A connection
worth making.

An everyday service.
A complex connection.

Households need waste collected. Local enterprises provide the service. DortiBox helps connect the two.

We partnered with Freetown Waste Transformers to design and develop DortiBox: an app connecting households and businesses with local waste collection services. Our role was to turn a shared ambition into software that customers and collectors could use in their everyday work.

From a shared brief to a working app.

For the initial app build, we brought together an 11-person team spanning product design, software analysis, and engineering. Working with FWT, we translated the service requirements into customer and collector applications, connecting the request on a phone with the work of arranging and completing a pickup.

We built the customer journey around selecting a location, describing the waste, and requesting or scheduling a collection. For collectors, the app brought pickup requests and schedules into view. Payment was part of that same journey, with mobile money integration and, later, a cash-on-pickup option.

Built through participation.

1. 01

   Understand the context

   We shaped the application around findings from a needs assessment involving FWT, Freetown City Council, waste management stakeholders, and residents. Their context gave the software brief a practical starting point.

2. 02

   Build and test

   We developed a working version for people to try, then refined it through a user-testing workshop and a pilot with waste collection enterprises. Demonstrations and feedback helped connect our design decisions with the realities of the service.

3. 03

   Learn from use

   We used feedback to improve the application as it moved towards wider use. Adding cash on pickup was one practical adjustment, giving customers another way to complete the service when the initial payment option was difficult to use.

Part of a wider effort.

We built DortiBox as part of a wider effort led by FWT, alongside local authorities, collection enterprises, and residents. Our contribution was the software; its usefulness depended on understanding and working with the people delivering the service.

That is what makes this work meaningful to us: bringing design and engineering into a shared challenge, listening as the product takes shape, and making room for improvements that help people complete an everyday task.