Boldheart, in collaboration with AHK Nigeria and other key stakeholders, developed Circulary as a comprehensive platform for waste management and recycling.
Circulary's digital marketplace is aimed at addressing the estimated waste volume of 1.37 million metric tons deposited annually in Lagos state, at fostering an environment for citizens to learn more about sustainability, and at supporting thousands of people who manually collect waste in the region every day.
The project therefore focused on the following key areas:
- Seamless Waste Collection: Circulary connects households and businesses with waste collection services for easy waste collection, while providing monetary incentives for waste recycling.
- Circular Economy Marketplace: Circulary enables waste collectors to efficiently sell their waste to national and international companies as input resources for their production. In addition, the platform also enables individuals to sell their recycled waste goods online, helping them to make a living.
- Sustainability Hub: Circulary serves as a central information hub for staying informed about sustainability trends, news, and opportunities in Lagos and beyond, driving greater awareness for the topic.
Boldheart's journey to develop Circulary involved a comprehensive process that included:
- Market Research:
- In-Depth Analysis: Conducted extensive market research to understand the waste management challenges, recycling infrastructure, and sustainability needs in Lagos, Nigeria. This research laid the groundwork for Circulary's development by providing valuable insights into the local environmental landscape.
- Stakeholder Collaboration: Identified critical gaps in the current waste management system by incorporating interviews with relevant stakeholders of the waste management industry in Nigeria, such as the Association of Waste Managers in Nigeria (AWAM). These findings informed the development process, ensuring that Circulary's features directly addressed these specific challenges
- MVP Scoping:
- Collaborative Workshop: Jointly defined the scope of Circulary's Minimum Viable Product (MVP), focusing on essential features in alignment with the market research findings.
- Core Value Proposition: Determined the key features critical to the platform's core value, ensuring that they were in line with the identified market needs.
- Lean Approach: Efficiently allocated resources by prioritizing and developing the most essential features, informed by the identified market gaps.
- Sprint Planning: Organized the development process to streamline the MVP's creation and optimize resource usage.
- Key Deliverable: Produced an MVP scope document outlining the essential features, a product backlog, and the sprint plan based on market research insights
- UI/UX Design:
- User-Centric Design: Crafted visual mockups and animated prototypes to enhance the user experience, aligning the design with market-specific preferences and usability requirements.
- Iterative User Testing: Conducted iterative user testing with end-users, gathering valuable insights that guided the design refinement process. This ensured that the interface was tailored to the specific needs and expectations of the local market.
- UI/UX Tailored to Market Insights: Incorporated design elements and features that resonated with the identified preferences and behaviors of the target users.
- Development:
- Front-end and Back-end Development: Progressed the development of Circulary, both on the front-end and back-end, using the MVP scope and market research data as the foundation. This phase ensured that the platform's technical infrastructure was built to address specific waste management challenges in the Nigerian market.
- Iterative Refinement: Continuously refined and improved the platform's features based on ongoing market feedback and development progress, ensuring that Circulary was highly responsive to the evolving needs of the target users.
- Integration of Market-Specific Solutions: Tailored the platform's technical aspects to incorporate solutions that directly address the needs of the market, such as the local payment provider Paystack for both domestic and international payments.
- User Testing & Scaling:
- User Testing System: Implemented a systematic user testing system for continuous optimization, utilizing market research findings to identify and address specific user needs.
- Platform Enhancement: Provided ongoing support to enhance the platform's functionality and user experience based on market-specific feedback.
- Scaling Exploration: Explored opportunities for scaling the platform utilizing market insights to identify expansion prospects.
- Key Deliverable: Generated user testing reports, recommended platform enhancements, and presented a proposal for scaling or creating spin-off initiatives based on market research data to extend the platform's reach and influence.
Through a combination of market insights, local and international collaboration, and a strong commitment to sustainability, Boldheart successfully developed Circulary to address Nigeria's waste management challenges and promote a circular economy. The platform serves as a testament to Boldheart's dedication to innovation and sustainability, in partnership with various like-minded organizations and individuals.
