“Aspiring World App”
About this Project:
The Aspiring World App will address the issue of climate change in our community. Naveen, Kiana, and Skylar chose this topic because they are passionate about creatively bringing awareness to climate change issues in their community. The student group conducted interviews with students and teachers at PSMS 161 to learn more about the climate change issues that people in our community deal with each day. The group learned that people care about climate change but don't know how they are personally contributing to climate change.
The Aspiring World app will address these concerns in fun and creative ways. The app features a recycling tracker to help people understand how much they are recycling, and creating waste every day. The app also features a game called "Waste Warriors." The "Waste Warriors'' game lets players pick up virtual trash in a digital environment to encourage good habits in the real world. "Waste Warriors" hopes to partner with existing climate change organizations to reward players for high scores in the game and help remove real waste in their local communities.
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Feedback from the Judges:
One thing that could take this already-innovative project to the next level is the idea of community and collective impact. For example, seeing your contributions as an individual is very important. However, what if you could see other people using the app and their recycling habits? Like a map of other app users and how much they’re recycling, then getting a holistic community view of how well you’re doing as a neighborhood/city/state? Perhaps you could gamify this in real life by having communities compete against each other to see who has the best recycling stats in a month? Obviously, this would increase scope and probably take it out of “MVP” status, but may be worth investigating for future iterations.
Either way, really socially-impactful idea and a very simple and thoughtful design to attack a very pressing world issue. Keep up the good work!
The fact that you incorporated a game is great because you can use that to keep the users engaged with the app. The idea of promising that picking up trash in the app will result in trash being cleaned up in the real world is a bold one. I wonder how we could make that a reality. One idea would be to have the game take place in a virtual world. You could sell advertising space in that world to companies that want to promote how they are addressing climate change, and the money you earn from the advertising could be used to fund cleanup projects.
Another idea you could incorporate would be allowing users to share with their friends what they have done to clean up their local communities, possibly by posting photos of themselves with the trash or recycling they have collected. Then the app could host competitions such as who can collect the most bottles in a two week period, or even competitions between whole neighborhoods. Perhaps the app could be used to organize local events, such as gathering in a park to clean it up and then have a cookout.
Adding gamification to the app is also brilliant - and will likely bring people back to see how they measure up in their real life activities.
To allow for more engagement in the app, you might consider adding activities beyond recycling - such as water use tips and measures (Do you run the water when brushing your teeth? How long are your showers?), along with information about that topic that demonstrates the broader climate issue (e.g., stats on water scarcity around the world).
I agree with other commenters here that expanding the app to include shared community activities - i.e., adding a social aspect - can also take the app to the next step in a big way.
Great job. Keep designing for the world!
Feedback from the Community:
Thank you for a record-breaking 14th anniversary event! Comments are officially closed until next year.