Farewell Bags
OpenIDEO’s Beyond the Bag Challenge
Cause: IDEO’s partnership with Closed Loop Partners and the Consortium to Reinvent the Retail Bag
Goal: Propose an eco-friendly product or system that serves to transport purchases from retailers.
My role: One of two co-designers
Timeline: 1 month
My wins: Putting values into action and coming up with ideas that were reflected in the winning designs.
Overview
A friend/former classmate and I recently participated in an intriguing, impactful design challenge. We used this extracurricular sprint to explore how to answer the prompt:
How might we transport goods from retailer to destination in a way that is compatible with diverse retail systems, delivers ease and convenience for customers, and reduces environmental impact?
As novices to the space, we focused on discovery and research. We were looking primarily to build understanding of stakeholder needs and knowledge of the industry overall, in order to submit an idea that could be adapted into a business model. Our final submission was a proposal on how to create and incentivize a bag sharing program that helps retailers and consumers close the loop and divert existing single-use plastic bags from the waste stream.
Personalization options for bag; illustration credit to my project partner, Mayra Arroyo
One of several proposed models for bags tailored to transportation method
Empathize
We began with desk research, guided by the use cases and personas shared by the challenge group, to familiarize ourselves with the problem, anticipated users, and solution precedents as much as possible. This stage took the principle of “flare” before focus to heart as we compiled lists of packaging options and material alternatives to plastic. A few of my favorite sources we came across: an episode of an old kids’ show called “Curiosity Quest Goes Green: Reusable Bags” and an Atlantic article on the history of the plastic bag.
Research document with very initial exploration
This gave us initial direction to craft a few more specific “how might we” (aka “HMW”) statements, intended to be generative provocations that would guide our next explorations.
HMW speed up the process of grocery shopping?
HMW protect privacy at the point of sale checkout without a bag?
HMW empower people to get their grocers to their destination regardless of mobility constraints?
HMW motivate people to recycle plastic bags?
HMW protect privacy at the point of sale checkout without a bag?
HMW empower people to get their grocers to their destination regardless of mobility constraints?
HMW motivate people to recycle plastic bags?
"How Might We" brainstorms
This exercise helped us craft a plan for primary research to fill in our knowledge gaps. We spoke to an expert in single-use plastic recycling and two people who embodied extreme, opposite consumer behaviors.
- Ciara May, founder of Rebundle, a company that recycles plastic synthetic hair and sells a first-of-its-kind compostable alternative for braiding. She explained how plastic recycling offers a solution from a technical standpoint, as even most single-use plastics are recyclable in the proper waste stream. However, proper recycling requires better infrastructure, education, and very likely a cultural shift to make it viable at scale and have consumers share in the responsibility of correctly disposing the products we take home.
- Jackie*, an enthusiastic grocery shopper who would take a trip to the store almost every day pre-pandemic via bike. She eschews plastic, so when it comes to shopping, the biggest consideration is, “will things fit in my bike bag?”
- Eric*, a fan of fewer trips and buying in bulk to avoid the “mental overhead” of frequent planning. He personifies an attitude of improvisation, showing us how a solution that could work for someone in one instance may not work for them the next.
*Names changed for privacy
Define
From here, we moved into distilling our insights and forming a point of view for our solution. We had two main stakeholder groups, retailers and consumers, and one elephant in the room: the plastic industry. More specifically, the oil industry, which facilitates the manufacturing of plastic, allowing the material to become as ubiquitous and convenient as it is today. As a way to reconcile the perspectives and motivations of these groups, we drafted guidelines for a pathway forward:
- Incorporate dual responsibility: consumers and government/city/companies have a responsibility to act for the good of the environment
- Recognize that plastic has value and solves everyday needs, find a way to redirect or reuse all plastic
- Curb new plastic use overall
There was also a statistic we learned that stuck out in our minds: plastic bags are used for an average of 12 minutes, but take 1,000 or more years to decompose (in ideal conditions). An infographic sketch I made to process this staggering difference:
This led us to reconsider our fundamental assumptions about the bag’s role in a checkout transaction. Consumers were getting a permanent solution for a temporary need. Instead, how might we challenge the notion that consumers are owed a bag to keep and still meet the needs of their 12-minute journey?
Ideate
Here’s where the requirements of the challenge and business considerations came in. We knew our solution had to be one of three categories: Reuse & Refill, Enabling Technology, or Innovative Materials. We also knew it needed to provide a compelling business case. We brainstormed possibilities, looking for inspiration in existing creative reuses of plastic bags as well as potential trends for the future of grocery and retail. My final list of ideas looked like this, where we identified the most promising direction: a way for stores to own the bags given at checkout, and to optimize the bags for your transportation method.
We modeled a system of bag-sharing to capture the idea of giving the consumer a product to transport goods that they would not have to own, and wrote requirements based on the user personas and people we spoke to. We also realized we had a lot of conjectures around what would get people to use the system, but not a lot of answers. We needed advice on the tradeoffs between business demands and driving consumer behavior, so we ran the earliest version of this idea by Victor Saad, a lecturer in Design at Stanford’s School of Engineering, and founder of the Experience Institute.
Early system draft
Consumer and store perspectives
Product Requirements
Retail
- Has to be strong, meeting or exceeding plastic bag standards
- Doesn’t require extra time or interfere with employee’s efficiency
- Integrates into a variety of retail environments and checkout options (e.g. curbside pickup, courier drop-off, etc.)
- Can be sanitized and used in contactless scenarios for safety
- Doesn’t require extra time or interfere with employee’s efficiency
- Integrates into a variety of retail environments and checkout options (e.g. curbside pickup, courier drop-off, etc.)
- Can be sanitized and used in contactless scenarios for safety
Consumer
- Can fit a variety of transportation methods
- Integrated into everyday behaviors
- Opaque, so that it can obscure sensitive purchases
- Memorable and delightful to use
- Respects consumers’ independence and self-sufficiency
- Integrated into everyday behaviors
- Opaque, so that it can obscure sensitive purchases
- Memorable and delightful to use
- Respects consumers’ independence and self-sufficiency
Our final idea was Farewell Bags, a B2B bagshare program with bags made out of recycled plastic.
Farewell Bags has a two-part system: (1) a system of bag-sharing that replaces all instances of single-use bags, and (2) different styles of reusable, zero-waste bags that consumers and couriers can use to fit their transportation needs. The bag-sharing operates in stores and out of outdoor kiosks that also serves as a collection point for single-use plastic bag recycling. We felt that it would be a missed opportunity to ignore the existing waste and possibilities afforded by expanding mechanical recycling, a process that can effectively preserve the integrity of plastic for reuse.
Final system diagram
Kiosk visualization
At the core of Farewell Bags’ system is meeting people where they are. This is done by creating quality bags that can be used in a variety of transportation methods, from walking to wheelchairs to strollers. Farewell Bags could also be used in multiple retail scenarios, such as cashier-assisted checkout and self-checkout. In these instances, customers would pick up a bag when they arrive at the register or point of sale. They would need identification in the form of a phone number, QR code, keychain, barcode, in-app code, or another method that stores see fit. We would need input from partners to know what method works best at scale and for different sizes of retailers.
We also considered key consequences. These could be that the bags do not get returned, they end up in landfill, or they create a burden on the providing store. We planned to mitigate these by designing incentives for customers who don’t regularly return their bags, adding delightful, convenient motivators as well as penalties, and working with possible retail partners to establish a seamless checkout method, even if extra steps are needed.
Outcomes
Our multi-pronged solution took a bit of a “throw spaghetti at the wall” approach, and, well, there was too much spaghetti. We left off on a point that we hoped would lead us right into prototyping, which winning the OpenIDEO challenge format would be prime for. While we didn’t win, I was very happy with how I was able to model a thoughtful process for a significant problem — core to who I am and what I stand for.
It was also fun to imagine a new, sustainable retail future. Looking back, I would make revisions starting with our audience definition and value proposition. However, I do feel validated that several of the challenge winners included elements of our idea in a more focused, polished way.