EXPLORING THE SUSTAINABLE NEIGHBORHOOD OF THE FUTURE
Service System Design
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Cities produce thousands and thousands of waste every hour. Resources that instead of being used are wasted.
Food takes up more space in US landfills than anything else.
30% of all food produced in the US is wasted each year, that's nearly 40 million tons of food.
Source: https://www.rts.com/resources/guides/food-waste-america/
People want to save energy at home, reduce food waste, and eat organic food. However, only half of the people who say want to incorporate sustainable habits in their life have actually made any significant changes in the last year.
Americans want to make sustainable living choices, but their desire doesn't always translate into action.
Source: https://globescan.com/trends/healthy-sustainable-living/
Average of 27 Markets, 2021
Desire to Change vs Changes Made to Lifestyle
Desire to change lifestyle to be more…
Changes made in the past year to be more…
61
50
47
24
25
31
“I would contribute a monthly fee to support [a solar project], but only if I can see the impact of the it on myself and the community.”
“It seems like everybody is in their business and no one cares about littering”
“Organic food costs more and to buy cheaper food, I have to visit several different supermarkets”
Incorporating sustainable habits into life is perceived as costly and inconvenient, difficult to measure and a lifestyle few are likely to adopt.
People want sustainable experiences that are easy to incorporate into their daily routines, where they can visualize their impact and feel part of something bigger.
Rescuing food one dish at a time
Urban Treasure is a pop-up restaurant that collects unsold food from supermarkets and transforms it into creative and unusual dishes.
Food is collected by trucks that run through various supermarkets within the neighborhood.
The unique menu adds excitement and surprise to the experience every week.
It is almost like a “MasterChef” mystery box, where they don't know what they are getting.
We partner with local chefs who use their expertise and creativity to create wonderful dishes from the food that is collected.
Through Urban Treasure app, customers can reserve a table, check the menu for the week and, most importantly, visualize their impact.
Customers can access easy-to-read sustainability metrics and see how much food they have saved since their first visit.
Customers can discover the weekend menu through the app.
Eating at Urban Treasure brings a sense of accomplishment, build community around food and help people incorporate sustainable practices in their lives without much effort.
Customers can order their favorite food at the counter and provide their community with ideas for using up leftovers while enjoying the outdoor venue.
By choosing a traditional restaurant customers lose the opportunity to have a positive impact on the local environment while having a dynamic and fun experience.
Urban societies possess resources with great potential, but they are misused and ultimately “wasted.”
The question is, what is the next Urban Treasure?
Process
CITIZENS
Individual user / citizen behavior / experience
SERVICES
NEIGHBORHOOD
Sustainable living
models / practices / services
Urban infrastructure / environment / community
The components of �sustainable city living
Understanding context and motivations
Secondary Research
The focus of our research centered on four key aspects of sustainable living in cities:
Public Space
Transportation
Waste water
Food waste
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07
04
09
Chicago residents
Primary Research
Leading from the findings from our secondary research, we wanted to understand the motivations and behaviors associated with adopting sustainable habits.
Total Interviews
Experts
Friends & family
Talking to residents and sustainability experts
Behaviors
To synthesize the findings of our research from a behavioral lens, we mapped out the emergent insights on the ‘Me, We, Tools, Rules’ framework to frame our insights.
As most of our findings linked back to group and individual behaviors regarding sustainable choices, they mapped well onto the framework. We found a few insights within each bucket.
Information & Infrastructure
Policy & Regulations
Social Context
Personal Behavior
Me
We
Tools
Rules
Individual context & identity
Social & cultural reinforcement
Physical environment, devices and processes
Government policies, penalties and incentives
Individual Behavior
“I would be willing to contribute a monthly fee to support [a solar project], but only if I can see the impact of the project on myself and the community.”�- Research Participant
“Organic food costs more and to buy cheaper organic food, I have to visit several different supermarkets”- Research Participant
“Even for someone who composts, it’s easier to throw it away in the winter, than go outside.” �- Fjord Expert
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Social Context
“I like to go out and do things because of my neighborhood culture likes to go out and do things. Feels very laid back and relaxed.” - Research Participant
“
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Info+Infrastructure
“We need to remove the word "sustainability". If we consider what keeps people in a ritual (convenience, affordance, etc), its not "sustainability", so you need to fold that objective in behind other incentives.” - Fjord Expert
“The building itself facilitated that people wanted neighbors to move in”- Research Participant
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Service Systems Workshop • Midpoint review • Overview
20
Service Systems Workshop • Mid-term Review
01 Public Space
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Policy
“For me, those who manage public spaces are the ones who must take the first step in creating sustainable services that people can use and enjoy.”�- Research Participant
“A political party whose leader and team are 100% committed to making change and focused on how to improve cities for their citizens, is the best top-down approach to build sustainable public spaces.
Why? because they are designing budget investment packages for local urban agriculture projects, retrofitting for buildings, designing kilometers of bike lanes that did not exist before. They are giving back tax money to create inclusive and sustainable cities.”
21
Service Systems Workshop • Midpoint review • Overview
“
”
“I would contribute a monthly fee to support [a solar project], but only if I can see the impact of the it on myself and the community.”
“It seems like everybody is in their business and no one cares about littering”
“Organic food costs more and to buy cheaper food, I have to visit several different supermarkets”
Incorporating sustainable habits into life is perceived as costly and inconvenient, and a lifestyle few are likely to adopt without the support of the surrounding community.
Research participants
How can we support the adoption of sustainable habits that are convenient, affordable, and that build community?
Ideation + Food Waste
Ideation + Food Waste
Initial concepts
Concepts
Concepts
Evaluation…Fresh Tables won!
Evaluation+Experiments creation session
Determine food sources as well as staffing and marketing positioning.
Back-end Components
Back-end Testing
Hypotheses:
Back-end testing
Experiment 1
Front-end testing
Experiment 2
Value Proposition
Final Concept
Goals:
Supply Chain Validation
Change supplier
Experiment design
Interviews with local chefs/owners
Some restaurants are driven by high profit, while others are about community, sustainability, and highlighting ingredients (e.g. Kimski, a polish- korean fusion restaurant, sometimes makes specials based off ingredients of the day)
We will focus on sustainability and community-minded restaurants and seek to expand our impact.
Through interviews with chefs, we learned that chefs are willing to join our concept and showed their interest in reducing food waste.
It’s all in our customer communication
People often find out about restaurants through social media
and word of mouth.
Other media like posters & flyers don’t work
Front-end Components
Hypotheses:
Back-end testing
Experiment 1
Front-end testing
Experiment 2
Value Proposition
Final Concept
Goals:
Front-end Testing
Measuring interest through a survey
30 responses
Reserve a table form
Setting up our test
Created an Instagram Profile and post first event featuring two local chefs from our chef interviews
Use this as a platform to advertise and also share info about us
Using our instagram & partner instagrams
Service Blueprint
Rescuing food one dish at a time