🔗 Transmedia Project — Sort It Out is the interactive AR node in a larger campaign turning recycling from a chore into a narrative.
▸ Case Study 02
Sort It Out
Mobile Web GameAR OverlayBehaviour ChangeTransmedia · 2026
A mobile recycling game triggered by scanning a QR code at a campus bin — intercepting the student at the exact moment the disposal decision happens.
2Prototypes
590Positive Training Images
80Training Epochs
75%Confidence Threshold
20%Target Improvement
5sDecision Window
Step 01
The disposal decision: primary and secondary research
This project builds on primary research from EMDD 620 (Ava, Femi, and Selasi), who identified contamination patterns at Ball State waste stations. The EMDD 640 team extended that work through observation, interviews, and journey mapping.
Ball State recycles paper, cardboard, glass, metals, and specific plastics in blue bags. Despite this infrastructure, research found one consistent pattern: students slowed at bins but rarely read signage. Sorting was happening in a near-total information vacuum.
Method
What we found
Observation (Woodworth, DeHority, Student Center)
Students paused at bins but rarely read signage. Greasy pizza boxes were the single most common contamination source.
Interviews with Sustainability Officers + Republic Services
Contamination rates high enough to divert entire loads to landfill. Muncie facility enforces a strict 10% threshold.
Journey mapping (~10 students)
Confusion peaks in rushed between-class moments. The disposal decision happens in under five seconds.
Discourse analysis (Ball Bearings, Reddit)
Students frustrated by unclear rules, inconsistent bin placement, and scepticism that recycling is actually processed.
Secondary research (Noh, 2021; Cho, 2019; Yusoff et al., 2024)
Recycling participation driven by perceived behavioural control and clear guidance, not general awareness. The intention-action gap is widest at the point of disposal.
Students broadly knew recycling mattered. They did not know, at the moment of holding something over a bin, what Ball State's specific rules were — and existing infrastructure wasn't telling them.
Step 02
Not an awareness problem. A narrative coherence problem.
Existing tools operate at the wrong moment. Posters and orientation modules build awareness weeks before the disposal decision. They cannot intervene at the bin. Sort It Out is designed to.
▸ How Might We
How might we design a transmedia experience that uses narrative, interaction, and participation to reshape how students understand recycling — meeting them at the exact moment the disposal decision happens?
Site-Specific
The game at Woodworth is not the game at DeHority. Each location carries narrative text developed with its community.
Mobile-First, No Download
Students are on their phones at the bin. A QR code triggers a mobile browser experience instantly.
Consequence-Based
Wrong sorts trigger an explanation before the item resets. Every error is a teaching moment, not a failure state.
Part of a Storyworld
The spatial touchpoint connecting the transmedia campaign's digital and real-world layers.
Step 03
Sort It Out as one node in a larger storyworld
The project is structured as a transmedia campaign. Sort It Out is the spatial node — the only component that can intercept a student at the physical bin.
01
Documentary
How Does BSU Recycle? — the narrative anchor
02
Explainer Series
TikTok and Reels — spreadable awareness content
03
Sort It Out
AR game at the bin — this project
This Project
04
Street Quiz Videos
Gamified, shareable campus content
05
Recycling Leaderboard
Residence hall competition app — sustain layer
01
Scan QR code on the bin — location-specific splash screen appears
Exit interviews with 10–15 students on story elements and behaviour change
The test is not whether players found the game fun. The test is whether they know what to do the next time they stand at a bin holding a greasy cup.
Step 06
What changed, and what still needs to
The hardest design problem in Sort It Out is not the recycling taxonomy. It is finding the balance between flow state, convenience, and education — three things that pull against each other. Push too hard on education and the game feels like a quiz at the worst moment. Optimise entirely for flow and students complete a round without retaining anything useful.
The first prototype solved the mechanism. The video reward — a documentary clip showing where a sorted item actually goes — was the response to professor feedback naming the gap: the game needed to mean something beyond itself. The sort earns the story; the story earns the next sort.
Location specificity. Woodworth sees different waste patterns than DeHority. The next version differentiates item sets by location using facilities data.
Semester-long sustain. One session doesn't shift a habit. The leaderboard, stamp map, and rotating item sets are designed to bring students back.
A more specific user. A junior commuter between classes and a freshman with time in the dining hall have different thresholds for friction. The next iteration needs to choose which one to design for first.
The first prototype proved the mechanic works. The next one has to prove it changes something.