How would you design a trash can?

Clarification:

Is this trash can being designed for home use, office use or public use/outside? Public Use

Which is the geo location this trash whereit will be first launched - USA

Public Use Trash cans:

• Locations are generally streets, tourist/high crowd places
• There can be one or 2 or more for different kinds of waste

Users:

1. Public who know at which can to put
2. Public who care about keeping the city clean but dont know which can to choose
3. People who dont care and litter the place

I am going to go with the user persona for 2nd persona and try to address point 3 as well.

General Physical Design principles for the trash can

1. Visible to public and accessability for all kinds of people - It should be seen easily from far away if needed - Attractive colors etc, The design should be such that kids, people with disability and of any size should be able to reach and put the waste in the trash can
2. Aesthetic : Aesthetically designed because, people when they see a clean nicely designed trash can tend to be careful and make sure they drop waste in trash. Connecting at a visual level - In design terms Conceptual vision. 
3. Size, capacity: Gather data and design for a size that will not fill fast and the city workers neednt come replace or empty every hour
4. Letting the city officials know when the trash is getting filled, live status updates :)

Pain Points for the persona 2, prioritization & metrics:

1. Not sure where the trash can is - Like waze, public can put the fixed trash cans in the maps. That can be an option within google maps or waze. The implementation of this should be medium complexity and can be crowd sourced like waze. The impact of this is big as people can hold on to their trash when they know where it is or if its close. The costs will be an engineer or 2 costs. P1
2. Not knowing to which trash can to put: This can be a image recognition device that can scan and identify plastic, waste, compost etc. and direct to the right bin. This is a high impact educational long term benefit item. The costs are to put the visual display units, image recognition sensors and they might have to be connected to cloud for running the compute. Costs are definitely high, medium to high complexity. P1
3. Since they are clean, they might not want to touch the lid - sensor based, like the soap dispenser. Easy to build, adds costs - P2

1. Positive reinforcement & gamification: Providing green points for every time they use trash can: There has to be an app that accumulates the points and has to be scanned. The visual display unit built for recognition can be used for this. P1. Costs associated are same as above, resource costs to build the app - 2 engineers/month - Complexity: Medium P1.
2. Impact to environment, educational : Showing the pros-cons of what happens to the environment through a display mechanism in the trash can - this can also serve as a ad space for monetization. Use the visual display to show the effects: Costs, screen, battery (can be solar charged), medium definition. Complexity: Simple, have a bunch of videos in auto loop. P2
3. Calling out: Through visual recognition, if it sees any trash in its 360 degree camera view, requesting passersby to come drop the trash and giving kudos or green points. Complexity: Medium to hard: active scanning - battery life, costs of 360 camera, personnel costs - more engineers needed. P3

Prioritization:

Based on cost, effort, ROI, monetization tradeoffs

 Physical Design principles 1-3 to be incorporated. Can be done and is currently being used at certain places for little bit extra cost (design and manufacturing). 

Based on the prioritization:

I will Prioritize: Not sure where the trash can is, Positive reinforcement & gamification, Not knowing to which trash can to put first

Metrics:

# of people actively contributing to the trash map

# of people signing up for the app

# of people/% increase over time of signing up and gamifying - Daily/weekly, histograms

# of people using the trash can identifying options. Over time this should go down\

Speed at which the trash is being filled: Can be ambigous based on size and material. But for starters can be seen as engagement.

Summary: