Student CHI Design
The Constraints
Design an object, interface, system, or service intended to support the idea of utilizing or consuming local resources rather than global resources, in a sustainable and environmentally efficient manner.
To make it interesting: pick your own users to work with and submit your design to the Student Design Competition of CHI.
The group included: Moe Rafi, Yujia Zhao, Cheng Fan, and Heiko Maiwand
How I helped to contribute: sketching, concept generation, focus group conduction, ethnographic observations, survey creation
So How Did We Do It?
When given this problem space, one of the behaviors we saw around us was the little use of perfectly good local food by the students around us. This gave us the inspiration to start researching their behaviors towards food and how we could start to think of a way to help them utilize the local food around them. Through the use of ethnographic observations, surveys, and a focus group, we found out that while there is a culture around local food, the time and price investment by most was a large barrier to entering this culture. This allowed us to start designing something that would make it more attractive to use local food.
By going to the farmer’s market and meeting with the local campus chapter of Slow Food International, we got to taste and experience firsthand the fruits and labor of the slow food movement. We saw how hard it was for some to actually have the skills to cook the local food around them. This gave us the idea of having a system for students to turn to for the tips and tricks on how to cook local food.
With our proposed system, students and other users can find easy-to-cook recipes using their favorite local foods. The system would be able to help the cook find the necessary ingredients and utilize them into the latest and tastiest dishes. This would allow a community to grow and share in the tastes of local food, rather than having to spend gas to go to the grocery store or pay for food that has had preservatives in it or has an inflated cost due to shipping.