Reflection – Storytelling

Challenge  Plastic waste has become a huge problem in India. The majority of the products sold have a  plastic packaging and most of those are littered and not dumped appropriately. This has caused  a variety of issues linke -

1. Adverse effects on human health  2. Disruption of food chains  3. Groundwater pollution  4. Land Pollution  5. Air pollution if and when burned  6. Animals die by swallowing it

It has been tried to decrease the use of plastic but still there hasn't been any significant  decrease in its usage and hence a solution needs to be developed where plastic can be  disposed of and not littered and more importantly people need to be encouraged to do so.

Selection  Since the problem and solution were quite direct and pre-defined, no major tool was required  during the early stages like ideation,define, prototype development etc. Hence the learning  launch tool was used for testing in the pilot region and analysing the results gathered.

Application  After the solution was developed, a pilot region was identified. This was important to get actual  proof that the idea actually works and is not just assumed anymore. The idea was that vending  machines were installed in gurgaon cyber city where people can dump their plastic and in return  they will receive money for it. Various stages of that were analysed and actions were taken to  make the idea successful by using the learning launch tool.

Insight  In the beginning of the pilot the vending machine was not a big success. People would just walk  past it and won't notice the machine and what it does. I realized that the machine is not self- explanatory and people really don't know what it does or were not excited enough to read the  instructions written on it.  This insight helped us a lot and we added a monitor screen and a small speaker and played a  video on how to use it and how it benefits the user. When people saw the video they realized  that it's a machine where you can dump plastic waste and they will receive money for it.

Approach  This approach caused slight complications as the solution designed was not self-explanatory  and hence people found it difficult to get accustomed to it. The alternate approach that I should  have used was to incorporate visualization tool, building a prototype and ask people what they  thought this machine does and make it better so that it it is easily understandable.

