PaperLama

Product Design • Mobile App • NASA Space Apps Challenge

The challenge

NASA’s Space Apps Challenge 2017 was a 2-day innovation incubator and hackathon participated by technologists, artists, scientists, students and engineers.

The prompt: Improve the quality of life on Earth with your amazing innovative ideas as we move towards the evolution of mankind.

Role

Interaction design, visual design, prototyping

Timeline

Apr 2017, 2 days

Team

Farhana Islam
Dalia Abdulkareem Shafiq
Vegnish Rao
Chamode Anjana
Shawn Benedict Kumar

Tools

Adobe XD, Adobe Illustrator

The solution: An app that promotes waste management through the 3R’s

Provided with an open-ended prompt, we decided to flesh out and fine-tune an app idea that some of our team members had previously conceptualised. PaperLama is a crowd-sourced mobile application aimed to promote effective waste management such as:

  1. Recycling by providing a list of nearby recycling centres and their relevant details like contact and accepted recycling materials
  2. Reusing in the form of buying preloved goods sold by users
  3. Reducing in the form of tips via blog posts

Our team was in fifth place among 150+ teams and was highly praised for our pitch and prototype.

Our team pitching PaperLama
Some of our classmates from Taylor’s University attending NASA Space Apps Challenge accompanied by our lecturers
Key user flow of PaperLama

Prototype highlights

Home

PaperLama’s homepage is the central hub to showcase it’s major features including a quick link to view nearby recycling locations, popular items for sale in the marketplace as well as blog posts regarding recycling tips and tutorials.

Prototype highlights

Recycle

The Recycle page helps you quickly find nearby recycling centres. Users can also search via post code, city and state to narrow down the list as they desire.

Users can contact their choice of recyclers, learn about their accepted recycling materials, get directions to the location easily, among many other important information.

Prototype highlights

Marketplace

Users can view all the pre-loved items up for sale in PaperLama Marketplace. Users can search for desired items or sort and filter the list to find desired items.

Users can contact sellers to let them know they are interested in an item. If the seller agrees to sell an item, the buyer must agree ion the pricing, time and place to meet.

Farhana Islam © 2025