminary user research. Our three main competitors are: electric composters, tumbler composters, and vermicomposters.

Value Opportunity Analysis

We then selected value opportunity attributes based on team rankings: emotions, ergonomics, aesthetics, identity, impact, core tech, and quality. After, we rated the importance of each attribute for our product, and for each of the three competitors.

Defining Product Requirements

From there, we created 50 total key product requirements based on our value opportunity attributes. The requirements surrounded ease of use, comfort, social, enabling, independence, security, and safety.

Ideation

Concept Generation

Our team independently came up with at least 10 solutions each, keeping in mind our product requirements and takeaways from user research.

In my designs, I chose to focus on incorporating a community aspect into existing products, and used analogies to come up with new solutions.

Concept Selection

Our team then engaged in convergent & divergent brainstorming via positioning charts, dot voting, and borda counting to narrow down all of the options for our final product concept.

Concepts

from divergent ideation

Concepts

after filling the gaps on the chart

Top Rated
Concepts

1 Final Concept: Communal Vermi-Composting!

Prototyping

Lo-Fidelity Prototyping

There were two main assumptions that our team wanted to test with our initial prototypes:

Safety

Our product is smell-proof and does not leak.

Social

Our product helps build a sense of community.

Prototype A: Testing the leakage amount & strength of smell.

Prototype B: Testing the community aspect.

Testing

For Prototype A, we documented the strength of the smell and amount of leakage coming from the compost over the course of a week.

For Prototype B, we introduced our prototype to subjects and documented their initial feelings and sense of community before and after viewing our prototype.

We incorporated all of the feedback and data into our final prototypes.

The Final Product

Building Community Over Sustainability

Our final concept is a communal worm farm that can be customized to create a sense of community among users in shared housing. Our team created a CAD model of our final concept using Solid Works, and laser cut a physical prototype using wood and acrylic.

Visual of Final Prototype

Physical Prototype
Constructed using wood and clear acrylic. The shape was designed in Adobe Illustrator and cut using a laser cutter.

CAD Prototype
This prototype was rendered with the computer aided design program SolidWorks.

Features

Primary composting bin

The primary green bin contains the ecosystem where worms break down food waste and organic matter into fertilizer.

Customizable worm habitat wallpaper

The customizability of the Vermi connects users in shared housing by allowing them to create a personalized composting system together.

Glass window on primary composting bin

The glass window on the front of the composting bin allows users to view the live process of vermicomposting.

Air holes and mesh bottom in primary bin

Small, circular mesh openings in the bin are small allow for proper air flow throughout the worm ecosystem.

Worm tea collection bin

Excess moisture -- called “worm tea” -- created by the composting process will soak through the primary bin’s mesh bottom to the collection bin below.

Community-Centric Composting

Background

Team Acknowledgements