On Day One we put our heads together to tackle the issue of pollution in the San Marcos river. We compiled our assumptions of Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How the issue developed.
As a team we came up with the following assumptions:
Contaminated/polluted river and water systems are affecting human & animal health.
Political resistance/obstacles make solutions harder to implement.
Runoff or litter are the most prevalent contributors to waste system contamination.
Most people are uninformed, inconvenienced and apathetic.
Most people think changing their habits won’t make a difference.
There is not enough access to proper disposal for river goer trash.
With these assumptions in mind, we went to the Meadow Center to see if we were correct and if we could turn our assumptions into solutions for our community.
First stop at the Meadows Center was the Wetlands Boardwalk. The boardwalk is a self-guided trail where one can see the effects of exotic and invasive species on the habitat. It offered a close up view of the abundant plant and animal life thriving there.
Currently the Meadows Center utilizes volunteer kayakers and scuba divers to help keep the wetlands clean by removing any unnatural debris and keep the plant life trimmed and noninvasive. During the boardwalk tour, we learned most contamination of the wetlands are from recreational sports.
Following the boardwalk, we did a bug-picking activity where we were split into groups and looked through vegetation that had been pulled from the wetlands and where many different bugs lived. We identified the species of bugs that were found in the water/vegetation sample. Certain bugs can only live in clean, non polluted water and some that could live in polluted water. We were happy to find that we were able to identify bugs that could only survive in non polluted water meaning that the water in our sample was clean.
Lastly, on a Glass-Bottom Boat Tour of the Meadows Center. We learned confetti and micro plastics are the biggest offenders and polluters of the river, and the lack of education or awareness of pollution is the biggest concern. By 2050 over 300 cities in Texas will not have access to fresh water. We will have less clean drinking water and strict water regulations will have to be enforced.
Blue Team: (Emily)
After visiting the meadow center, we travelled to Sewell Park on campus to observe and conduct interviews. A few things we noticed were a significantly small number of recycle bins to trash cans, trash collecting along fence lines and sidewalks, and collected confetti at the bottom of the river. The trash we did see included, styrofoam cups, plastic bags, food wrappers, straws and bottle caps. Our team split into two groups of two to conduct interviews. Jaz and myself interview a local celebrity who goes by the name Frisbee Dan. He told us he is at Sewell Park everyday after he finishes at his day job being a landscaper. Frisbee Dan offered us an interesting perspective by mentioning the fact that there is not enough police presence along the river to enforce citations for littering, therefore allowing people to get away with it. He also said he has seen people leave their trash anywhere and everywhere. (enter other interview here)
After regrouping back at the studio, we sat down as a team to create an empathy map for our user, answering questions like what they see, do, hear and say. We then identified challenges and answered how might we questions on how to solve our challenges. We refined our how might wes down into one specific problem we wanted to tackle; How Might We repurpose existing signage/education near the San Marcos River to motivate river goers to dispose of their waste properly. After we had our clear objective, we began sketching ideas on how to solve this question. We received feedback from the entire studio on which idea they felt would most effectively motivate river goers to properly throw away their waste. After getting feedback, our chosen direction was to implement environmental design to get people to start thinking about the environment around them and the impact they have on it. Through another round of sketches we came up with the idea of creating a San Marcos Salamander, which is an endangered species that is native to the waters here on our campus, that would go around the existing trash cans around the river. The salamander would educate our users about the impacts of litter in the river, make them drawn to the trash can, and make them more likely to dispose of their trash.
The next step was to begin prototyping our idea. Two of us went and measured one of the trash cans on campus in order to make our prototype to scale. After, we all started creating our salamander out of cardboard, pipe cleaners, duct tape, and sticks. A sign reading “I may be blind but I can still see your trash in the river,” a survey that asked the questions “Did this trash can stand out to you” and “Would you be more likely to throw trash away in this trash can?”, and a name tag that read “Hello, my name is blind salamander” were included with our prototype.
The next stage of our process was to test our prototype with our users. We traveled to Sewell Park for a second time to install our prototype and observe how our user interacted with it. Once at the park, we secured our salamander with a lot of duct tape to protect her from the wind. Everyone at the park at the time was curious/intrigued by what we were doing. After she was all set up, we found a shady spot to sit in to observe the people interacting with our design. Almost immediately, we had a mom and her two daughters interact with our design. They participated in our survey, and all answered yes to both questions. After this, we had many people stopping to look at/ read what we had to say, but no more survey participants. This, however, could have been caused by the fact that the cardboard holding up the survey blew over, no longer making it visible. After about 40 minutes of observation, we packed up our prototype and headed back to the studio.
Green Team: (Chantal)
Following the Meadows Center tour, we headed to Rio Vista Park to observe the environment and get a deeper understanding of the problem. We checked our assumptions against our new knowledge. Though more vacant than expected we noticed there were several picnic tables without trash cans near them. Trash cans outnumbered the recycling bins and were only located around the exterior of the park. At first glance there didn’t seem to be litter, but upon closer inspection there was an abundance of small debris such as: plastic and glass bottle caps, cigarette butts, bread plastic holders, pieces of food wrappers, zip ties, can tabs, and other debris from children’s snacks and drinks.
On Day Two we solidified our How Might We to: How Might We reduce the amount of tiny trash along the San Marcos River by making disposal more convenient to river/park goers? After sketching possible solutions we decided to create bins that attach to current park benches to dispose of tiny trash to ease convenience for our User. We made two sections: one for plastics and one for metals for tiny debris. Each slot was labeled and included signage reading : “Tiny trash leads to massive problems–By 2050, it is estimated that over 300 cities in Texas won’t have access to fresh water. Ultimately, this could mean that we have less clean drinking water, harmful effects to surrounding wildlife, and cause more water regulations. Keeping track of your tiny trash can help prevent further damage to our environment.”
After prototyping, we regrouped and went back to Rio Vista to User test. We set up the bin at a picnic table to watch interactions. However, the bin was not approached, so we decided to approach park goers at picnic tables and interview them. We were happy to find out our interviewees were excited about our bin and agreed it would be a good solution. They agreed there was a significant tiny trash problem around the park and believed the convenience of having the bin at the picnic areas where families were already sitting and eating would help lessen the trash debris. During our interviews we realized we had not thought of our spanish speaking demographic and would need to implement bilinguality into our design. Everyone we interviewed was from out of town, so it influenced us to integrate species specific to San Marcos.
Conclusion to the overall challenge, sharing in the gallery, and future research.
(Blue Team) Once back at the studio, we shared our findings with everyone and discussed how to improve our design, its effectiveness and how to include a call to action. We decided to create a cohesive branding system for our designs, while still maintaining our individual ideas. Lastly, we identified tasks that needs to be done in order to refine our prototypes to display in the gallery and split into teams to tackle branding, illustration, building, and research.
(Green Team) With our new information and learning what our Blue Team members had done for their research and prototype, we realized that our ideas could become one cohesive design and system for all the riverside parks in San Marcos. We combined our efforts to work together and split into groups to research, brand design, and build high-refined prototypes.