Design Thinking for Innovation Assignment  Mind Mapping for Recycling Contamination  Note: Due to the ongoing coronavirus outbreak, it is not possible to actually apply these design thinking  tools at the moment. The following is a plan for how the tools could be applied to a real problem. The  problem I am describing is a real one.

Miami-Dade County’s Department of Solid Waste Management (DSWM) provides solid waste collection  services to over 330,000 households in the County’s unincorporated area as well as contracted  municipalities. This includes biweekly curbside collection of recyclable materials such as paper, cans,  bottles, cartons, and cardboard. The materials are placed together in a large, wheeled cart with a lid and  collected by a collection vehicle with a mechanical “arm.”  Recycling collection is currently outsourced to  a private vendor, who pays the County a portion of the revenue received from the sale of recyclable  materials.

A major problem currently facing DSWM, and solid waste entities nationwide, is a high rate of  contamination in residents’ carts. Contamination occurs when residents place materials in the cart that  are not recyclable, such as diapers or food waste. Another form of contamination occurs when residents  place materials that might be recyclable under certain conditions, but not through the curbside  collection program. This is often known as “aspirational recycling” and examples include the placement  of egg cartons or plastic bags in the bin; these products are commonly recyclable at local grocery stores,  but not curbside. Unfortunately, a high contamination rate results in less material being recycled and  presents risks of revenue reductions or even service disruptions (if the service is no longer profitable).  DSWM has expended considerable resources on resident education, but the problem has persisted.

Design thinking is often useful for problems involving complex human behaviors, like the recycling  contamination problem, which arises from individuals’ motivations, beliefs and behaviors surrounding  recycling. The design question could be framed as “How might Miami-Dade County provide services that  result in successful residential recycling?” The Mind Mapping tool could be used in this process to  synthesize findings from customer research.

I would use preexisiting research conducted by DSWM several years ago, when a consultant was hired to  conduct customer focus groups regarding their recycling habits. Ideally, I would complement this prior  study by conducting several ethnographic interviews with residents, taking care to ensure ethnic, gender  and age diversity among the interviewees. (Because the majority of County residents were born outside  of the United States, ensuring ethnic diversity is extremely important.)

I would schedule a work session with project team members, who would optimally include  representatives of both the DSWM and recycling contractor administration and operations teams, as  well as representatives from the organizations’ information / customer service work units. If possible,  representatives from other regional solid waste organizations and from other local businesses that  provide certain recycling services (such as grocery or electronic stores) would be invited as well.  At the  work session, participants would be invited to use the “sticky note” method of writing down key  observations from research material posted on the wall. Through facilitation, these observations would  be sorted into groupings of similar ideas; these groupings would then be refined into insights and,  ultimately, design criteria. A key facilitation question would be the one noted in the Mind Mapping  video from Week 3: “If anything were possible, what criteria would our new design meet?”

The insights I have gained regarding this tool include:

•  The Mind Mapping tools is very similar to a tool I have previously used called the “affinity  process” for developing customer satisfaction survey questions. In the affinity process, teams  identify “favorable customer outcomes” for specific process touch points. Team members  write the outcomes on sticky notes, group them into categories, and use the groupings to  develop survey questions. It is exciting to learn a new and more expansive use of the “sticky  note” method. By a) focusing initially on “what is” and b) not limiting the exercise to specific  process touch points, a wider range of insights may be possible.

•  In the traditional Lean Six Sigma methodology, team members ask the question “why?”  iteratively in order to identify the root causes of problems. The iterative use of the question  “so what?” in the Mind Mapping technique resonates with me as a similar method of getting  to the heart of an issue.

Without actually facilitating a Mind Mapping work session, it’s difficult to guess what I might do  differently the next time. Key things I would watch for during the session include:

•  Did the participants appear comfortable and engaged?

•  Did the room layout and setup allow for participants to move comfortably? Were the materials  on the walls easily visible?

•  Did the work session feel too short or too long?

•  How successful (or unsuccessful) was I as a facilitator in leading the team to develop insights and  design criteria? What factors contributed?

The answers to these questions would inform lessons learned and lead to adjustments in future work  sessions.

