Project Proposal
This proposal documents considerations and research conducted toward the fleshing out of a Social and Mobile project. For this project our team chose the domain food waste and explored solutions on how to effect change in identified problem spaces. This domain was selected as team members conducted initial research in this space out of personal interest. The team identified insights and themes, by examining peer reviewed articles and by conducting individual interviews, to ideate for solutions to existing problems that were discovered. We soon realised that the solution should address not only one problem space or theme but that several would be needed. Throughout the semester the team will refine the concept and develop prototypes until we have a final “proof-of-concept” prototype that attempts to address user expectations. By the end of the semester, we hope to have learnt more on all aspects of social and mobile computing and gained knowledge on methods to develop different prototypes.
Food waste is defined as any food that is lost in the four stages of the food supply chain (Bellemare et al., 2017). According to Bellemare et al. these stages are:
- Grower
- Processors
- Retailers and
- Consumers
It occurs daily and can be considered a global event but it occurs at different stages of the food supply chain depending on the location that is considered.
The scale on which food waste occurs is hard to quantify as it can be expressed in relation to documented instances of food waste (which are available in the form of limited datasets) or in terms of global malnutrition (Parfitt, Barthel, & Macnaughton, 2010). According to the United Nations (Gustavsson, Cederberg, & Sonesson, 2011) food waste in low-income nations occurs at the first two stages of the food supply chain whereas it occurs in the last two stages in medium- and high-income nations; this means that food that can be consumed is thrown away. This proposal considers food waste on the consumer level, specifically targeting food that gets wasted without being consumed. Before discussing food waste at this stage, it is necessary to examine the effects of food waste and why it is a problem. As of 2011, an estimated 1.3 billion tonnes of food fit for consumption is wasted globally (Gustavsson et al., 2011). This impact can be expressed in terms of carbon footprint. Carbon footprint can be defined as the measure of emissions of greenhouse gases of individual entities that contribute to global warming (Ecrin & Hoekstra, 2012).
Carbon footprint can be calculated at different scales: an individual’s carbon footprint to that of a country and even globally. According to the United Nations (FAO, 2015) the total carbon footprint of food waste, if it were a nation, would rank third behind China and the United States at 4.4GtCO2 - this is an expression of carbon emissions in tonnes.
Returning to the intentions of this proposal, consumer level food waste or “post-consumer” food waste occurs between acquisition of food to when it is discarded (Parfitt et al., 2010). This waste can be classified into that which can be avoided, possibly avoided and that which cannot. Food waste: That cannot be avoided includes waste created during the cooking process (skin, shells, bones)(Quested, Parry, Easteal, & Swannell, 2011). That can possibly be avoided include waste incurred in accommodating personal preferences (eg. some people eat the skin of fruits and vegetables while others do not) Avoidable food waste includes food that was edible but thrown away As examined in a study: “The generation of food waste is not a behaviour in itself, but results from the interaction of multiple behaviours relating to planning, shopping, storage, preparation and consumption of food.”(Quested et al., 2011)
In order to assess the food waste that occurs in the third and fourth stages of the food supply chain, we looked at food waste in households. The following conceptual framework by Quested et al. gives us a good overview of the same.
According to the same study(Quested et al., 2011), in the UK - a high-income nation - single person households waste more food than the national average. We are targeting food waste that can be avoided in individuals.
The aim of our project is to motivate users to incorporate consistent and conscious actions in relation to their food handling and waste management into their routine. To work toward such a goal our design must be able to inspire spontaneous change in the users. In order to attempt changing human behaviour, it is imperative that we explore the factors we must consider.
Persuasive technology, according to Fogg’s Behaviour Model (Fogg, 2009), is about learning to automate human behaviour. The factors that influence situations for behaviour change in people are:
- Motivation
- An ability to perform the behaviour and
- Triggers for that behaviour
These three events must occur, in the user, all at once through technological stimulation for behaviour change to successfully take place. The behaviour that we intend to introduce is good food handling practises in order to curb personal food waste. This model provides us with a foundational guide in that endeavour. We must understand user motivations and triggers and assess appropriately that they are able to perform these actions. It is possible to investigate motivations and triggers through observations and interviews.
When designing a mobile persuasive systems, we as designers should enquire and understand the reason behind food waste behaviours that we are targeting. Makuochi’s implementation of a mobile web-based persuasive system in developing countries in Africa (Nkwo, 2019), indicated how design plays a significant role in boosting positive waste management behaviours and protect the environment. Behaviour change in users should also be spontaneous and enduring, since simply force the user to comply with rules will not be as efficient and its effects will be short term.
Moreover, a social persuasive system could provoke reflection and shift in behaviours in target user group (Thieme et al., 2012). An effective result has been identified by Thieme et al. in the “BinCam” system. That system utilised social media to raise awareness amongst users : a user could see their own and other participants’ food waste behaviours to foster a sense of membership within that particular social group and encourage responsibility that was socially motivated.
Therefore, in our project we will take all aspects of technology, social influence and human persuasion into consideration to achieve our goal. In the following section, we detail key insights from our initial inquiry interviews.
An inquiry was made to examine why food waste occurs in households using interviews and a probe. The insights gained from this exercise are listed below and categorised themes are detailed in Appendix 3. These key insights and themes drawn from our interviews are those that we consider relevant to the literature we have reviewed. This helps inform our user group along with key features of our concept such as incentives for users to change their waste management habits and even inform possible solutions.
Here quotes from the interviews are followed by insights and/or possible solutions:
“Do you keep track of the things you throw away?”
“Not at all. I throw them away because they got bad and I forgot them, I would not give it away to anyone else. It does happen in my house however that someone says that they have something extra that we can use” - From Interview 1 Appendix 2
Insight 1: Things in the fridge go bad
Possible Solution: Give users access to storage tips so they may appropriately store food such that it lasts as long as it can.
From field notes of a Probe:
Food that has been thrown away: Bread 1 big package: 5/12/2018, Purchased to try and did not like it. Bread 4: 27/05/2019 Some were given by flatmates (thrown away while talking) Salmon, Crab stick: Had no expiration date on the package, received from ex-flatmates and thrown away. - From Probe in Interview 3 Appendix 2
Insight 2: It is difficult to track the expiration date of the food
Possible Solution: Provide expiration tracking to the user (maybe so it is automatically added by scanning the receipt)
“Do you keep track of the things you throw away?”
“Fresh veggies (lettuces) and mostly perishable food. Sometimes meats that I marinated and forgot I had in the fridge. “ - From Interview 4 Appendix 2
Insight 3: Users often forget what is in the fridge
Possible Solution: Allow users to track what’s in their fridge
“Do you think if there is a way that can help you to remember what you had in the fridge so that you won’t forget?”
“I think maybe, I would need to organize my fridge well and store them by category. Also maybe I should buy less junk food, and I felt back then we waste less food because there was less processed food. So we usually just have regular meals.” - From Interview 4 Appendix 2
Insight 4: Buying too much junk food distracts from food in the fridge and causes waste
“Is it cooked too much? “
“Not really because everyone has different appetize on a different day, and it was hard to know and control what they would like to have for the day I cooked. It’s hard to satisfy everyone. And you can’t control and have the same amount of food in every meal because it changes from day to day. Sometimes if you cook too little, then it’s not enough for everyone so I would rather cook lots just in case.“ - From Interview 4 Appendix 2
Insight 5: Users find it hard to control the right amount of food during preparation and often have leftover food
Possible Solution: Recommend easy, quick recipes with adjustable quantities and encourage consumption of leftovers
“Do you give it to someone?“
“No, I didn’t give it so someone unless someone is asking for it, and If I have it, I will give it out. I know there is a charity that you can donate food. If it's around my neighborhood area, or people can come to collect it at my doorsteps I will donate it.“ - From Interview 4 Appendix 2
Insight 6: Users do not know where to share or donate food
Possible Solution: Provide them with a food share forum (metaphor: community pin-up board)
In the following section we look at existing websites and applications that might help us set parameters for our own project.
There is a range of different food waste apps we have seen on the market. We have found some of the apps that were targeted to an individual household and promoting how to manage and organize food to prevent food waste. Most of them focus on organizing the fridge, keeping track of their current inventory, getting notified before the expiry date, a shopping list, and sharing/donating food. They were somewhat similar to one another; however, it only seems like helping the user to manage and avoid buying more food than they need. The apps only help the user track what they buy or have already, there is functionality that helps manage food that has expired or is going to expire. It is good to provide information on how food would be handled prior to going bad i.e. when the user is notified. Alternatively, how to store food appropriately to last longer would go a long way in helping users with this. However, the lack of information on handling ingredients was limited as well.
While inspecting existing apps, we looked closely at two applications: CozZo, Food Inventory Management, and Glean. CozZo is an application that has most of the functions that might be expected; for example, shopping list, search, scan, pick and notification of keep or toss. However, it did not enable social interaction and communication between users. Glean mainly focuses on sharing on the platform where people can post items that they would like to give out, or people can request items that they need. It has more social interaction between people but it was missing the functions CozZo offered.
Moreover, we found some additional information on OZharvest and Foodwise websites that introduce not only a basic understanding of the food waste but also break down food into categories along with information on what to look for and buy, how to store and cook them. They give complete overviews of what the user can do when they go shopping. It teaches users how to store their food, receipts of how to cook in document and video format. However, all this useful information was on digital files, the user has to download them one by one based on their preferences. Users who have limited resources, but want to make changes in their habits in relation to food waste, would have a hard time finding this information by themselves.
In this exploration, we came across some useful features that are similar to our design concept and some we would take into consideration in our future design. The similarities in each of individual apps were interesting, yet we assessed that they were not individually sufficient to address all the issues we identified in our research.
Using the research above, the team is aiming to create solutions that can help the individual reduce food waste. The team’s initial design opportunity is a mobile application featuring a system where the user would record their purchases and this way have a clear overview of their inventory in a mobile application. The app can provide the user with features such as expected expiration date, especially on perishables, such as fruits and vegetables, since they don’t come with one, suggest different preservation and storing methods and remind the user to use food from their inventory before purchasing more. The decision to develop around this feature was informed by our research which stated that one of the reasons for food waste is consumers not consuming edible food and then throwing it out (Bellemare et al., 2017).
While the aforementioned feature has been our concept’s central design feature in mind, other features are being explored and evaluated to expand on the main concept. Our research has shown that sharing unused food can also be a path to reduce food waste: If the initial purchaser can’t consume their food themselves, they can instead give it away to someone who will. With this in mind, the team is considering a solution that enables users to share their food with people inside a certain radius around their geographical location (their neighbourhood). The user will post on the sharing forum on the app about an item they won’t be able to use so that others can claim this item for free if they want. Additionally, users could also request items such that nearby users are able to respond if appropriate. Making the food freely available can attract more people to the feature and our application (Bauer, Blankenship, Gingras, & Goetz, 2009).
Another feature that the team is currently considering implementing is a recipe feature that provides suggestions for food that the user can make with what they currently have in their inventory. With this feature, we aim to reduce the amount of food a user purchases and also reduce the waste by consuming items from the inventory, as seen in the interview insights above - “things in the fridge go bad”. Features proposed to include that are linked to this insight are:
- A notification system that will notify the user of food that is about to go bad based on the expected expiration.
- A feature that gives tips to the user on how to preserve/store different kinds of food appropriately so they will last longer.
In order to inspire the users to continue their use of the application and reduce their food waste, the team is currently considering three different kinds of reward or incentive systems. The reason for implementing such a system is because research has shown that this is the most effective system to keep users motivated compared to the opposite form which is a punishment system (Aydin et al., 2017).
- The first form of reward/incentive is a money loss metric feature that shows the amount of money the user save by consuming their food instead of wasting it. Even though this is not a direct money-saving method it shows money that is not lost by consuming all the food that is purchased (Aydin et al., 2017).
- The second reward/incentive system is a metric that shows the user about the nutritional benefits they can have by keeping control over what they consume. The app will keep control over everything the user consumes and will therefore also be an easy way to show them their eating habits, tips for improvement could be considered for future implementations if this rewards system is chosen (Appendix 2, Interview 2).
- The final reward/incentive system is visualization of the carbon footprint that the user has made. Reducing food waste has an impact on the environment and with this reward system, the user can have a direct insight as to what their behaviours have contributed or rather what (Ecrin & Hoekstra, 2012).
Even though this is the first design opportunity the team is exploring, does not mean that it is a feature that inevitable will be a part of the end result. At this point, future research might change the direction and development of the concept and add additional insight not yet discovered.
Palaghias et al. explores and examines human behaviour through different research methods. The social aspects of our concept are important for it to be viable. Food waste is only as important as society and social norms make it and because of this, it is important to research what makes a person motivated and what can keep the motivation up over a long period of time. Additionally, it is important to understand our audience in order to design a concept that is appealing and interesting to them. (Palaghias et al., 2016). Over time the social understanding of technology and what it can do for us changes and it is therefore important to be up to date about the relation between humans and computers. Technology has become more and more mobile over time and many experts believe that the mobile should be the primary platform for new development (Dourish, 2006). Both of these areas, the social and the mobile, are important for the team to research and understand when we develop a product for the mobile and the people owning such a device. Our concept is in practise an individual one, but the attitude towards it is social. In the end, we wish to make a product that could become a reality in the future, but if we fail to understand the social aspects and the mobile technology that goes with it, this aspiration will fail.
Some of the features that we have proposed already exist in other apps as seen in a previous section of this proposal. What we will do differently is implement more features into one application so the user will have all they need to reduce their personal food waste in one place. As mentioned the team did not feel like any of the existing solution were addressing all the underlying issues which is something that we will try to solve with our application. This will be done by combining several features that address the issue of individual food waste into one application.
The target audience for our concept is dedicated individuals - people who are already interested in limiting/controlling their own food waste. The reason for this is because we decided on a concept that helps users reduce food waste and not one that aims to change how people feel about the same; This would be considerably more challenging and inquiry would take much longer, we are pressed for time since the project is only a semester-long. In short, our concept is not about recruiting and will therefore not be useful for individuals who have no interest in food waste reduction, to begin with. Lastly, we wanted to target people who reside in homes and have a smartphone (as this is required to use applications). University students are easily available to us for testing; We have decided to target them in user tests but the concept is intended to be usable for everyone who meets the aforementioned qualities. When thinking about age, it becomes natural that the starting age that we are aiming at are 18 (or at the very least the youngest age at which individuals are responsible for their own meals) and above since this is when people usually move to their own residence.
For a project to succeed with a time constraint, planning is crucial. The plan provided below is an outline of how the team envisions the next weeks to go by. The phases are explained in further detail below and will be overlapping and working together. The current plan is to have two iterations, but there will still be room to iterate more times if necessary.
| Phase | Note | Week |
|---|---|---|
| Design exploration | Look at research conducted and find possible ideas Key Milestone: Concept proposal |
Week 7 |
| Make idea tangible Make prototype |
Week 8 | |
| Construction | Test prototype Evaluate outcome Key Milestone: Explain current progress in Stand up |
Week 9 |
| Refine the concept based on feedback | Week 10 | |
| Test prototype Evaluate outcome Key Milestone: Explain current progress in Stand up |
Week 11 | |
| Finalise | Finalise proof-of-concept If there is time and it feels useful; Test one last time |
Week 12 |
| Key Milestone: Design Prototype | Week 13 |
Over the weeks we have been working on this project, we have created a research foundation that includes:
- Initial inquiry interviews and Probes,
- Reading through peer reviewed sources of information on the domain and
- Analysing existing solutions This foundation will be used when exploring ideas. This phase is to generate and access relevant research to create concepts and ideas. It will include connecting the ideas to salient features from existing solutions and apply critiques of those solutions to inspire new ideas. Conducting ideation sessions and creating affinity diagrams are a big part of this phase.
The construction phase will consist of four distinct processes:
- Prototyping
- Testing
- Evaluation and Analysis
- Design Review This is a part of creating a proof-of-concept prototype and iterating through early and later stages of the idea. These four parts builds up to be one iterative design cycle, and the team can go through this cycle as many times as is possible within the time frame. We have planned for two to three prototypes, but the team would have to adapt this plan to circumstances as it becomes apparent how comprehensive the prototyping and testing must be for the proposed concept.
Prototype Prototyping will involve implementing the ideas. The level and quality of the prototype will depend on where the team is at that stage and the difficulties in implementing the proposed concept. The prototype needs to eventually be at a sufficient level to test it in the chosen context. It is important to consider the aim and scope of the prototype, and to determine technology and platform for the prototype.
Test The testing phase enables us to get valuable feedback and critique on our design. The format and testing protocols will be decided upon finalising the concept for the prototype. The tests should consider what the team wants to learn from the participants when testing and what methods that are going to be used needs thoughtful reasoning for why they are chosen.
Evaluate and Analyse Evaluation and analysis of feedback and critique received from the testing session will take place. This can include finding themes and outliers, identifying design issues that can be reviewed.
Refine Apart from just looking at the data and finding themes the team must consider the feedback in relation to the concept and how that affects it. This can include changing minor design features, changing a workflow or even revisiting the concept itself. This marks the end of one iterative cycle and depending on time, need and resources the cycle can be done all over again as many times as necessary or possible.
The finalising stage is meant as a buffer to make sure that all the documentation and necessary items are where they are supposed to be. This could also be used in case prototyping and testing takes a lot longer than anticipated, or if we want to include more than two testing sessions. It is difficult to determine at this stage exactly how it is going to be, and a finalising stage is good for this purpose.
Though these are the main phases of this course, the team will make sure that everything done is documented and uploaded to gitHub or similar relevant platform as we go. We will use different platforms to keep organised:
- Trello.com will be used as a way of tracking process and padlet.com will be used to ideate and find themes and outliers from the research.
- Zotero will be used to make sure citation is done correctly
- GitHub to share documentation and collaborate on code
Our team is a diverse group of five girls, four doing a Master of Interaction Design and one doing a Master of Information Technology. Most of us have worked together in a team before, but never all five of us together. We are all high achievers and know that we are willing to put in the work that is required of us, and are from diverse backgrounds; This can help us get different perspectives and opinions. Strengths and weaknesses are discussed further in the SCOR(E) analysis.
Individual aims and goals:
Priyanka is determined and will choose to work with other people over working alone. This intention comes from wanting to avoid a creative process that is an echo chamber of her own thoughts. She works with purpose to get things done at least a day before the deadline. She completed an undergraduate degree in Architecture and is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Information Technology. She intends to combine the skills she has acquired in her undergrad and the skills she will graduate with, upon completion of her current degree, to demonstrate and use her strengths in design and technology. Her strength is her determination to do well in the courses that motivates her to have challenging goals that are achievable with good planning. She has also worked on several team projects before and is willing to learn and grow with each experience. She is eager to learn new things and do what it takes to achieve her goals. Her weakness is constantly being uncertain of her decisions leading her to second guess what she proposes or brings to her team. On occasion, doing what it takes might lead her to pressure those around her, her team members, and this might stress them out as well. Her tendency to put away issues instead of confronting them needs work so she is able to have clean and open communication with her team. With this project, she intends to learn appropriate leadership skills, organise and achieve team goals successfully, and get better at facing things that are daunting: -Programming languages -Saying something to team mates early on if work is not getting done on schedule
Kuan is an introvert but likes to learn and exchange ideas with people. She has a high expectation of herself and wanting to keep improving in every aspect of her skills. She had a Bachelor degree in BFA of Animation and Illustration and currently studies Master’s degree in Interaction Design. She is good at UX/UI design and had a couple of years of work experience. Kuan intends to focus more and get better at programming because the combination of her design skills and programming would be an advantage in her future career path. Her strength wants to do well on all the courses and willing to accept the challenge, learning, and exploring new things. She is good being on time when it comes to meeting with the group. Her weakness is that she is a more detailed oriented person; therefore, she might easily get caught up on overthinking of a subject before she starts the work. Presentation in front of a group is Kuan wants to overcome and get better at. Also, she is currently working on proper time planning and intended to learn leadership skills and organize document in teamwork. Lastly, Kuan would want to understand and grasp social and mobile computing technology in this class has offered and looked forward to work with the team.
Tuva is very extroverted and works well with people. She loves keeping things organised and getting work done before rather than last minute, and her goal is to learn as much as possible and grow as a person. She has done Applied Computer Science in the past and is currently commenced in the Interaction Design Programme where she gets to combine her creative skills with programming and tech-skills. A weakness that she wants to be aware of for this project is that she can easily take too much ownership of the work done in a team, and want to make it better it all by herself. Working with familiar faces and people she trusts might make it easier to trust the work done by her teammates and give the group work a better flow. She does not have very good design skills, but luckily does the rest of the team have this skill. On the other hand, she enjoys programming and has been working briefly with several different technologies and programming languages in the past, which might help the group with creating what they want. In this course she wishes to get a better understanding of the term “Social and Mobile” and to develop her skills in a new technology for the prototype.
Qisi is an introverted person who enjoys working alone for the individual work and feast on working in a design team to get inspired by others as well. She holds a Bachelor of Commerce degree completed in Japan and doing a Master of Interaction degree here at UQ. The six years of living experience in Japan made her always pay attention to details and sensitive to others feeling. However, it also caused her to always to be shy and be afraid to speak up especially about different opinion and counter views. She tends to push things off before the deadline while working in this team she will try her best to prevent that happens and proactive for each assigned task. She is better expressing ideas by combining visualisation rather than only use the verbal. Therefore, writing skill is one aspect she would put more effort in since the design project document required more accurate and a high level expression skill. The other part she needs to improve throughout this project is to be more confident talking in front of the crowd. Her explanation for this course is to contribute not only the visual design part but also the technical aspect while building the prototype. Programming skills it the most weakness part of Qisi, she will try to learn and practice by herself and with the other team members. For instance, since she did not utilise Unity and Arduino for the final prototype making in the Digital Prototyping course, she would like to attempt those skills in this project. To sum up, she is excited about creating a new application by utilising social and mobile computing technologies with the fabulous team.
Marie has a degree in multimedia technology and design and has basic knowledge within different kinds of media, for example, 3D animation, video and audio editing etc. Marie is a perfectionist when it comes to design and sets high standards for her own and others work. She is especially passionate about web design and wishes to learn more within JavaScript. She is, therefore, excited to be able to challenge herself with this project and make a product that has new elements that she hasn’t tried before, of course with the other members of her team. Her goal is to go outside of her comfort zone and code with a language that she is not as well familiar with as with other web design languages. A weakness Marie has is the bad habit of procrastinating her tasks, which makes her unnecessarily stressed and might worry her other teammates, but she always delivers before the due dates set by the team. Also, as aforementioned, because of her high standards of quality, she always tries to inspire the team to do their best. This can be both a strength and a weakness depending on the situation. A strength is that she always expects the best from her teammates as well as dedication and good communication, which she makes sure everyone follows. The team put together for this project is talented and serious and because of this Marie is excited to work with them this semester.
A SCORE analysis is a version of the SWOT analysis, which is a Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. The SCORE analysis looks on this more in depth, while still highlighting strengths and weaknesses. It includes strengths and challenges within the team, strengths and challenges around the concept, opportunities and risks and possible responses from the audience. The last point, Effectiveness, is not focused on for this project. These points allow the team to look at the project from an outside perspective, clarifying what are the challenges and highlighting where there is potential (Graves, 2013).
Strengths within the team:
- Determination: The team consists of members that are all high achievers and determined workers. This can encourage strong work ethics in team members while working on the project, ensuring high quality of the process and outcome.
-
Diversity:
- There is a wide range of cultural backgrounds represented in the team, which is great for ensuring different viewpoints and getting inputs to build on the creativity.
- The group has a diverse background from previous education. This brings a wide range of skill sets to work with, some are most comfortable doing design, some like programming and are motivated to improve in this field. Coming from different backgrounds also means different experiences with different tools (developing tools, programming languages, prototyping tools, management systems, etc.). This can be very useful in a project like this.
- Different personalities is also a strength that this group has. Some team members have strong personalities that would take up a lot of space, others are more private in the way they behave and some in between. A team consisting of either only strong personalities or only quiet personalities would either be too noisy and fighting for the word or communication could be difficult and inefficient. That is why having diversity in personalities is a strength of the team.
Strengths around the project concept:
- User group: The user group is chosen with accessibility in mind; participants should be easily accessible and easy to recruit for testing. This is a strength for the concept because it makes it easy to verify the concept and make improvements based on user experience.
- The domain, food waste: Our definition of food waste occurs in many households and there is therefore a wide range of users and locations available for us to test on. This is also a big topic that has a lot of papers and research related to it, meaning background information and starting points are easy to find.
- Relevance: The target audience includes people already involved or motivated in this domain, meaning the concept will be a tool for people to realise their motivations, relevant for their goals.
Challenges within the team:
- Different work ethics: Already some differences in the ways the team members work has been discovered, some working better closer to the due date and some working better when things are done further away from the due date. This could cause some implications, but as long as planning is done thoroughly, the project should progress smoothly.
- Personality types: The team consists of a wide range of extroverts, introverts and variations or in betweeners of this. This means some prefer to work in teams, while some are more comfortable getting work done at home in bed. This can cause some implications when collaborating, but again; planning is the key to making this work.
- Technical skills: In the team, most members are comfortable as designers, but only a few are comfortable with programming. Although the team combined has a lot of knowledge on different technological tools, advanced coding might be a barrier in this project. Team members might have to spend a lot of time trying to develop their technical skills, which can remove time from other valuable activities.
Challenges around the project:
- Creating something new: The domain, food waste, already has a number of projects and solutions, both on the market and work in progress. This makes it difficult to come up with something innovative that will be useful next to the other existing solutions. Researching existing solutions and what challenges they face is therefore crucial to have a succeeding product.
- Accessing and testing in people’s homes: The domain is about food waste in individuals’ homes, meaning an ideal place to test most likely (depending on the prototype) would have best results when tested in the real environment. A home is to many very private and it can be difficult to access necessary testing spaces.
- Technological constraints: The project might need technological tools or programming features that the team members are not familiar with. This can cause the product to suffer, having to adjust to the members technological skills.
Options:
-
Opportunities:
- New technical skills: As the technological skills are not as high as maybe wished for in this project, this will be a great opportunity to explore unfamiliar technology. Each team member has ambitions to learn a new technology or new tools in this project, and this is a great opportunity to do so.
- Real world impact: As we are exploring a real world problem, the product has the opportunity to be a viable product with a real world impact. After researching and iterating user tests a number of times, this is something that is realistic for the product, if we offer the project more time and resources after the end of the course.
-
Risks:
- Delays: The project is facing a risk in relation to the lack of technology skills in the team; possibly having to learn new technology from scratch can be a time consuming activity and the project might face delays. That said, the team members does have a certain experience with a range of different technologies, so depending on the final project this might or might not be an issue.
- Security: The team does not have a lot of experience on working with sensitive data that needs secure solutions for the real world market. Ensuring security for all data might be a challenge for the product, but is crucial for it to be a viable product.
- Privacy: The solution is based on tracking food and waste habits, using pervasive technology. This might raise certain concerns amongst the users, and they might not feel comfortable using the application. Keeping the users reassured at all times on how their data is stored and what it is used for should be a big part of the
Responses:
- Motivated: The idea of the application is to give people that are motivated to reduce their food waste a push. The intended response it motivation towards reducing waste, and satisfaction when achieving this.
- Persuasive technology: The persuasive aspects of this project might be received poorly. Users might feel judged or insecure from what they see on the app.
Aydin, A., Micallef, A., Lovelace, S., Li, X., Cheung, V., & Girouard, A. (2017). Save the Kiwi: Encouraging Better Food Management Through Behaviour Change and Persuasive Design Theories in a Mobile App. Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2366–2372. https://doi.org/10.1145/3027063.3053192
Bauer, J. S., Blankenship, L. A., Gingras, L. M., & Goetz, M. A. (2009). WantKnot: Connecting Organizations to Improve Their Waste Management Practices. CHI ’09 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2841–2846. https://doi.org/10.1145/1520340.1520412
Bellemare, M. F., Çakir, M., Peterson, H. H., Novak, L., & Rudi, J. (2017). On the Measurement of Food Waste. American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 99(5), 1148–1158. https://doi.org/10.1093/ajae/aax034
Dourish, P. (2006). Re-space-ing place: ‘place’ and ‘space’ ten years on. 299. https://doi.org/10.1145/1180875.1180921
Ecrin, A. E., & Hoekstra, A. Y. (2012). Carbon and Water Footprints: Concepts, Methodologies and Policy Responses | United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Retrieved from http://www.unesco.org/new/en/natural-sciences/environment/water/wwap/publications/side-publications/carbon-and-water-footprints-concepts-methodologies-and-policy-responses/
FAO. (2015). Food Wastage Footprint & Climate Change. Retrieved 2 September 2019, from https://www.fcrn.org.uk/research-library/un-fao-food-wastage-footprint-climate-change
Fogg, B. (2009). A Behavior Model for Persuasive Design. Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Persuasive Technology, 40:1–40:7. https://doi.org/10.1145/1541948.1541999
Graves, T. (2013). Checking the SCORE. Retrieved 3 September 2019, from Tetradian Weblog website: http://weblog.tetradian.com/2013/06/29/checking-the-score/
Gustavsson, J., Cederberg, C., & Sonesson, U. (2011). Global food losses and food waste: Extent, causes and prevention ; study conducted for the International Congress Save Food! at Interpack 2011, [16 - 17 May], Düsseldorf, Germany. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
Nkwo, M. (2019). Mobile Persuasive Technology: Promoting Positive Waste Management Behaviors in Developing African Nations. Extended Abstracts of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, DC14:1–DC14:5. https://doi.org/10.1145/3290607.3299071
Palaghias, N., Hoseinitabatabaei, S. A., Nati, M., Gluhak, A., & Moessner, K. (2016). A Survey on Mobile Social Signal Processing. ACM Comput. Surv., 48(4), 57:1–57:52. https://doi.org/10.1145/2893487
Parfitt, J., Barthel, M., & Macnaughton, S. (2010). Food waste within food supply chains: Quantification and potential for change to 2050. Philosophical Transactions: Biological Sciences, 365(1554), 3065–3081. Retrieved from JSTOR.
Quested, T. E., Parry, A. D., Easteal, S., & Swannell, R. (2011). Food and drink waste from households in the UK. Nutrition Bulletin, 36(4), 460–467. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-3010.2011.01924.x
Thieme, A., Comber, R., Miebach, J., Weeden, J., Kraemer, N., Lawson, S., & Olivier, P. (2012). ‘We’Ve Bin Watching You’: Designing for Reflection and Social Persuasion to Promote Sustainable Lifestyles. Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2337–2346. https://doi.org/10.1145/2207676.2208394
- Domain Insights: https://padletuq.padlet.org/p_sureshiyer/ce7rel1u7e7r
- Existing mobile apps and websites: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1t7Ry1lGUkjl50gvKc7mWr5w3_lNLtt4I50QmxDs6OtE/edit