A platform that redistributes leftover art & design materials across the Brown University and RISD community, promoting the reuse and repurposing of unused resources to minimize waste.
Ux Researcher
Ui/Ux Designer
Nina Chang, Sunjoo Park, Amrita Desmet, Jeffrey Lin, & Fiona Liu
Figma
Illustrator
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Second Life bridges the communication gap between students who want to give away their materials and the students who need them.
Easily interchangeable between needs to receive and give away.
Enables students to share what they are looking for and help others complete their requests in an open network.
Second Life encourages students to participate in material giveaways + swaps through an easy and convenient process.
Students can easily filter and browse through items posted near them.
Students can also find and contact potential buyers or sellers fast through the Live feature.
Students can easily propose meetup times and locations for in person transactions
Second Life ensures consistent and reliable means of redistributing materials, fostering trust amongst its users.
Only available to current students to ensure safety
Secures interaction
Keeps users accountable
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RISD students are well aware of the waste issue plaguing their campus. Students often obtain new materials, most of which go barely used and are eventually discarded.
This issue becomes evident when visiting the workrooms at the end of each school year, where a substantial amount of perfectly usable supplies are found to be thrown away.
create an experience encouraging College Hill students to redistribute their unneeded materials within their community and foster a culture of reuse?
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For our research, we surveyed 55 students at RISD and Brown University.
find the majority of their art materials are acquired through classes.
Have leftover materials.
favor buying new materials over getting leftover ones.
rarely or never obtain materials from others.
Is it found that buying is favored over sharing
out of 10
Average of what interviewees ranked their college's ability to manage material waste
out of 10
Average of what interviewees ranked their options to redistribute unneeded materials
Interviews were conducted to answer some of the questions that resulted from the surveys. Some notable quotes include:
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There is a gap in communication between students who want to give away their materials and students who need them.
Students are less likely to participate in material giveaways + swaps when the process of doing so is bothersome and slow.
Current methods of redistributing materials, like word of mouth, are inconsistent and unreliable.
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Denise is a declutterer. She hates messes and is also a bit lazy, so she seeks the easiest solution: throwing materials away. She feels guilty doing this but also does not want to compromise her time.
She would like a convenient way of dealing with unneeded items without creating too much waste.
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Joe is a hobby artist who wants to try out new art mediums. However, he does not want to spend too much money on materials.
He would like to find artists and designers who are willing to sell their leftover materials for a cheap price.
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Mary hates throwing things out. She usually list materials on thrifting apps and Instagram stories to find new homes for them. However, it is not always a reliant method.
She would like a way to find consistent consumers to ensure that her materials are going into the hands of those who need it the most.
*From the point of view of a buyer
For the first round of prototyping, multiple variations of major app frames were designed. Team members broke up into partnerships to collaborate on a single area before gathering as a group and critiquing and sharing ideas.
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Testers were asked to walk us through the user flow of each frame and identify areas that could be improved or seem confusing to them. They were also asked to choose between different variations of designs.
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*Green accent color was chosen to help user associate app with a sense of sustainability.
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The art waste issue is tackled by giving art students a platform to redistribute unneeded materials and encouraging in-person transactions to prevent shipping waste.
This project helped bring awareness to the art waste issue on RISD's campus, sparking conversations about potential solutions like the Second Life Platform to address the problem.
