We are working with Bring Recycling to help customers know what's OK to recycle using human-powered image recognition and text messages.
<aside> 💡 We are participating in Hack-for-a-Cause 2020, please join us!
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We are a new project, just getting started with our team and technology. As a kick-off event we’ll be participating in Hack-for-a-Cause October 22-27 2020. In this design sprint, we’ll gain a greater understanding of the process of determining reusable donations for Bring and dream up some technical solutions. Emily Shelton is the project owner from Bring and Mark Davis is a Code for America volunteer providing technical resources and guidance. We are excited to hear more about how you’d like to contribute. The best way to get involved is to attend a co-working lunch on a tuesday or thursday at our Discord server or drop by the technical Slack channel. If you would like to participate in the Hack-for-a-Cause design sprint please register at the link below.
BRING relies on donations of good reusable building materials from individuals and businesses. Because we offer a unique service, our donor (and customer) base stretches to every corner of Lane County, often requiring donors to travel dozens of miles round trip from their homes to bring us stuff. While we do publish a list of the types of materials we generally accept and sell, our staff reserves the right to refuse a donation if there is may not be reusable: not the type of thing we take, broken, hazardous, out of style, over supply, etc. There are many reasons we may not accept an item. Our problem arises when a donor has traveled to BRING to donate an item or load and finds out that we are unwilling to accept their donation. This can cause frustration and anger, and resentment of our staff whom are just doing their job which reflects badly on our brand.
We think this simple workflow is a good starting place:
Let's start with some human centered design! We'd love to see a workflow, etc. etc....
Bring: https://bringrecycling.org/
Hack-for-a-Cause: https://web.cvent.com/event/bb8f1509-61ed-4486-8c73-15caeb61b07a/summary
Hack for a Cause: https://hackforacause.org/
Democracy Lab https://democracylab.org/index/?section=AboutProject&id=535
Readme: https://www.notion.so/Bring-App-Readme-994a68e64b8549d5bfe735cbdc3ff0c6
Repo: https://github.com/OpenEugene/bringbot
BRING's mission is to provide vision, leadership, and tools for living well on the planet we share. BRING relies on donations of good reusable building materials from individuals and businesses from all over Lane County. Because we offer a unique service, our donor (and customer) base stretches to every corner of Lane County, often times requiring donors to travel dozens of miles round trip from their homes to bring us stuff. While we do publish a list of the types of materials we generally accept and sell, our in-take staff reserves the right to refuse a donation if there is any reason that we think it may not be reusable: not the type of thing we take, broken, hazardous to staff, out of style, over supply, etc. There are many reasons we may not accept an item. Our problem arises when a donor has traveled to BRING to donate an item or load and finds out that we are unwilling to accept their donation. This can cause frustration and anger, and resentment of our staff whom are just doing their job which reflects badly on our brand. It may even result in a loss of a donors use of our service, of which we rely on. Additionally, we realize the waste of fuel resources, especially when traveling from further distances. We would like to solve, or relieve, the problem of a donor traveling to us only to hear that we will not accept their donation. We envision a 'Tinder for Stuff' -- where a donor may access a portal to send us photos of their stuff before actually driving to our site. Our staff could decide ahead of time if the item is something we want. We could create a likelihood we will take this score, and send different types of feedback to the potential donor. This could dramatically decrease the amount of unproductive trips made to BRING, help us educate our donors on the types of things we take and reasons why we do not, and reduce unwanted fuel over-consumption. We are open and flexible to the solution to our problem, but this is one way we know technology could assist us. The power of technology is infinite!