Challenge
The hospitality industry generates significant amounts of waste through single-use amenities. One commonly overlooked example is disposable hotel slippers, which are often used briefly before being discarded.
As travel becomes increasingly accessible, the number of disposable products consumed by travellers continues to grow. While many travellers are becoming more environmentally conscious, convenience often takes precedence over sustainability.
Problem Statement
How might we encourage more sustainable travel behaviours while maintaining the convenience travellers expect?
Key Insight
Research revealed that the issue was not a lack of environmental awareness.
Most users understood the environmental impact of disposable products and expressed a desire to make more sustainable choices.
However, they often chose convenience because sustainable alternatives were perceived as:
Inconvenient to carry
Difficult to store
Easy to forget when travelling
Less practical than disposable options
The key insight is: Sustainable behaviour is more likely to occur when it is effortless and seamlessly integrated into existing routines.
People were not rejecting sustainability, They were prioritising CONVENIENCE.
Opportunity
Rather than attempting to persuade travellers through education or awareness campaigns, there was an opportunity to redesign the travel product itself.
The goal became:
To create a reusable travel essential that is portable, convenient, and easy to integrate into everyday travel habits.
By reducing friction, sustainable behaviour could become the easier choice rather than the harder one.
Solution: FoldFlop
A compact, reusable travel slipper designed to reduce reliance on disposable hotel slippers.
The product folds into a compact form that is easy to pack, store, and carry while travelling. Through multiple rounds of prototyping and material exploration, the design balances:
Portability . Comfort . Durability . Ease of use . Sustainability
Throughout development, the project involved:
User research
Concept generation
Sketch exploration
Physical prototyping
Material testing
CAD development
Rendering and visualisation
The final outcome provides travellers with a practical alternative that supports more sustainable consumption habits without sacrificing convenience.
Find out More
To learn more about the design process I took, you can view my creative design journal below:
Impact
FoldFlop reframes sustainability from a behavioural challenge into a design challenge.
Instead of asking users to make sacrifices, the product supports sustainable behaviour by fitting naturally into existing travel routines.
The project demonstrates how thoughtful product design can influence everyday decisions and reduce environmental impact through small but meaningful interventions.
More importantly, it highlights the role design can play in shaping behaviour rather than simply creating objects.
Role: Product Designer
Responsibilities
Conducted research into sustainable travel behaviours and disposable hospitality products
Generated concepts and explored multiple design directions
Developed physical prototypes through iterative testing
Investigated materials, portability, and usability considerations
Produced CAD models and visualisations
Refined the final product for manufacture and presentation
Skills Demonstrated
Product Design
Behavioural Design
Prototyping
CAD Modelling
Sustainability
Design Development
Reflection
This project taught me that people rarely make decisions based on values alone.
Although many travellers care about sustainability, convenience often has a stronger influence on behaviour. Through the design process, I learned that encouraging positive behaviour is not about persuading users to do better—it is about making the desired behaviour easier to adopt.
This project strengthened my interest in designing solutions that influence everyday experiences and behaviours. It reinforced my belief that design can create meaningful change not only through products themselves, but through the habits and actions they encourage.
