Awesome Box

An alternate returns box that sits alongside your library’s regular book drop.

The Awesome Box sits next to the regular drop box. Return to one box or the other.

The Idea

If you’re returning an item you really connected with, drop it in the Awesome Box instead of the regular book drop. Library staff tag it as Awesome and share it with the rest of the community.

The key feature is that it doesn’t ask the user to significantly alter their behavior — they’re already returning the item to the library. We’re just asking them to choose between two boxes. No accounts, no reviews to write. A physical vote.

Some Awesome Box bookmarks.

We built Awesome Boxes for several libraries at Harvard.

An Awesome Box sticker out in the wild.

Off Into the Sunset

Annie Cain and I built the Awesome Box together at the Harvard Library Innovation Lab. We learned a lot from it, but in 2016 we decided to turn off the awesomebox.io website to free up energy for other projects.

Thank you so much, 500+ partner libraries. What a great run.

Role. Designer. Developer.