Waste In Sight, Placed Right
PHASE 1:
POG Generation
After research and product opportunity gap selection, the final POG we chose is: reducing single-use waste from restaurant and retail businesses with an emphasis on customer utility and product adoption. This decision was driven by a design process that included methods such as SET factor analysis, brainstorming, weighted matrices, mind maps, affinity grouping, research, reflection, 2x2 matrices, and of course, collaborative discussions amongst the team. Key factors in the decision making process involved the teams excitement about the opportunity, the feasibility of creating an impactful solution under both timing and technical limitations, as well as the likelihood of creating a solution or product that could actually be adopted by local restaurants or retail shops.
SOCIAL FACTORS
The primary social factor accounted for in POG selection was that most consumers do want to be sustainable, but will often be unwilling to sacrifice convenience. The current trend to be more sustainable is prevalent and likely only going to get stronger. However, consumers are largely still attached to their ways, and can be picky when it comes to style or convenience. Many green products that have been introduced to the market have failed because they did not take into account that there needs to be a balance in order for a new product to be adopted.
Short attention spans
People are constantly on the go
Shift in how shopping is perceived
Grocery store being replaced by Instacart kinda idea
Energy savings and space if not being designed for consumer experience
Worker displacement
Empathy to those impacted during product life
Animals, workers, etc.
Pickiness over a brand
Gamification
Rewards: punch cards
Desirability of not interacting with people
Preferability of cooking (lower cost) vs take away food (quick and easy)
Having a means of taking away food (backpack)
Increased age before having children, and average # of kids
Restaurants: convenience vs experience
Snacking becoming more popular
People are moving towards being more sustainable
California leads many trends, then others follow
ECONOMIC FACTORS
The first economic factor we focused on is the fact that millennials are often buried in debt, whether due to college loans or increasing living expenses. This is a major driving factor in the economy since this debt affects how millennials spend their money. While consumers generally favor healthy foods, they also want food that is affordable, again affecting the economy via the types of food they purchase. Our literature research identified and quantified the major disparity in purchasing power between different economic classes of America.
Brand identity is an important economic factor, as companies aggressively protect and value their brands. They rely on recognizable brands to maintain a large share of the market, and will push back on any product or other company that attempts to disrupt the industry. While branding is an important social factor, it also has considerable economic impacts as consumers are willing to pay a premium on company products with a well-branded identity. Apple, Lululemon, Soylent, and hundreds more companies are exceptional at leveraging this approach.
Millennials are buried in debt (student loans, housing)
The average education level is shifting to “college” with new generation
Average age that people have children is getting older
New generations will be first to live to 100
Affordable
Non GMO foods
Expensive reusable water bottles
Types of jobs in retail industry
Fewer cashiers
Delivery jobs
Manufacturers/conglomerates in competition might push back on any new disruptive changes in their industry (like big tobacco vs. e-cigarettes)
Branding
Pushback from companies and users that love to rely on a brand
TECHNOLOGICAL FACTORS
Technological literacy is growing to be more and more important in the retail and restaurant industry; of all places! This is the most important technological factor to our POG than the tens of others that we identified. Consumers trending towards taking more food to-go brings with it the inception of digitizing these industries. Young consumers are accustomed to using their personal devices for every aspect of their lives, and companies of all industries are trying to take advantage of that with apps and data analysis. As such, it was clear to our team that a technological solution to whichever complex problem we converged on would likely be comfortably adopted by the generations of tech-savvy consumers.
Higher dependence on personal devices
Automation
Manufacturing and material science advances
Recycling/Composting technologies
Adoption is high
Corporations/institutions are trying to be “green”
Renewable energy advances
Technological “literacy”
Technological Restaurants
Restaurants having to meet customer demand for technology to improve their dining experience
Apps, automation, delivery
2X2 MATRIX
We placed our six POG statements on a 2x2 Matrix, with axis of feasibility and impact, to determine the relative strength of each POG to our group. From discussions amongst our team we determined that food preservation had the possibility to be quite impactful in reducing food waste in the restaurant and retail industry, however, we did not feel we had the technical expertise necessary to design an effective solution. Next, we considered optimizing the operations and energy use of a restaurant. We deemed this less feasible and impactful once again to our team's skill set. Another problem we identified was the significant barrier to entry with this POG. Single-location restaurants already have slim margins and high operating costs. Our team figured that many restaurants with already low returns would likely consider this opportunity too risky.
PHASE 2
POG Selection and Research
In Phase 1, our team developed our initial POG of reducing single-use waste in the restaurant and retail industry based on our identification of social, economic and technical factors characteristic of consumers today; primarily that they order out more, have less time to spend cooking at home, and have increased interest in supporting sustainable initiatives. We established customer surveys to poll consumers, and conducted restaurant interviews to understand their perspective of this space. These research methods gave a lot of insight into consumer and industry preferences regarding sustainability; consumers highlighted that re-imagining single-use waste containers could be difficult for adoption as they prefer convenient methods of sustainability, while restaurant feedback uncovered that to-go waste was never going to disappear from the industry. These were both significant strikes to our POG, and suggested at its revision. Further, large-scale perusal of scientific literature identified that current production of disposable to-go items is highly efficient, and the number of reuses required of reusable alternatives to recoup energy losses (or water usage, carbon emissions, etc.) of their production are often greater than might be expected of their useful life. Through extensive value opportunity analysis (VOA), we developed a better understanding of how our target POG compares to the competition based on a baseline of attributes we defined. After research, interviews, and exercising a number of design methodologies to flesh out desired product goals, we were naturally led to revise our POG to be relevant and impactful.
STAKEHOLDERS
We began Phase 2 by identifying stakeholders that would be affected by a product made within our POG. By understanding who is at stake, we can strategize and focus on who we contact and ensure our product offers the best solution. Illustrated by our stakeholder map, we utilized Powers of 10 to see how our POG could impact different groups at various levels of society. The smallest center circle, our primary stakeholders, are businesses like restaurants and cafes. As the most significant source of single-use waste, they are our prime target for gaining insight into how we can approach the problem of reducing that waste. Zooming out slightly, producers of single-use consumables may be affected since we are trying to reduce the very products they create, so our solution may end up impacting their business negatively. We also identified waste management companies as a stakeholder, because the more waste they receive that has been placed in the wrong section or has been contaminated, the more money and resources these companies have to spend to properly sort them. Customers are the next stakeholders, as the consumers and cause of waste. Knowing their habits and educating them would be an important step forward in sustainability
CONSUMER RESEARCH
We gained some very valuable high-level insight from the answers to our survey questions. Firstly, we were able to confirm the high frequency of takeout ordering amongst this young adult population. When we came up with SET factors in phase one (which were primarily based on consumers of age 18 to 30), we stumbled across many that would allude to the conclusion drawn from responses to question one including:
Social— Young adults are constantly on the go, and opt for convenience over experience of restaurant dining
Economic— Average education of consumers is getting higher, and a busier lifestyle would likely mean fewer dine-in experiences
Respondents also showed preference towards convenient methods of sustainability (i.e. not a significant burden to adopt or continually exercise), but recognized that our goal of reinventing single-use containers would likely mean inconvenience to them even in the ideal event that restaurants fully adopted our “solution” container. These results, among with later revelations from restaurant interviews and scientific research established a significant basis to revise the initial POG to a more relevant and effective POG based on our research. Our team took demographic information for the second survey, but kept the questions largely the same. In doing this, it provided a good sanity check for the first survey as this survey largely confirmed the same results but for a slightly older population
RESTAURANT INTERVIEWS
Both the restaurant interviews and survey results showed that both consumers and restaurant owners were not as passionate about reimagining single-use containers as we had initially relied on for our first POG. However, we received persistent feedback from restaurants, dining facilities, and an employee at the Environmental Protection Agency about the issues with restaurant patrons misplacing trash in incorrect bins. The single-use item journey redefined our problem space, focusing on the waste that can be controlled, that which is disposed of inside a restaurant. Based on the insights gained during this phase, we realized that there was significant motivation to modify our POG to be more useful and impactful. At the end of this research we concluded our final POG:
Minimizing the environmental impact of single-use waste by maximizing the efficacy of existing recycling and composting services at restaurants.
PHASE 3
Product Selection
Our product requirements followed naturally from user and restaurant interviews. We set usability requirements based off of our SET factor analysis, as we projected that consumers were willing to use green technologies if they were affordable and not cumbersome to adopt. Surveys of over 100 consumers corroborated this. We further required our product to be of solid build and “green” aesthetic, as restaurant interviews highlighted that they are willing to pay a premium for sustainable products to incorporate them into their brand identity. Lastly, after exercising a host of concept generation and down-selection methods, our team converged to the final product idea based primarily on our team’s enthusiasm, input from stakeholder interviews as to what aspects of our POG were most important to them, and the product’s realistic potential for sustainable impact. The final idea of a computer vision scanner at waste-disposal satisfies stakeholder input and SET factor projections, as 1) users want to engage with practical and easy-to-use methods of sustainability, and 2) restaurants often have a vested interest in correcting in-house waste disposal ensuring and promoting sustainability as part of their restaurant identity.
CONCEPT SELECTION AND CLUSTERING
We began the structuring process by placing our initial 55 concepts onto a digital board so they could be inspected collectively. This led to the initial four main categories — Education based, reusable related, packaging, and waste sorting. Then, we organized each idea into subcategories using colors to : labels, consumer education, employee education, reusable product, services, non-container reusable, cleaner, sorting mechanism, sensing, large-scale trash, human disposal, and unsorted. This helped our team identify common concept themes and understand the solution space that we had developed concepts for.
Our initial filtering process was necessary to take our 55 concepts down to a more manageable number for other selection methods. We targeted redundancies by removing any repeats or collapsing similar concepts into a single idea. We also discussed whether concepts had adequate potential to become a useful, sustainable, and desirable product. Finally, we considered if the idea was really relevant to our POG. This allowed us to reduce our concepts down to about 15.
We used a weighted matrix to downselect from 15 to 6 concepts. With these six concepts, we formatted a second weighted matrix. The criteria for this weighted matrix focused on aspects of all three phases so far. We chose prototypability as a criterion because we wanted to ensure we chose a project that our team could develop a prototype for in phase 4. Ease of customer use, global sustainability, and whether the concept supported our research were all characteristics we had determined during phase 2. From our second weighted matrix we were left with 4 concepts that stood out. After analyzing the existing options, we felt it would be appropriate to combine two of the concepts, the automatic sorter and the waste scanner, into one.
PHASE 4
Product Development
In Phase 4, we physically realized our chosen concept with a medium-fidelity prototype which potently demonstrated the sustainability goals of— and consumer need for— a computer-vision waste scanner at the site of disposal. We received an outpour of positive feedback from this phase regarding its potential for adoption and the very real need for a product which simplifies the convoluted process of single-use waste disposal. In two weeks, we developed a 3-bin (compost, recycling, landfill) demo prototype that uses: OpenCV in Python, a pre-existing object-recognition library with tens of food and waste items built in, an Arduino and a few servo motors, and a USB camera to perform real-time recognition of single-use waste items and identify their correct binning. A demonstration of our prototype can be seen here. The path to commercialization would take a fair amount longer but is very much attainable. With dedicated graphics processing hardware for real-time detection, and both general and restaurant-specific trained computer vision models, this idea has a strong potential for realizable implementation, profit, and sustainable impact.
WASTE SCANNER
REFLECTION
This class was a great way to start thinking about problem solving as an engineer from a different angle than we are used to. We began the course with much more consideration for the problem we wanted to solve rather than just some random product solution. This was extremely different for me, but proved to be a very fruitful strategy for product development.
I am very happy with my effort, project work this this semester, and how I was able to drive the team to new heights. I began to resonate with the course much more at the beginning of phase 2 once I figured out how this course was going to go. From then on, I was able to effectively leverage the course strategies and methodologies to perform effective interviews, map out a path for development, and more activities that ended up being crucial for the project. Lastly, I am happy with the final product idea that I generated based on all of the research and Phase 1 analyses we did: a computer vision waste-scanner to sort trash at the time of disposal.
I look forward to the future of this product, and I intend to pursue a path towards patenting this product as it was envisioned in the course.