Design Thinking

The Design Thinking course embodies an interdisciplinary approach, catering to graduate-level students from diverse academic backgrounds including Design, Management, Engineering, Science, and others. This collaborative course emphasizes a problem-solving methodology， encouraging students to engage in innovative thinking processes. The portfolio showcases a final group project illustrating the application of Design Thinking principles. The group comprises students with varied backgrounds, blending both design-oriented and non-design perspectives. All “real” personally identifiable information has been excluded from the displayed content. The names in the report are all aliases, and the photos are from open public image resources instead of from real participants.

Waste Reduction On Campus: Design Thinking Case Study 

Problem

The problem our group investigated was waste reduction with regards to food. There could be two aspects of this project, one around reduction of amount of food wasted, the other related to reduction of waste generated in food distribution, specifically food packaging. However, we did not want to initially limit ourselves to only one option, therefore we considered both aspects at this stage. Our research revealed how large the scale of the problem really is. In 2017, the U.S. alone threw away 38 million tons of food.[1] And 25% of the freshwater in the U.S. is used in the production of this food that is wasted.[2] On average, people in the U.S. waste 1 pound of food every day.[3] These are huge numbers and is incredibly wasteful of resources. We also found that one-third of the waste that ends up as trash is derived from plastics. In the U.S., plastic is more likely to end up in the landfill or waste-to energy facility, than to be recycled. According to Environmental Protection Agency, Americans recycled only 9.1% of their plastics in 2015. At the same time “we are growing more and more dependent on the plastics, especially hard-to-recycle varieties, such as single-use flexible food packaging”. In an attempt to address the growing problem, municipalities are installing equipment to sort waste better and improve recycling. Additionally, politicians are banning some single-use plastic products (straws, cutlery, polystyrene foam containers). Even then, leading U.S. municipalities are only achieving 30% plastic recycling rate.[4]

Process

We started with the question, “How can we create a product or system that produces less food-waste in schools?” The team that worked on the case study was comprised of three students at Iowa State University (ISU), that wanted to impact the educational experience, in order to be more mindful of waste on campus. The on-campus waste issue is complex because it’s interconnected to food distribution, food storage, nutrition, local government waste management system, and more. The impact of decreasing food waste, on-campus could lower food cost and lower water usage. By creating an innovative system for handling on-campus waste, the team was able to address a common problem that also plagues campuses across the country.

The users for our case study are primarily students on-campus, however it may also include staff and professors, as well as any local community that may interact with the school. We interviewed a diverse group of people including; students, on-campus food staff, people working within the food service industry, and conducted contextual interviews to better understand and empathize with the problems people face with food preparation, food consumption, and waste.

The ideation process involved the “double diamond” process model of discover, define, develop and deliver phases, and it is illustrated on the following pages.

DISCOVER: User research plan

This project began by asking a series of human centered questions. Our team focused on how to reduce waste. We then refined this general idea into reduction of food and single use containers on a college campus using a series of questions.

DISCOVER: Contextual user research interviews

This week involved creating a set of interview questions and interviewing several individuals who work within the food service industry or are users of its products, such as students or households. The questions were to determine what potential issues are present in the food consumption industry, with regards to food and packaging waste. We collectively interviewed 12 individuals, 6 students living on campus of two different colleges, 2 families with multiple kids, 1 family with one kid, 1 manager of a small food service business, 1 manager of a large food service business, and 1 manager of on-campus dining service.

DISCOVER: Affinity mapping

In order to analyse the insights we gathered by conducting user interviews and research, we created an empathy map for each set of interviews, which later were combined into one collective empathy map. We also created 3 affinity diagrams, which later were combined into a team affinity diagram. Lastly, we created 3 personas based on data collected during the interviews.

Below is an image of affinity diagramming for the collective team

DEFINE: Empathy mapping for each interview set

DEFINE: Personas

These three personas were created based on user research, in order to reflect key traits of people that are related to food waste. We created these personas in order to express the needs and expectations of users, and to uncover new features and important usability of the service.

DEFINE: Scoping

The assignment for this week involved the consideration of different point of views (POV’s) and how might we (HMW) questions. To obtain POV’s, we used the user+needs+insight framework. This method helped us obtain a good balance between broad and refined HMW questions.

DEVELOP: Divergence and Mash up

After framing our problem into a HMW question and further discovering our team POV, we started to develop possible solutions for food waste problem using a mash up method. The next step was to identify 6 best concepts. After applying forced connection and templates of innovation techniques, we ended up with 25 new ideas around on-campus food waste reduction.

This series of images below shows the process of creating the 25 new ideas.

DEVELOP: Convergence

For the convergence phase of our project, we picked the Now, How, Wow Matrix and Four Categories Method. These two methods seemed appropriate as convergence tools, as they allow us to take a systematic approach in dividing the concepts into distinct categories, in order to make a final decision and pick the best idea. After using the How, Now, Wow Matrix and the Four Categories Method, our team decided to use solution #24, a location that can facilitate reuse of food packaging products and food containers, these would be specially designed for durability in order to facilitate reuse.

DEVELOP: Service Design Blueprint

In order to evaluate our solution from a point of view of both the end users, and the service providers, we created a service blueprint, where we connected all components of the proposed service, and mapped out user’s interaction within that service.

DELIVER: Prototyping

Next step was to create prototypes for our solution. We made a paper storyboard and built lego mockups of the components of the solution in order to explore the interactions of the service, and designed a paper/cardboard prototype of collection bins to better understand how to best design some of the physical attributes related to this service.