Design Thinking and Concept Development

All this hard work has paid off in the end.

I was a part of the Roc City Market group and the feedback we received from our panel of judges was interesting and helpful. Feed back and my response to it:

·         Rock City Market, what kind of atmosphere will there be, it should be more defined

o   I had an idea of making it more of a hipster atmosphere with cool trendy local art work around like “lovin cup.” And the art work would be of farms and produce that is made in Rochester.

·         More detailed Budget

o   We have a more detailed budget that tells what are initial expenses were and we would make money in the restaurant area. Most of the income would come from the CSA in the begin and then the spread of word will catch on and make it a high traffic area.

·         Remodel the Menu

o   The menu contains a couple of items that are not harvested in Rochester but people consider comfort food. We were thinking of having some produce from a sustainable farm that we thought would not have a huge foot print in the environment.

·         What type of education

o   The educational aspect of our idea was very similar to the “workshop” group.

The feedback was greatly appreciated and I hope that Chris Hartman takes one of our ideas and implements them.

Roc City Market!

“I love this idea of an urban cracker barrel type of thing for local food. Sit down and eat prepared foods on one side, buy packaged food (designed by Daniel) on the other side. Where do you think your expertise as an engineer fits in?”

My discipline could be used in the creation of the freezer bags for the processed food from lodestro. As i stated in the blog creating an environment where there will be not plastic bag waste, we can sell re-usable totes. For our first time customers we can use paper bags just because they are recycled more often.

I am very interested in the lay out of the store, even though my disapline has nothing to do with interior decorating. 

Just like a family gets together there was a grand fancy potluck with team representatives and special invited guest. Don’t feel left out my Packaging friends this is just the beginning hopefully when my teams ideas become a reality you can dine in the new Bodega/café. There was a visual aid that we decided to make of the pot luck so why the guest can visualize our ideas better.

Poster:

The poster would should our four phases of prototyping easy moderate ambitious and to the moon.

Easy: would be our simple idea of just having the bodega, picking up the farmers product with the existing CSA truck.

Moderate: incorporating out bodega and our café idea

Ambitious: the bodega and café idea with a lunch truck that will depart the shot before lunch and serve fresh food for lunch to working people in the heart of Rochester; Meanwhile promoting the café and bodega.

To the Moon: while maintaining all of the ambitious ideas also have a monthly even where Rochester chefs come and host a Chopped (like the TV show on the food network) event where they create dishes with the produce that is in the bodega.

Images of floor plans of the bodega and bodega/café

Images of fronts of bodega to get a feel of how a bodega should look like.

Pot luck experience:

According to my team representative it was hard to talk to people in the pot luck because some of them were not interested in our idea. Unfortunately it was a potluck and I hope they enjoyed our dishes.

The Main Attack idea

The moderate idea is our main running idea that we all want to do. Since I’m a packaging science major I don’t see much then creating a sustainable waste reducing environment in the Bodega/café. Main things I would like to do is not have plastic bags, shoppers would have to bring their own carrying containers to take their products home. Using plates and silver wear will decrease the use of disposable utensils.

Saving the plant one utensil at a time.

We have advanced!! Now collect 200 dollars and go to the nearest Prototype phase station. Yes fellow packaging professionals we have advanced to the Prototype section of our project. We have past the Empathize phase where we observed engaged and immersed ourselves with the future customer. We have dashed from the Define phase where we developed a deep understanding of our user and design space to create a point of view. Strolled right by the Ideate phase where we step beyond the obvious and generate ideas with a wide mentality.

Through creating a 2X2 matrix we have refined our ideas/ solutions from the Ideate phase and have come up with some great solutions for the original problem. How to entice the early majority and mainstream customers to local foods in the winter season in western New York? Through refining our ideas we came up with a list that ranges from ideas from simple to complex.

The list:

1.       Bodega - Open up a store where there is a lot of walking traffic. Where customers that are a part of the CSA can pick up their seasonal produce and walk-ins can come and buy some fresh produce from the store. There can be refrigerators that can hold the processed frozen foods that the CSA offers as well; having a refrigeration system can allow for meats eggs dairy, foods that are perishable if not in a cool environment.

2.       Community Café- this idea incorporates the Bodega idea but adding on to it a Café in the back. This café will only use local grown/produced meals from western New York. There will be a Bartista with organic coffee from sustainable farms and a helper to prepare the café food. There will be a couple of circle tables with trendy/ local artwork on the walls.

3.       YouTube channel-piggy backing off of the bodega Idea we can also have a YouTube channel where we show our customers what they can do with their fresh produce and what types of meals they can prepare.

These ideas meet all of the needs of our future and current customers and my team and I believe that this will bring positive outcome to the CSA. 

Good afternoon my packaging enthusiasts and environmentally conscious followers today I will be blogging about some key elements:

1.       As know last week I visited the Good Food Collective truck on RIT Campus and have some concerns that I will voice.

2.       I will introduce the Golden Circle of Why concept. (you’re going to love this)

a.       Relating this to the improving the local food economy in upstate New York in the winter time.

1.       What Chris Hartman, his wife and his team of multi-farmers have created is exceptionally creative and one of a kind, a local food distribution to the Rochester community year round in a practical sense. But as I observed the Green machine go to work I noticed some things I believe hurt the business.

1.       Since this is a CSA I believe that after picking up my share I will not need to go to grocery store for any vegetables but for some people they will have too. There was not an enough variety of vegetable that I could say to myself “SHEESH I have all the vegetables I won’t be seeing the produce section at Wegmans I have everything I need.” I feel there should be enough vegetables here that I will not need to see Wegmans produce department.

2.       I observed a couple of potential customers come the truck and ask if they could buy some produce. Unfortunately this is not possible because this is a CSA and selling the produce on the spot is not what the CSA does. My issue is that even though the customer cannot but any of the produce, do not let them leave empty handed. Shutting down potential customers that approach the truck is not the most productive approach, give them a crop that when they eat it they will say “wow this is fresh ill wait for the next season and sign up” insert thumbs up emotional icon. Leaving them with something they can use their five senses on will make them come back as a customer.

3.       I spoke to Chris while I was at the CSA Food truck and one of his problems and one of my concerns was the organization of displaying the produce without having no clutter or empty baskets. Using reusable totes (I love this idea well any Packaging professional likes this idea) to house the produce for shipping and selling purposes is a smart idea.

2.       The Golden Circle of why is how to achieve success through changing ones conventional thought process.

Simon Sinek explains it in his TED video here is the link: TED. In his video he explains how conventional companies think. He states that every organization knows WHAT they do, some know HOW then do it and, few know WHY they do it and it does not mean profit because that’s a result, that’s always a result. We usually think from the outside in starting from the WHAT, the clear to the fuzziest thing, WHAT-> HOW-> WHY this traditional way of thinking states what we do, how we are different. But if you notice it does not say why we do it. The why section is the purpose, the belief why should anyone get out of their beds for your product/service? Inspired leaders and target from the inside to the outside WHY->HOW->WHAT. People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it. The goal is not to do business with everybody who needs what you have; the goal is to do business with people who believe what you believe in.

Relating this to the CSA:

The current view of the CSA per the flyer:

The good food collective winter CSA program provides fruit vegetables from sustainable, upstate New York farms from winter sun farms; stored roots, apples and fresh salad greens from our Good Food growers near Rochester; and organic citrus from locally owned Florida citrus farm.

Using the Golden Circle of why:

Why: We believe in stimulating our own economy and health by selling home grown food.

How: Through connecting local farms together in Rochester New York we can harvest numerous produce that usually comes from other countries that don’t have the same amount of responsibilities as US Farmers.

What: We provides fruit vegetables from sustainable, upstate New York farms from winter sun farms; stored roots, apples and fresh salad greens from our Good Food growers near Rochester; and organic citrus from locally owned Florida citrus farm.

Now don’t you want to sign up for the spring collective?

Good night fellow packaging enthusiast and sustainability conscious bloggers. Tonight I’m going to discuss couple of topic I learned in lecture and in the field.

1.       Topics from the “Bootcamp Bootleg” and Tim Brown video

2.       Applying topics to any problem

3.       Who’s Chris Hartman?

4.       The Good Food Collective

For most of Packaging engineers other design is manipulated through a group called marketing and sculpted by a group called ”designers”, we mostly put everything together with a cost that marketing will like with a look that the designers like. This struggle is well know among us.

1.

Tim Brown states that Design is human centered, knowing your customer the best will give you a better/more useful product. Learning how to view your design problem in a diverging manner will open us new concept ideas.

Bootcamp Bootleg states five key phases of design thinking they are

1.       Empathize mode- observe your future customers, engage/interact with the future customer and finally immerse yourself with the future customer so why you understand what they are experiencing.

2.       Define Mode- develop a deep understanding of your user and design space so why you have your own point of view.

3.       Ideate mode- step beyond the obvious and generate ideas with a wide mentality

4.       Prototype mode- bringing your ideas to physical form and introducing it to the entire team.

5.       Test mode- refines solutions to make it better.

2.

These five phases are new to me together but separate have been a part of my Packaging/sustainable use thinking for a while. Last quarter I was working on a detergent optimization project for Church and Dewitts Arm & Hammer. The first thing we did was take the current product and use it become the customer, ask around see what does the customer want and need and why. All this research falls into Empathize. Then we gathered a bunch of ideas. Prototyped the ones that we felt worked and launch them in within a 5 year plan.  

3.

Chris Hartman, I think he should have a bunch of cool emotional faces of carrots let us and stars. He graduated with a teaching degree. He help start farm schools for children, students come for a break and learn about the farming industry. He then came to Rochester and noticed that the farm industry here isn’t as organized as it should. His main objective was to bring local grown food to home in Rochester through a multi farm CSA called the Good Food Collective.

4.

The good food collective is a program that provides fruits and vegetables from sustainable upstate new York farms all four seasons of the year with all kinds of produce they also provide citrus products from a organic farm in Florida and some local Rochester baked goods.

The farmers of this collective have a safety guard just in case one set of their crops turn out bad theirs a back up farmer in the multi farm that can back you up just in case they season is not over.

The following photos depict the experience with the green truck.