Ritual

This project is a failure story of a month-long effort to create an experience of a ritual of using reusable bags while shopping. We used the Human-Cantered Design process in the execution of this project as elaborated below.

Inspiration

During this stage, we created the design challenge and our interview guide for shop owners and customers. Next, we had two field visits where we talked with the shop owners about their selling habits especially packaging and observed their plastic use. Also, we explored more about the trends that they often pick up to reduce single-use plastics. It was very interesting to learn about their incentives such as the discount system and the points to attract people to bring their own containers.

Ideation

During the ideation stage, we came up with a couple of solutions such as video, game experience, and a bag. We decided to design the bag since the idea seemed to be innovative. This was going to be a special type of bag that would have assigned space for lunch box, a bottle, and a hook to keep reusable plastic bags.

As we designed our tangible bag in the class, I was thinking to have a test and control prototype. For example, the test user experiencing the bag that has specified space for lunch box, bottle and a reusable bag to see the convenience, motivation, and probability to use while the control user using the normal bag and then comparing the experience. Although we could not do this as our project evolved, I believe this prototype could have the potential to be a market product and I would have loved to explore the insights.

Credit: Auey Matneeya

During the design, our team’s concern was the lack of expertise and material quality. For example, the materials we used were not very strong. However, the human-centered design doesn’t encourage the designers to come up with something perfect in the initial stages, rather the whole point is to explore and use cheap materials to test the ideas. This ideology inspired me to think it’s okay if we proceed with cheap materials as this is more of rapid prototyping to test the design and then our idea could be developed in the more perfect form later.

We worked on developing the prototype but soon was the turning stage. However, we stepped back as we realized that we are not supposed to solve problems rather explore the solution. Also, we decided to co-create with our participants. During interviewing the customer, we found some pain points. For example, they did not like to wash the lunch box. Further, she put forward the major suggestion to focus on owners and make the change there.

Failure Prototype

During the design, our team’s concern was the lack of expertise and material quality. For example, the materials we used were not very strong. However, the human-centered design doesn’t encourage the designers to come up with something perfect in the initial stages, rather the whole point is to explore and use cheap materials to test the ideas. This ideology inspired me to think it’s understandable if we proceed with cheap materials as this is more of rapid prototyping to test the design and then our idea could be developed in the more perfect form later.

We worked on developing the prototype but soon was the turning stage when we stepped back as we realized that we are not supposed to solve problems rather explore solutions. Therefore, we decided to co-create with our participants. We changed the idea of the bag with space of lunch, bottle and hook with reusable bags to only reusable bags and home containers for food and fruit shopping.

For this project, what has been interesting is to learn the difference between habit and ritual. It is kind of tricky to convey how we want our users to reduce the use of plastic bags as a ritual with mindfulness and awareness. However, in reality, it can become a habit (an involuntary act) as they practice over time. Just like culture, as I reflect, I see rituals becoming habits where one can be engaged in actions that he/she is not aware of the reasons and purpose in a deeper sense but with practice, an act is likely to become a habit.

Later, we interviewed Wisuttinee Sangpradab (Kate), a 52 years old woman. She lives with her family at home that includes her husband, mother in law, 3 daughters, 2 housemates, and 1 elderly caretaker.

She goes to work on weekdays, grab her breakfast from home and eat in the car while she is stuck in traffic. During the office, she gets her lunch at the canteen in the office building and has dinner at home cooked by housemates. She often buys food from the canteen roughly 2-3 times a week and a back home to eat with family members.

Buying that food back home, the food vendor always put food in plastic bags that create plastic waste. She knows the negative impacts of plastic waste because she is working on projects about zero waste and circular economy and therefore, she is always conscious about single-use plastics. On weekends when she goes to the market to buy food and ingredients, she brings her own foldable bags with her. Her concern is that the food that comes in the plastic bag is always oily and she doesn’t want her reusable bag to get dirty.

She shares that she has containers that she is interested to use but hasn’t used yet. As our prototype, she used her using her own container and reusable bags to buy food, fruit, and dessert.

Feedback

Mrs. Kate felt good as she shared that her colleagues were inspired and impressed with her act of bringing her own container and using a reusable bag. Further, she was able to reduce four plastic bags and hopes to continue this ritual.