Avast ye travellers. Red at morning, sailors take warning. I did not take this warning.
Project 4 started off as calm as a summer breeze. I started by blazing through domain research. This was the very start of the design for good project which I started by doing domain research. I took a look at The UN sustainability goals found here https://sdgs.un.org/goals
The ones that stuck with me were 2. End Hunger, 12. responsible consumption & production, and 13. climate action. These three really stuck with me as my family have voted green ever since moving to England and the values I was raised on were all encapsulated by these. I was interested in them also because of the knowledge I have that comes from my working history. I worked part-time at the Norwich Recycling Centre. Full-time at Asda where I worked as a produce employee for five years and then moved on to the waste/reductions team where I worked for another year. So it came as no surprise to me when those sustainability goals were the ones I enjoyed the most.
My initial thoughts were I could produce a service app to help reduce food waste. However, when you take the user out of user design you’re left with bad design; so I had to find out where in the world needed a food waste reduction app. I looked into different countries and found that sub-Saharan Africa had the highest amount of food loss.
The choice is obvious! Create a food loss service for sub-Saharan Africa.
Wait…
Oh…
To create a food loss service app for a country where only 40% of the population have access to the internet is foolish. I’m ignorant of their cultures and practices along with the lack of internet proved to be too much for me to undertake as a project.
Things are looking up!
Luckily enough the rest of the world has about the same amount of food loss which means I can take it back to the UK where I have a bit more understanding of our problems and access to more resources when it comes to sourcing interviews and data.
The next upside was that data showed ALL income levels suffered from the same amount of food loss/waste across the board. Perfect. An app everyone can use(at least in the UK).
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