CIRQ
A Circular Storytelling Economy Platform
The Problem
Circular Economies have long been considered a way to combat our culture of mass production, consumption, and wasteful disposal. How might we made circular economies more accessible, while making mundane objects harder to throw away?
The Response
Research into what gives objects value. Create a platform for circular economy exchange that connects manufacturers and consumers. Pilot a new form of valuation that uses stories and histories of objects to algorithmically determine value.
My Role
Researcher, Brand Identity, Animation
“+ Design-Led Research
+ Research Provotypes
+ UI/UX Prototypes
+ Animation”
Project Overview
We started our project asking ourselves how we might combat waste generation in design knowledge generation. We had noticed the amount of Post-its designers use in workshops, and we wondered how we might make designers think more consciously about the everyday “invisible” objects we use and then dispose of when they are no longer useful.
We used a series of design research tools to narrow down our problem space. We realized that the issues we wanted to address were much larger than Post-It notes. We started looking at all of the everyday, mundane, “invisible” objects that we use and dispose in mass quantities.
We designed a series of provotypes to capture targeted audience research into how people value their objects. We learned that storytelling was one of the most direct ways to give an object value; a lesson that was reinforced through our secondary research into zero waste initiatives, advertising, and marketing.
Circular Economy
Our research showed that supporting circular economies was an effective way combating the waste we were researching. We knew from our provotypes that stories were a large part of what gives objects value, so we thought, “what if stories could become a currency?” We designed a digital platform that could connect manufacturers and customers, and implemented stories and object histories to determine the price/value of an object.
Next Steps
This project has been accepted into the Wege Prize Phase II (as of Jan 2020) and submitted to Cumulus Green 2020. Further progression will be noted here.
