Marine life saver

Social and mobile computing, 2018

BEHAVIOR CHANGE:

REDUCE PLASTIC BAGS USAGE

An interactive installation that aims to raise awareness, encourage discussion and have people change their behaviour of plastic bag usage in a self-motivated manner.

OVERVIEW

Globally, one trillion of single-use plastic bag are consumed each year. This is equivalent to using 2 million per minute. It can take up to 1000 years to degrade plastic bags. Millions of animals died each year because of plastic waste.

Although governmental actions can be somehow effective in reducing plastic bag usage, it is more important to raise people’s awareness of the different impacts of plastic bags on the environment and ultimately have people change their behaviour in a self-motivated manner.Therefore, we created an interactive installation that emphasis on collective effort in a team of four.

GAMIFY EDUCATIONAL MESSAGE

The installation consists of 2 parts. The first part is a two player game where users need to compete with each other in catching the plastic bags before they fall into the ocean. When the game ends, the score of both players will be summed up, inducing the message that saving the environment requires a collective effort.

The second part consists of three different messages in educating users more about the impact of plastic on the environment, how their contribution can help and finally ends with a call to action to persuade behaviour change.

The project was displayed on a showcase. The project successfully raises people’s awareness and attention to interact with it. However, it fails to make people stay to read the message which is the more significant part of the whole project. This shows the importance of the fun element, once it is taken away, people’s attention is taken away as well.

From the insights, future design direction should consider more on how to make the message prominent to users and how to engage people to stay for the message part. One potential method will be creating a short animation which is more entertaining and easy for people to understand. Another design consideration is adding interactive elements in the message part, such that people can continue to learn through a playful experience.

SUPPORTING MATERIALS