Project 5: Beta Implementation
Deployment
Github Repo
Design Revisions
- Sync registering new user with access level none
- Impossible to manually change the access level of all users. Most users will be normal users who should not have access to app-level changes such as updating a bin location or what the bin accepts as a material. Admin users can be manually added.
- Further revision and scoping down due to time constraints meant we actually did not end up finishing implementation for different user access levels. Instead, all bins will be prepopulated in the app and users will only be able to report the bin capacity. Any other updates to the bin will require a member of team-w to manually edit the bin or add a new bin.
- Removed the ‘#’ symbol from the numbered Plastic materials
- There was strange unicode conversions that made matching the ‘#’ symbol difficult when querying MongoDB.
- Longitude, Latitude coordinates instead of just x,y
- Specified the coordinates for each bin to be in the form [longitude, latitude] because that’s what the map API we are using requires
- Colored markers on the map for each different type of bin
- Decided to use colored markers to easily differentiate between bin types on the map without having to click into the map. This will help expert users who are familiar with the map’s coloring scheme to more readily find the bin that they need.
- User does not need to choose what to search by
- Instead of making the user choose between item, material, and RIC for their search query, we just search our entire database for the user’s query and return anything that includes their query in the name. This makes it easier for a user without proper waste disposal knowledge to use the search feature.
- Did not implement Achievement, Community, or leaderboard due to time constraints
- The Community, Achievement, and leaderboard concepts/features were all part of our gamification strategy to encourage users to recycle and compost. We decided to not implement these due to time constraints and because we thought the Score concept would be sufficient at gamifying the app and encouraging users to come back to see their sustainability contributions increase over time. Additionally, we decided to not implement a leaderboard since we did not want to risk users trying to increase their waste just to be on the leaderboard. One of our ideas was to use the contamination percentage rather than the number of items recycled; however, we were not able to figure out how to collect data for the contamination percentage with the time we had. Overall, these were all ultimately not required for our impact case goal which was to allow users to look up the proper disposal method for an item and then find the proper bin for it, so we believed not implementing these would not harm our app.
- Did not implement UserSettings due to time constraints
- The UserSettings concept would have allowed different users to set their own default locations, however we had to hardcode the default map location for a user (purpose of UserSettings concept) to be at MIT due to time constraints. We still believe users not near MIT campus would still be able to easily use the app by interacting with the map itself much like one does with Google Maps. However, by not implementing this concept, our strongest impact is now more limited to users in the MIT geographical area. Users are still able to scroll around our map to find bins near them, but they will have to scroll around every time they use the app which is inefficient for them.
- Did not implement similar items, commonly recycled items, commonly misrecycled items, recently recycled items due to time constraints
- It was hard to find similar materials without using AI or hardcoding and hard to collect and aggregate all of our data for the commonly recycled items, commonly misrecycled items, and recently recycled items.These were all purely nice-to-have features and not necessary for our original impact case and we decided we did not need to overcomplicate our app.
User Testing Task List
| Task | Instruction | Item Tested | Rationale |
|---|---|---|---|
| Search item to dispose | You have a tupperware that is plastic 4. Can you find out how to dispose of plastic 4? | Guest User + Search | Test if users realize they can look up items without making an account |
| Find any recycling bin | Can you find a recycling bin that is not full? | Default Map | Test if it’s easy to find a bin to find a not full bin and of the correct type |
| Find far away bins of specific type | Can you find a Compost bin, a Recycling Bin, a Solid Waste bin, and a Donation bin in Central Square? | Map Navigation + Colored Map Markers | Follow up task to the one above, should not take the user long to do this. How easy is it for users to navigate through the map? Are the colored map markers intuitive? |
| Create Account + Log Recycle from profile | Can you make an account and then log that you have recycled 2 items and composted 1 item? | Log Recycle | Is the effort to log the disposal higher than the satisfaction of logging it for the user? Need the gamification aspect to be easy and fun so that users are motivated to use WasteWise |
| Report bin status | You threw an item away but realized that the bin located at Kresge is full. Can you report the bin as full? | Bin on Map | Requires them to find the bin again and then click into it to actually report it. Checks if UI is intuitive and what is expected |
| Log recycle from bin | Can you log that you just threw away an item at this bin? | Log Recycle | do they try to go back to their profile to log the item or do they know to click into the bin to log the item? |
User Interviews
- User A: practices sustainability regularly - Sunday 12/10 6pm
- User B: does not think about sustainability regularly - Friday 12/8 afternoon
- User C: does not think about sustainability regularly - Sunday 12/10 evening