Design Honors Thesis
Sustainability in the Boba Industry
Boba is a trendy drink originating from Asia. In recent years, boba shops have started trending all around the world, attracting customers with its sweetness and fun flavors. A typical boba drink is iced tea mixed with a combination of milk and sugar, alongside chewy toppings such as tapioca balls, jelly, or pudding. Since boba drinks are typically served with disposable plastic cups and straws, the industry creates mounting waste that goes into the landfill.
The purpose of this research is to improve the sustainability of the boba industry through human-centered design practice. To understand the motivations of boba users, I collected qualitative data by conducting user interviews and I obtained quantitative data from a market research company. I synthesized the data to find the common themes in consumer’s motivations, then I brainstormed some sustainable boba cup design solutions that still fit into consumers' current consumption habits. At the end, I chose one prominent design to further develop on.
Inspiration
Even though I have had boba drinks since I was little, its waste problem really shocked me when I studied abroad in Japan last year. I stayed in Tokyo for four months and witnessed how boba consumption can even change people’s disposal habits. It’s widely known that Japan has a good reputation for being extremely clean and organized, especially around the topics of recycling and protecting the environment. From my first-hand observations, Boba is incredibly popular in Japan: the lines in front of boba shops were always long, and they typically went all the way out on the street. Shops and the government encouraged customers to take their boba drink trash home, but there are still some who left their drinks on the sidewalk because trash cans were already filled up with boba drink waste. It was such a surprise to me that the boba industry has cracked the robust Japanese garbage system. I want to find out how I can do something to help solve this problem.
 Tapioca wastes spilling out of the public trash cans |  Unfinished boba teas are disposed incorrectly in Shibuya, Tokyo |  Tapioca drink disposal box in Harajuku, Tokyo |
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Methodologies
This research is conducted through human-centered design practices, a problem-solving approach that focuses on the users and their needs. The specific methodologies are user interviews and design synthesis, which are aspects of human-centered design. User interviews are an efficient way to collect data on what motivates consumers’ behaviors, while synthesis helps me make sense of the collected data as a whole.
Interview Process
Following the methods written in Steve Portigal’s book, Interviewing Users How to Uncover Compelling Insights, I conducted 12 interviews of boba drink consumers that focus on their experience with boba drinking and boba shops. The main purpose of interviewing is to gain insights about what people think they need or might need. Although one of the goals of these interviews is to know their views on sustainability in the boba industry, I could not ask them the question in a leading way like “why do you think boba cups are wasteful?” Instead, the list of topics in the questions are structured as such: ice breaker questions, overall experience, motivations, walk through a specific experience, compare boba to coffee, and describe a boba cup. If they happen to mention the problem about sustainability or waste, I would ask them to elaborate on these topics. Interviewees are a mixture of my personal friends and strangers selected at random, and they are mostly students aging from 19 - 25. Although boba drinks are appropriate for people of all ages, the primary demographic is focused on teens and young adults. Hence I selected people within the popular boba demographic to interview. The interviews were recorded and transcripted with interviewees’ approvals, but their identities remain anonymous.
Interview Result Analysis
Using the interview transcriptions, I highlighted terms and sentences that either answer my questions straightforwardly, or imply a deeper motivation. I then arranged the important sentences in an empathy map, a 2-by-2 table that separates what they say, think, do, and feel (see sample in Appendix). At the end, I summarized the interview results in the following themes.
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Motivation: getting boba drinks is a social experience​​​​
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Boba Culture: users enjoy boba shops' relaxing atmosphere for young people​
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Packaging: ​a majority of the interviewees enjoyed the transparency of the boba cups
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Sustainability: ​many expressed concern over the amount of plastics used over boba drinks
Brainstorming
After synthesizing the interview results under different themes, I brainstormed solutions according to these themes.
People Like to Hangout at Boba Shops While Finishing the Drinks
Many interviewees suggested that they prefer boba shops over other food shops because they are free to stay in the boba shops to talk to friends for as long as they like. Other features inside a typical boba shop like board games, fun decorations also facilitate a cozy atmosphere for casual hangout. This prompted me to consider the viability of boba shops providing reusable cups for customers who want to stay inside the shop and finish the drinks
Alternative Boba Shop Designs
Continuing with the theme that people tend to stay inside the boba shops to hangout while finishing the drinks, I came up with two alternative boba shop designs that further encourage this tendency.
Different Ways to Reuse Boba Cups
Inspired by an interviewee who reuses her boba cups for chili paste at home, I brainstormed different ways to repurpose used boba cups if users are feeling crafty. This idea is not exactly sustainable because the number of ways to repurpose a cup is a lot less than the number of cups sold.
Reusable Cups That Don’t Require the Use of Straws
Many interviewees expressed willingness to use their own reusable cups at boba shops if the shops offer discounts for them. I researched some commercially available reusable boba cups and found that carrying a straw that sticks out of the boba cup is not convenient for the users compared to most reusable boba cups. I brainstormed different ways a reusable cup can eliminate the straws.
Fun Boba Cups
In the process of narrowing down, I was stuck for quite a while because the straightforward solutions like changes to a boba shop or discovering brand new sustainable materials, are not something I am capable of at this point. I decided to narrow it down to the notion of playfulness. Instead of presenting sustainability as a moral obligation, communicating sustainability by making it fun can be a stronger motivation for the users.
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Prototypes
I initially chose the “Aquarium Box” design on the bottom right of the image above to further research on The user will use a straw to hunt down the boba balls as they drink. This is inspired by interviews. Some people expressed that they liked the mechanism of sucking up boba toppings, that it’s like a mini game. This design adds playfulness to enhance the experience of drinking. While elaborating on the idea of “Aquarium Box,” I realized that there is little room for innovation in terms of materials and portability. This design is not considered a breakthrough in improving sustainability.
Next, I did another round of quick brainstorming, drawing different shapes of containers that fulfill the criteria of holding boba drinks, transparency, and fun to suck up boba balls.
Through this process, one idea stood out for me: what if the container is made of soft, transparent film that uses less material? This boba pouch should have a bigger bottom for stability, and a narrower opening for the straws. The bigger bottom also enables users to see where to “hunt down” the remaining boba balls just by looking down.
Prototyping With Materials
There are a few immediate challenges with this design. First, even with a bigger bottom, it would be easy for the pouch to topple or roll over, spilling out the content because of the soft material. Second, the narrow opening makes it difficult for boba shops to fill up the pouch using their current tools. Third, the conventional boba cups have a thin plastic film or lid on the top to seal up the drinks, and this plastic seal would be hard to apply to the pouch because of the soft material.
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To solve these problems, I prototyped ideas with some simple materials from the kitchen.
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On the next attempt, I folded and taped the bottom of a ziploc bag to form a flat square at the bottom. I made a cylinder out of cardboard, which would be an add-on base for stability. To shape the bag closer to my drawings, I cut out the sides at the top and taped the cuts so that the opening is narrower. After I filled it up with water and put it into the cardboard base, I found that it was actually quite stable because most of the weight was concentrated at the bottom. Even without the cardboard base, the pouch could still survive a few pushes on the side. It seemed that this tapered pouch shape and a cardboard base solved the problem of instability. The ziploc feature also solved the sealing challenge automatically.
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The next problem in line was how to fill up this boba pouch. I found a funnel in the kitchen whose narrow stem fitted into the opening of the pouch. I poured down some water, and it was easily filled. Unfortunately, the stem of this particular funnel was too narrow for the boba balls to fall through. If the stem size were bigger, this device would be able to fill up the pouch with boba balls and tea.
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Final Design
In summary, the final design consists of two parts: a boba pouch and a refill station. The boba pouch is made of transparent, biodegradable plastics with a ziploc opening and two punched holes above the ziploc. The refill station has a funnel with a wider stem on top, which connects to a rod. The funnel can be moved up and down along the rod. In the middle of the rod, there is a pair of slide bars whose distance from each other allows the stem part of the funnel to move in between. The slide bars are inspired by the bagging area inside supermarkets. Similar to how shopping bags are placed on the bagging racks, these slide bars can hold boba pouches through the punched holes that are above the ziploc.
The steps to fill: first, move an empty pouch from the back of the slide bars and open the ziploc; second, push down the funnel so that the stem is placed right inside the ziploc opening; then fill up the pouch with toppings and beverage through the funnel; finally, zip up the boba pouch and serve.
Users may also pair up the boba pouch with a cardboard sleeve, which acts as a base for the filled pouch. This cardboard sleeve is inspired by the ones used by Starbucks. In my design, the sleeves are also made of cardboard and foldable, but they stay at the bottom around the pouches for stabilization. For those who want to take the boba pouch to-go, they can fit a string through the punched holes and carry the boba pouch like a handbag. Whenever users are ready to consume the drink, they can unzip the opening, and either pair it with the cardboard base to drink from a flat, or hold the pouch neck to drink on-the-go.
There are several advantages to a ziploc boba pouch compared to the traditional boba cup with a lid or plastic sealing or other reusable boba cups. The ziploc prevents the users from having to punch a hole with the straws, as some interviewees complained that they had a hard time punching through the plastic sealing. The ziploc that comes with the pouch also eliminates the use of a boba sealing machine, which is often a necessity for shops that don’t use lids. The pouches give users the freedom to dine-in or to-go, as interviewees mentioned that they particularly enjoy this freedom. Although a regular boba cup also allows users this freedom, the ziploc feature on the pouch takes a step further to allow users to reseal the drinks after they started consuming.
Compared to the conventional boba cups, the boba pouches save material and space tremendously. To calculate the difference, I compared boba cups to regular ziploc bags. Note that a ziploc bag is not the same as a boba pouch, but its data would be similar to that of the pouch. According to a listing on amazon.com, 50-count 24 oz boba cups weigh 1.5 lbs and measure 31” tall, 4” wide and 4” long ("Amazon.com: [50 sets - 24 Oz.] plastic cups with flat lids: Kitchen & dining," 2020). I measured 50-count 32 oz ziploc bags available in the kitchen, and found that they weigh 0.2 lbs, and measure 1.6” tall, 7” wide and 7.75” long. Compared to traditional cups, the boba pouch would take up 82.5% less space and create 85% less waste. More importantly, the boba pouch can reduce waste without making sustainability a moral obligation to the users. Even though many interviewees expressed their concerns about sustainability in consuming boba drinks, and were willing to use reusable boba cups, none of them have actually used reusable boba cups. This gap between users’ opinions and their actions means that it is difficult to make a difference solely through consumers’ conscience. The boba pouches create minor to no inconvenience to the users while reducing environmental impacts.
Conclusion
The highlight of this design is that it helps the industry to be more sustainable by reducing waste without disrupting much of users’ current habit of consumption. If I had the chance to conduct the research again and not during the Covid-19 pandemic, I would make copies of the final design prototype and ask people for their opinions or even test it out.
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The final design of this research is only at a beginning stage. There are many hurdles ahead before it becomes an actual product. To name a few, I will need to research into the specific plastic that is biodegradable, safe for food, and economically profitable to produce. Once I custom-made actual pouches using the right material, I will conduct another round of user interview and user-experience research to further improve the product. A thorough life-cycle analysis is also needed to estimate the environmental impact of the boba pouch.
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