Merve Kalan - Upoil

Merve Kalan

Upoil

Service design - Waste cooking oil collecting system designed for Service Design Hackathon by Appcent

Duration: 2 Days during challenge - Updated after jury feedback

Year: 2022

Teammates: Ekin Erden, Celil Koyuncuoğlu

My role: User research, Ideation, UX & service design

Awards: 1st prize in Appcent Hackathon

The service design hackathon focused on the theme of 'Sustainable Waste Management,' challenging participants to create a service around this topic. Through extensive research into different waste types, we discovered that waste cooking oil is a significant issue in Türkiye, yet it tends to receive less attention than other waste categories.

Identified Waste: Waste Cooking Oil

1 liter of vegetable waste oil spilled into the sink pollutes 1 million liters of drinking water.

In Turkey, approximately 350 thousand tons of waste vegetable oil is produced annually.

While 5% of waste vegetable oils have been collected in recent years, 95% is released into the environment.

Opportunity

Interview Questions

We conducted interviews to understand how people store and dispose of waste oil.

How do you typically dispose of your waste vegetable oil at home?
On average, how much waste oil do you produce per month?
What waste collection services are available in your area? Are you familiar with them, and have you ever used them?
Does your waste oil contain any solid or liquid contaminants? If so, what percentage do you estimate this affects on average?
If you’re disposing of your waste oil, how do you feel about the process?
Would you need additional motivation to use a service for delivering waste oil? If yes, what types of incentives would encourage you?
Do you have difficulty finding suitable storage containers for collecting waste oil in your home?

How you dispose waste oil?

Here are some responses to the interview questions:

Outcome: Through our interviews, we discovered that individuals struggle with disposing of waste oil, often releasing it into the environment through various means. The majority indicated that they typically collect the oil in bottles before discarding it.

User Personas

What do competitors have?

Competitor Analysis

Even though we didn’t find a direct competitor in the Türkiye market, there are similar services for managing other types of waste. To understand and compare what similar applications offer in terms of functionality and content, and how they differentiate themselves, we conducted a competitor and benchmark analysis.

Benchmark Analysis

What other services exist?

Outcome

Existing projects have shown a clear demand for waste oil collection, but convenient disposal methods remain lacking, and many citizens are unaware of the available solutions.

Problem Statement

After conducting interviews and thoroughly researching existing services and solutions, we were able to clearly define the problem at hand. This process helped us understand the key challenges and gaps that need to be addressed.