Envac Reflow
Envac ReFlow is a mobile app that helps Stockholm residents track and improve their waste habits. It connects to Envac’s underground waste collection system, a network of high-tech inlets that replaces traditional trash bins and removes the need for garbage trucks in the city.
While the infrastructure was already in place, many people didn’t know how to use it properly. The challenge was twofold: make recycling easier to understand, and create a space where neighbors could share, borrow, and reduce waste together.
Duration: June 2021 to May 2022
My role: Design Lead
Team: 1 Team Lead, 1 Product Lead, 1 UI Designer, 2 iOS Developers, 2 Android Developers, 1 QA
Designing for sharing, not just sorting
To support Envac’s goal of reducing waste and encouraging conscious living, I led the design of a new feature that would help neighbors share, borrow, and give away items instead of throwing them away.
In Sweden, up to 10% of the items thrown away at recycling stations are fully functional, including furniture, electronics, clothes, and even bikes. We saw similar trends in local recycling rooms in Stockholm. People wanted to live more sustainably, but the system didn’t make it easy.
The goal was to create a simpler, more accessible way to keep these items in circulation, while also fostering a stronger sense of community.
Early on, I helped reframe the challenge around a few key questions:
How might we make it easier for people to borrow and lend out items?
How might we make it easier to dispose of bulky waste?
How might we show users that “waste” isn’t always waste?
How might we increase the sense of community?
These questions helped shape the Sharing feature and guided my work as I designed a new experience within the app — one that made reuse feel useful, social, and easy.
Research
The Sharing feature started with big ambitions, but also a lot of open questions. To create focus, I organized and facilitated a workshop to align the team on the purpose and scope of the feature.
We asked questions like:
Who is this for?
What value does it bring to the user, to Envac, and the city?
How does it support more conscious, circular living?
That session helped us step back from assumptions and define the real problems we wanted to solve. From there, we narrowed the scope to three core user flows: borrowing, lending out, and giving away.
I also ran competitor analysis and user interviews to understand how people currently share items, what motivates them, and where friction tends to show up. This research helped us define key design principles — simplicity, trust, and low effort.
To take this further, I organized a hands-on ideation session with the team. It gave us space to explore early ideas collaboratively and build on what we had learned in research.
Ideation session
As part of the early concept development, I facilitated a collaborative ideation session with the team. It built on the research insights and helped us quickly explore directions for the three core flows: borrowing, lending out, and giving away.
We used a Crazy 8s format to generate a wide range of ideas in a short amount of time. Each team member chose one of the flows and sketched eight rough concepts in eight minutes. This exercise helped surface unexpected angles and ensured everyone, from designers to developers, had a voice in shaping the experience.
This session was one of several touchpoints that helped us move from abstract ambition to concrete, testable ideas. It also gave us early alignment on some of the key UX challenges, like how to design for trust, how to keep the process lightweight, and how to support item discovery without overcomplicating the app.
Case study in progress
I am still putting together the full story of this project, so check back soon for all the details. In the meantime, if you are curious or want to hear more, feel free to reach out. I would love to chat.