•Design workshops with householders

•Ethnographic fieldwork with karang guni men and of sites of rubbish disposal

•Interviews and observations of charity thrift shops and organisations 

•Workshops are organised for householders to understand recycling practices using interactive and visual tools

•Participants are also asked to envision future recycling platforms and socio-technical possibilities

Usability Testing
The app prototype was initially tested with students and researchers in SUTD and in the coming few months to be trialed in some neighborhoods

Notes from the usability session (see above) and subsequent proposition to change the transaction model of the app (see below). 

When we were there, there were many students who make up the main bulk of customers shopping there. As the store is close to many art schools, we were told that many students would buy cheap clothes to be used for performances or art works. 

Clothes are the most popular items sold and are strategically placed at the store front. The back of the store contains small antiques, books, bags, CDs and other assorted items. The framed artworks on the wall are also for sale. Items are priced scaled according to their original prices and made affordable for their main customers who are foreign domestic workers. I was told that the store gets very crowded during the opening times on the first opening day of week (with people queuing up before the opening time).

   i. SCWO is unable to go out of their way to collect from donors while MINDS would only do it for larger donations. The P2P model that the karang guni operates may not be appropriate on the scale of charity organisations

   ii. Although MINDS is a larger social enterprise, their main concern is the extra workload (for the store manager) in managing the app. They are only willing to arrange to collect donations of large quantities. 

   iii. Having to micro-manage and negotiate individual donors is not something charities are willing to commit. MINDS prefers a B2B solution where an organisation/entity is able to collect enough that is worth their time and effort to collect (e.g. collection drives by organisation or a suggestion by their store manager, a collection box in a shopping mall). 

   iv. MINDS feels that unlike a phone call, a messaging system in an app is insufficient in educating potential donors of the charity’s values, goals, and informing their reasons for rejecting/accepting items – although more labour intensive than simply rejecting on an app, they are willing to expend more effort on public education

   i. Even if the app is streamlined into accept/reject decisions, MINDS is concerned that rejecting too many offers would be bad for their charity image

   i. MINDS was concerned if choosing a specific charity to donate to makes choices too narrow, e.g. what if someone wants to donate to MINDS but they don’t want it and SCWO wants it?

   ii. The app should not unnecessarily increase the amount of work that they are already doing. MINDS feels that some functions of the app are too complicated and would take up too much time to manage (the first point), e.g. messaging function is useful but too much of a hassle to micro-manage. 

iii. For both SCWO and MINDS, there little to no reason to use the map and scheduling functions as they do not conduct regular collections from residential areas.