Loop Cup
Loop Cup is a sustainable design solution aimed at reducing the use of single-use drink containers in a way that feels effortless and integrated into daily life, whether on campus or beyond.As a team, we collaborated closely during the research and discovery phase, each conducting individual secondary research before regrouping to carry out primary research—including interviews and surveys. We then moved into data analysis, ideation, testing, and iterative refinement to develop our final concept.
Sustainability is a growing global concern, becoming more important each day: for environmental protection, economic stability, and social equity.
While sustainable practices are being implemented in some areas, others fall behind, particularly the use of single-use containers. On university campuses, single-use drink containers are consumed by thousands daily, making these spaces ideal for targeted, impactful change.
Loop Cup’s design is in response to key pain points identified during our research around why users avoid reusable drink containers. Our goal was to create a solution that is convenient, portable, and easy to integrate into daily student life, removing friction from sustainable choices.
The design focuses on portability, visibility, and accountability, aiming to fit seamlessly into the routines of busy campus users. By rethinking how and when people interact with their drink containers, Loop Cup encourages more consistent reuse and helps reduce single-use waste across university campuses.
Design a solution that encourages effortless sustainability, in effort to reduce single-use drink containers.
After unpacking the brief, we began conducting background research to better understand the root of the issue. Each team member independently mapped their insights using a variety of frameworks: including a Knowledge Mapping, as well as Stakeholder and Power Mapping, to explore the broader systems at play.These frameworks helped us understand why previous solutions had failed, identify key pain points, and uncover the ripple effects of the single-use container problem. They laid the foundation for our primary research and pointed us toward areas with the most potential for meaningful impact.
To complement our systems-level research, we conducted user interviews to better understand individual behaviours, motivations, and attitudes around single-use drink container use on campus.We prepared a semi-structured interview guide, a survey, and spoke with a range of students across USYD, aiming to uncover daily routines, barriers to reusable cup adoption, and attitudes toward sustainability. These conversations offered insight into the emotional and practical reasons behind why students often default to single-use options: ranging from convenience and habit to embarrassment and lack of accessible alternatives.To synthesise our findings, we created an affinity diagram, clustering data into recurring patterns, frustrations, and needs. This process helped us move from raw data to actionable insights, revealing deeper themes:
- Forgetfulness and lack of reminders
- Inconvenience of carrying bulky reusable items
- Low perceived impact from individual actions
- A desire for sustainability that feels “effortless”
- Desire for incentives
These insights directly informed our “How Might We” statements and guided our design focus.
Before committing to a single direction, our team began by individually generating a wide range of ideas in response to our problem statement. This allowed us to explore diverse perspectives before aligning on the most effective solution.We used creative ideation methods such as Crazy 8s and Brain-writing to push our thinking beyond obvious answers. These exercises encouraged rapid, open-ended exploration and helped us identify recurring themes and promising concepts.Once we narrowed down our ideas, we collaboratively selected the most compelling direction. To quickly bring the concept to life, we built a low-fidelity prototype using found objects, paper, and simple crafting materials. This tangible model allowed us to communicate our concept clearly and test early assumptions before moving into digital prototyping.
