Skimp
A subscription based website paired with mainstream physical stores, aimed at alleviating the monthly hassle of purchasing household necessities. No more fights about who used the last of whatever and didn't replace it.
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Approach
Primary and secondary research Insight analysis Opportunities analysis Customer Journey Map User Testing Final screens |
Personal Responsibilities
Unit prototyping and design, scheduling and maintenance of units, team oversight, presenting findings. Group: Elijah Haines, Rita Lei, Jessica Yang Time Frame: 5 weeks |
Brief
Create a behavioral change in a group of 10 or more people |
The Problem
Keeping essential supplies stocked for people who live together can cause conflict between them. Often running out of something and not having it replaced or having it replaced with an inferior product can increase tensions and cause conflict between people living together.
The questions that we asked ourselves
Can we reduce the amount of paper towels people use by giving them an informational nudge at the right time?
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How simple can we make the nudge?
Can we reduce the amount of paper towels people use by giving them an informational nudge at the right time?
and
How simple can we make the nudge?
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Physical Prototype
Our first order of business was to get a base line of how many paper towels were used in a certain time frames (e.g. one day, one week) and how many paper towels each person used.
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We decided to make Arduino units that would give us two data points; time of paper towel use and number of paper towels used. With this data we could know what the average number of paper towels used, and when the busiest times were so we could place our nudge accordingly.
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The Nudge
How simple can you make an informational nudge ? We tried really hard to make it as simple and understandable to as many different people as we could.
We wanted to use a simple diagram and iconography that was mainstream for people of all ages and backgrounds.
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Results
The best case scenario for us was to elicit some measurable change in behavior. As long as we could measure it we were going to be happy. What we got was way beyond what we expected. Great results from such a simple informational nudge.
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Process
We learned so much from this process, mostly in our failures and some in things we over looked initially. Like making sure that your equipment is well made, having backups for your backups, equipment maintenance is critical, reset your equipment every time you change the battery, and the list goes on and on. What was most interesting about this project was simply , how a little bit of information at the right time/place made sucha huge difference.
Before starting this project we ran the details by our teacher, the dean, other students, maintenance dept., and facilities to make sure that everyone was okay with what we were doing and that no privacy boundaries were being crossed.