1. Recycling@UM Team Members: Inta Mylov - imylov@umd.edu Adam O’Sullivan - adam.osullivan@gmail.com Shawn Pennington - shawnp87@umd.edu Eugene Shvartsman - eshvar60@gmail.com 12/11/2008

2. Problem: “Solid wastes are the discarded leftovers of our advanced consumer society. This growing mountain of garbage and trash represents not only an attitude of indifference toward valuable natural resources, but also a serious economic and public health problem.” -U.S. President, Jimmy Carter Humanity has finally realized how much damage our waste does to our health and to the health of our environment. To combat this problem many websites have been created to promote and provide motivation for, recycling.

3. Current Approaches Current Approaches: There are many websites that have done a great job providing the motivation to recycle. Many of these websites even allow you to find where things can be recycled but theses sites are fairly complicated and time consuming to use. Time is money! Therefore, many consumers who would be willing to recycle, simply don’t want to spend a lot of time finding recycling locations.

4. Our Approach: Our team decided to create a recycling website (Recycling@UM), that would be very easy to navigate by a user with any level of computer skills. Our main page displays search results (map, locations). Buttons (Batteries, Paper, …) will provide quick search, eliminating errors and cutting search time. By selecting the “For Cash” field, all locations giving cash for recycling will be displayed.

5. Usability Test: Recycling@UM testing had two phases: First – testing was done in the application’s early development phase. Testing results were taken into account for further development. Second – more subjects were tested after the application was fully developed. All subjects were UMCP residents. Every subject had to fill out pre-test and post-test questionnaires and complete the given tasks. Subjects’ actions were closely observed by our team members. The application was improved based on the user comments and our team’s observations.

6. Testing Results: Overall Satisfaction: 83.33% Satisfaction with the map: 88.33% Ability to complete tasks: 100% Likelihood to use again: 66% The majority of the users who participated in the testing were pleased with the application. Users found the interface intuitive and easy to use. In general, they were able to use the interface’s functionality without significant difficulties. All the users were pleased with the color schemes and ease of navigation of the application.

7. Improvements Based on user suggestions the following improvements were made. Map centering Clickable locations Cash details at the item level Location names on roll-overs Formatting in the pop up bubble text

8. Conclusions: Our users had a pleasant experience using Recycling@UM application. Therefore, Recycling@UM may have further development opportunity. At this point, our application is focused mostly on the College Park area, but with a little effort it can be expanded to a larger scale. Future improvements would include such things as use of a database, more detailed search results, etc...

9. Recycling@UM team. Thank You and don’t forget to recycle for the better tomorrow!