There is a magical and sometimes difficult to ascertain point in any design process when you have to move from “let’s have some more ideas” to “let’s decide which ideas get to stay”. Or as Ron said yesterday, this is the time to move from diverge to converge.
It is a tough time in the term for students (and faculty). It seems that mid-terms are sort of over — they really do take up a lot of the students’ energies. Wonder if they are productive in a learning sense? Anyway — another topic.
Yesterday, the interim deliverable was some great ideas and a pilot to test the ideas. We heard from one of the Concert groups who have decided to work on the food system as it intersects with the Collingwood apartment building residents. They had a unique idea for their observations of the residents. They knocked on doors and requested that the resident allow them to photograph the contents of their refrigerators.
Their problem statement is around finding ways to shift the eating habits of the residents to be in better alignment with a light carbon footprint, e.g. less meat.
You can just glimpse the contents of the fridge here. The group had fun with giving code names to the residents. And they observed some commonalities around how couples stock their fridges vs. single men and single women. You can fill in the blanks yourself on that one.
The next challenge is to take these insights and turn them into tangible ideas that Concert Properties can implement as part of their quest for improving conservation and sustainability in rental apartments.
We spent a productive afternoon meeting with all but one of the groups — and here we have Ron explaining how the remainder of the term will unfold. Next week the deliverable is around the second iteration of their ideas — potentially using the business canvas again as a means to document and record ideas. It’s a time for using the feedback from yesterday and refining and refining.
Next week is week 11. And the presentation is week 13!