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Service Design (MA)

Yuxin Lu

With China's rapid development, people's lives are becoming more and more convenient, but more and more urban pollution and waste are increasing. 

The two founders of Precious Plastic Shanghai are aiming to enable sustainability in Chinese people’s daily life. However, at that moment they just focused on offline workshops and did ToB business.

In addition, they are two foreigners so it’s hard for them to influence more locals.

Due to the virus, It's difficult to held official workshops in China. But it's a good opportunity to do something online. 

So I have worked with Precious Plastic Shanghai to create a new solution that aims at helping consumers to switch to sustainable habit meanwhile saving money. And support local business owners that propose sustainable options.

Contact

ku.ca.acr.krowten@ul.nixuy

@mimiyuxin

My website

Degree Details

School of Design

Service Design (MA)

Sponsors

Precious Plastic Shanghai

I am an empathetic and critical thinking designer with 6 years UI & UX design experience and more than one year of team management experience.

In 2018, in the sixth year of my work, I chose to study Service Design at the Royal College of Art in London. During this period, I started to think about the relationship between humans and the earth.  

We work overwhelmingly and earn a nice salary. So we purchase a lot of stuff to treat ourselves and our life is full. We have no time to feel the meaning of our life. I think it's awful for me.

There are too many problems in the world or in the future world. I feel like I have a responsibility to do something to make a little bit changing. So I have paid more attention on the plastic pollution since 2019. And I found Precious Plastic Shanghai which is a company based in Shanghai that focuses on creating awareness about plastic waste, with a unique process. I have so strong passion to work with them because we have the same vision and mission. 

We build a new project which is Precious Shanghai and help the consumer to switch to sustainable habit meanwhile saving money. While supporting the local businesses that propose sustainable options. It has been implemented recently and really going well. 

Problem — We all start to know that plastic pollution is a world wide issue. Plastic is spread everywhere in the ocean. - People eat plastic equivalent to the weight of a credit card every week and ingest 100,000 plastic particles in the body every year. The sources of intake are drinking water, shellfish, beer, and salt. - Shanghai produces 8 million tons of garbage every year. 27,000 tons of garbage will be generated every day

Research — Digging into the people who have a Sustainable lifestyle. I found they really relay on some small businesses around them. They use their own cup to grab a coffee. And prefer buying ingredients from bulk shops and fresh markets. They are used to repair and reuse everything. Besides they don’t mind second-hand stuff. I have practiced their life way and found it’s not easy to remember to bring the container before shopping and also not easy to convince shop owners to use my own container. But it’s really could save money because some cafe provide discount for own container. And I will repair my broken stuff instead of buying new and I also joint swap event to get free second-hand clothes.

Solution — The solution is a service system based on the WeChat platform, including Mimi’s personal WeChat account as a customer service contact and a subscription account as a media, and an interactive map in Wechat Mini App. So it’s like a bridge connecting local small businesses and local residents. And could provide more sustainable options to local residents, also could bring more traffic and customers to these small businesses.

Mimi's Story — Mimi’s role is a contact of Precious SH and a helper to transfer our concept and service in a cute and fun way. If people add Mimi's Wechat they can have a chat. Mimi could classify different followers into different types. And later Mimi could use a different way to talk with them. Also, it will help us to build our database of local customers. Mimi also promotes our mini App and articles to followers. The Mini App is an interactive map collecting the shops could provide sustainable service such as buying some food without plastic.

Interface

Value Map — With collecting more and more small business and local customers, we will bring more traffic and customers to these small businesses, and they will become our business alliance. Meanwhile, we give local residents more awareness of environmental issues and they will expand the map, making our service sustainable. Right now we have contacted some NGO about sustainability in China and they all quite glad to cooperate with us to provide more information about sustainability. For instance, GoZeroWaste wants to give us more information about repair shops and bulk shops Because they are very familiar with these, and we will help them to promote their brand. And in July, a sustainable brand Boomi and Shanghai coffee alliance cooperate with us to make a big campaign to encourage more cafe to provide such service and join our map. After that PPSH could gain a deeper understanding of how we can influence local residents to practice sustainable lifestyles. It’s a super good ability to help some companies build brand image and influence the Chinese lifestyle. Actually a French energy company is starting to contact us. We will know what they need and what we can bring to them. So from now on, we realized Precious SH is an indirect marketing tool for Precious Plastic SH.

Feedback

Test — I have published the mini App on June so from now on we have 256 views of Mini App. For the Beta Vision, the data is not bad we think. Next step we will put our stands in cafes and see the reflection of locals.

Precious Shanghai is a WeChat platform collecting small businesses about sustainability in Shanghai and dedicated to giving more options to people who decided to embrace a sustainable lifestyle in urban areas.

Size:

6 months
behaviorbusinesscommunitylocalSustainability

Precious Plastic Shanghai

Precious Plastic China is a company based in Shanghai that focuses on creating awareness about plastic waste, with a unique process. Their unique process allows anyone to understand and engage in the process of plastic recycling. They belong to the largest plastic recyclers’ community in the world.

Website:

http://preciousplasticshanghai.com/

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