Team with Edwin D’Mello, Roselinde Loeffen, Pinar Kesenci

Introduction

The given design brief was looking to create a ‘toolbox’ that will help small-medium enterprises (SMEs) reduce their environmental footprint. The design team re-framed the problem and focused on finding a solution to reduce CO2 footprint from enterprises by making changes in their food-related habits of their employees.

Client Vision

“Many industries are responsible for the depletion of natural resources in our planet. WWF envisions to empower them and their employees with the right tools and knowledge to minimize their impact and ensure they behave in an ethical and sustainable way.” - Paul Zevenboom, WWF Netherlands.

Design Solution

The Foo(d)tprint Project engages employees in an easy & effortless way through a collective game to make ‘greener’ food choices in their organization’s canteen, raise awareness and reduce their carbon footprint. The game organizes employees in teams of 5, and they compete against other teams within the organization daily. The game wants to create a good-nature banter - a playful and friendly exchange of teasing remarks -  like friends that support different football teams and make fun of each other. To promote behavior change and to form new habits to the individuals the game runs in sprints of 21 days. According to Maxwell Maltz, writer of the Psycho-Cybernetics, “21 days is the minimum amount of time needed to adapt to a new change and start forming a new habit.”. The Foo(d)tprint Project to function initially requires the following: A small-medium corporation (SME), with up to 100 employees, with a canteen, one ore more CEOs that want help and support to reduce their corporation’s footprint and some open-minded employees. The toolbox that we give the CEO includes:

• The Calculator Software: An interactive engine that calculates the estimated CO2 emissions of each item sold in the canteen.

• The Ambassador Software, the conveyor of the idea, the message carrier of the whole project through whom employees will know everything related to reducing their footprint by functioning in teams. The software runs on employees computers and appears in most touchpoints with the system.

• Email templates, what should your employees know before they join the Foo(d)tprint project?

• Tailor-made Posters and Styleguide, raise awareness about the Foo(d)tprint Project in the physical context of the corporation.

• Food Labels: They are replacing current canteen food labels and they include the estimated footprint to the environment (CO2 per item) and are in the style of the Foo(d)tprint Project with the Ambassador style.

• The Leaderboard Screen, A large screen placed somewhere on the exit of the canteen which shows the ranking of each team on who has less footprint to the environment by their canteen food choices they make 

• The Idea Box: A physical box where employees can drop in their ideas, complaints about the system.

Scenario

Before lunch: Tomas is sitting at his desk working and it is close to lunch time. Tomas’ friend - Vincent - from another team walks by and asks him if he would like to join for lunch. Tomas agrees and gets up to go for lunch. While walking to the cafeteria, Vincent asks Tomas if he is prepared to be beaten for the third day in a row. Tomas grumbles a little bit and Vincent talks about how his team is better than Tomas’ and they are going to win.

At the canteen: Tomas enters the cafeteria. He browses around to see what food he wants. Vincent laughs and asks him to get the beef so that his team can get an advantage. Tomas is a little annoyed. He looks at the labels for prices and the footprint of the food he is buying. He is a little concerned about his team getting a bad score because of him. So he decides to buy chicken instead of the beef to keep a be`er score. He goes to the register and asks for a chicken. He sees his score for his order on the register. He adds an environmentally friendly food like banana. His score increases and the screen shows the footprint of his entire order  (chicken + banana).

Eating lunch: He confirms the order with the cashier and pays by card. The system knows who has paid and adds the score to Tomas’ team. Tomas waits for Vincent to complete the order. When both of them are done, they look at the big screen to see their teams’ scores. Turns out, Tomas’s team has ‘cut’ the points gap on Vincent’s team. Tomas jokingly warns Vincent to watch out for his team because they are going to go ahead of his team very very soon. They walk towards the table and see their colleagues sitting there and join them. Emily smiles at them and asks who did be`er today. Tomas tells her that his team just kicked Vincent’s ass. They laugh and sit to eat.

Android & Arduino Prototyping

The foodprint calcualtor demonstrates how the cashier will tap in the system the food choices of the employee. On the left side it’s the cashier screen and only the cashier can see it. On the right side, it’s the employee screen and its pointed to them so that the cashier can not see it. Both screens are connected to the same application and they update each other live. We noticed by the prototype that less impactful choices can be significantly healthier, cheaper and serve bigger portions. See how it was developed and how it works:

Following are the hardware components used to demonstrate how a product purchase is happening (Feather Huzzah ESP8266, PN532 RFID Card Reader). During checkout, buyer taps their employee NFC card to register their score to their respective team, pushing an update on the main screen leaderboard!