Our story begins in the salubrious surroundings of the shared bin store below my flat. (Not the greatest setting I know, but please bear with me!)
Now I’m never usually one to get wound up by residential issues, but lately I’ve been quite bothered by the fact that people keep putting green bags of recyclable waste into the silver wheely bins which are intended for ordinary black bags. So much so, that I’ve actually been moving green bags to their rightful receptacles myself.
To cut a long and really quite smelly story short it has become obvious to me that, rather than the lazy recycling habits of my neighbours (they were bothered enough to fill the green bags), poor DESIGN is the real problem here. My theory is validated by the observation that none of this bin confusion was occurring before the bins were re-labelled!
You may or may not have read about our ‘User Centred Design’ approach yet (not a new concept and we’re not claiming credit!), but it is based on the belief that good graphic design functions on a several levels. Basically, you have to drill down to consider what the person who will be using your signage/brochure/website wants/needs to see and how best to present that information to them. Generally you can only get so far without properly taking these considerations into account, no matter how pretty your colour palette or choice of font.
Good design, that considers the end-user fully, can have a very positive effect on people’s actions. And it follows that the opposite is also true. I think the picture above illustrates what happens when the end-user is not prioritised at the design stage.
Note the almost identical labelling on the green and silver bins. The user (me for example) is presented with far more information than they need on the standard silver bin. Sure, it does say “Non – Recyclable” waste, but I do have to stop and check. The fact that the word “Recyclable” is so prominent and I can see a green recycling symbol underneath contradicts the message that the label is supposed to convey. The labelling does not make it as easy as it should be for me to respond in the correct manner – It would actually be clearer than this if there was no labelling at all, from the end-users perspective.
I can speculate that the ‘designer’ of these bin stickers was probably following a strict directive about using the national recycling symbol on all material relating to the “tri-bag scheme” and I’m pretty sure that everyone involved had the best of intentions. But for me, it just comes back to the concern that more green bags might be going to landfill now (the bin men might spot them) as a direct result of what was supposed to be a positive move. Cardiff Council is partially defeating the object of what they are trying to achieve because they gave more thought to what information THEY wanted to see on the bins than how the bins are actually being USED.
…I do hope the design-related point shone through and this didn’t sound like and anti local government rant!
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Tags: User Centred Design