Bagged
Application Design | UX/UI, Branding, Designing For Social Good | Fall 2021
Inspired by a problem statement from OpenIdeo on reusable product use, I created a solution for a topic I practice in my own life; reusable shopping bag use. I reflected on my journey of using plastic bags and what areas I felt were drawbacks in this culture. With external interviews and research on related government implementations, I started to understand what worked and what didn’t work for the general population. This led to the HMW statement, “How might we empower and provide incentives for customers to bring in their reusable bags to all stores?”
Community
My solution consisted of an incentive-based application for shoppers to use their reusable bags at all stores, even those who do not provide them, and build a community around this culture. Users shop with their reusable bags and scan their receipts to show the amount of single-use bags they saved. Bagg.ed calculates saved bags by calculating how many bags would need to be used based on the total size of purchased products. Because of the heavier plastic in re-usable bags, it takes 131 uses to save plastic. After saving 2,000 saved plastic bags, shoppers can unlock free reusable bags to use in their future shopping trips.
Incentive
Bagg.ed does not just benefit the shoppers. In marketing, there is a strategy behind everything, including the single-use store bags handed out at checkout. Think about the bright-colored Forever21 and PINK bags and the decorated Gucci bags. Bagged uses this same strategy to advertise non-profits who pledge to donate every time their reusable bags are used through Bagged. When shoppers save enough bags, they have the ability to “unlock” a free bag from an organization of choice that they want to support.