UXAUS2019 Day 1

Bite-sized activism for STREAT! Helping reduce our environmental footprint collectively

How do you massage small, discrete chunks of volunteer time into a program that creates something bigger than the sum parts? That’s the question we asked ourselves when we set up a Human Centred Design (HCD) community volunteer framework to support STREAT’s Planet Plan knowing that many people want to volunteer time to something that serves a higher purpose but has limited time available to commit.

STREAT is a hospitality-based social enterprise that provides supported vocational training and holistic personal support to young people aged 16-24 who really need a hand. While we are working on maximising our social footprint we’re also working hard to minimise our environmental footprint as part of an ambitious Planet Plan!

In this talk, we’ll share our “bite sized” volunteer framework and how we’ve been applying it to formalise a Planet Plan and for the first time to help solve a challenge: How to recycle, reduce and eliminate single cup, bottle and can use through a Human Centred Design and product innovation approach. For this challenge we’ve been working with universities, people with available volunteer days and individual HCD practitioners who have a few hours they can contribute. We’ll share what’s gone well in modifying traditional HCD activities and the things we want to improve on. We'll also tell you what happens when you morph a design "sprint" into a "relay". And, we’ll share some of the interventions and prototypes we’ve come up with including behavioural design nudges, product innovation and closed systems for re-usable coffee cups.