What we see on our way.

We are about finishing our project. It has been seven interesting weeks with a lot of input. There are areas we really know a lot by now and others we don’t know anything about. The next steps in developing the lunch kit go in two directions, one is the detail work and the other is the bigger perspective and how the logistic around the lunch kit should be.

A visit to Whistler made me think. I can see that our product could fit in but I can also see that at Roundhouse Lodge a lot of things are already done and are working very well. Here are the plates of porcelain, they have a nice waste bin system and the encourage people to recycle their plastic mugs. As a restaurant I think this place worked really fine, where our lunch kit would fit in, is if people are allowed to eat on their way to the venues e.g. in the gondolas.

I had a talk with Dave, my ski instructor, and asked if he was pro or against the Olympics. He was definitely pro, but also had a big concern about the security plan, and he thought that as soon as the security plan was in place a lot of things could be planed in details.

So first and foremost co-operation with the Olympics is one of the next steps. As part of the co-operation there need to be insight in the security plan. I think that if the product is adaptable to different kinds of security levels, there is a good change that it can end up been a real product.

As I see it, the bigger perspective of our task is to feed a lot of people in a short time in an efficient way and with as little waste as possible. Depending on where the Olympics wants to have the focus the lunch kit can be a good solution, and in other situations, a lunch kit is not what they are looking for. Except if it is possible to make a lunch kit that will fit in to the security plan, the sponsors’ wishes and the vendor’s ability and interest in the project. With that in mind, we know that our product is not finished yet. There is still a lot of thing to take in consideration before it reaches its goal.

Our last meeting with our client will also include a talk about how he wants to bring the project forward – I’m looking forward to hear about his plan….

Kaospilot Ideation

Prototyping

A SPONTANEOUS GROUP DISCUSSION

Mr. Magic Man

You know Rocky, the guy who boxes? Cool. Now think about Mr. Wolf in “Pulp Fiction”. The guy walks literally into problems and fixes them, now if you take the nature of his problems away; basically Mr. Wolf is the best KaosPilot I have seen in action ever.
Today we had a visit of Mr. Wolf, disguised as Peter McLeod. It was great to have a person coming into our project for a brief moment with new eyes, and another approach to how we could solve our task.
After Mr. Magic man, as we prefer to call Peter, went, the energy level in the room elevated to an insane level. Papers were filled with drawings and words, sheet came up on the level, and all the computers went nuts because of the typing. Work outcome of the day has been crazy!!

Other mentionable things today, are the heating system in our room. Since we moved in, the heating system has not been our best friend, it has frozen us out. But today the saga took an unexpected turn; the heating system became our best friend, and decided to heat the relation up some notches. So instead for the usual complains about how cold we were, today we sang Nelly’s famous song; “It’s getting hot in here”. Which kind of not only fitted the temperature in the room in Celsius but also our work production!

Moving forward

Starting this morning we had a lot of funny, useful and some not useful ideas to take further. I was very useful for us to bring in new brains with new mindset and see what they would come up with. A lot that is!
We needed to narrow it down to approximately 6-8 more concrete ideas that we wish to develop more on.
Our contact person Ruben has found a designer who is a very good artist, and she has taken the task of drawing and visualizing the different ideas we have so far.
The booklet presenting our first research phase and first ideas are to be done for Thursday latest.
Monday March 26 Ruben will use this booklet and the drawings of the ideas, when he is presenting our work to Industrial Canada for the first time. They will give their feedback and this will hopefully give us something to develop further.

Paper Are Better Than Plastic, Right?

Neither. They're roughly equal in pros and cons. While convenient addictions, they both gobble up natural resources and cause significant pollution. So those famous enviromental materials you have heard about, might not be as sustainble as you frist thought.

Reporting from the material jungle.

Searching for different material to use for our reusable food ware I have read many articles about which material that is most sustainable. That question seems to be much harder to answer then I thought. We had decided to use cradle-to-cradle design. Quoting from one if my earlier blogs.

”We have discovered the new way of product and package design, called cradle-to-cradle design (instead of traditional cradle-to-grave design). Cradle to cradle is about remaking the way we make things and it means literally designing waste right out of the lifecycle of the package. Mimicking nature, a package is designed to be either a technical nutrient that can be reused, or truly recycled in a tight, closed-loop process with zero loss in material performance, or a biological nutrient that can safely break down into the soil. One idea is that we create reusable food ware out of Corn, potato or soy bean plastic which is biodegradable.”

Know I have heard that corn plastic is not that green as we first thought, because of both the genetic modification and because of pesticides they use when growing them. Problems, problems, and how hard can it be to get a hold of some good old sustainable material? Okay, so what about Cellulose (plant fiber)? I have heard that in a recent test between bio plastics made from cellulose, corn, and starch (potatoes), that the cellulose products had fewer greenhouse gas emissions in their production, is that true? I search the web for answers and yes it is true, but the same problem still exist, it’s all genetically modified. So can we choose the right material without being hypocrites? Is their such a thing as the perfect material?