A Sudden Clever Idea

Yesterday we had our first "big" brainstorm, we had invited Ruben our contact person and his friends, all industrial designers.

We had arranged so that the room looked nice, candles, pens, colours and of course beer. Around sevenish people started to flock, and the temperature was high. I started up with telling little about our school, rules and the focus for the coming brainstorm, which was What product could of help the spectators to eat in a fun, practical and reusable way? And after that we had a warm-up, we asked all the guest to tell something we didn’t know about Ruben. All and all I can know say that I know that Ruben has a thing for cats and that he used to be a trapeze dude.

After that we had a little associations game to empty some heads. The participants could freely say what they associated with the word reusable or lunch kit. After this game we had two different brainstorms, one traditional and one negative. The participants seemed to like the negative brainstorm very much, even though it was more nasty and disgusting then negative.


We let the participants to choose their favourite idea and made a new associations game, you should write down your feeling you had during your first kiss and connect those feeling to the idea. Then we had the Idealog method, were each and everyone could write on each other’s ideas. Then we paired them up and told them to prepare a presentation and a sell speech.

It was fun to brainstorm with other people then only Kaospilots. We had ten new faces to concrete on, and it was cool to see how Kaospilot cooperated with non-kaospilots. It was also interesting to have a mix between experts (industrial designers) and “normal” people, us. Many great ideas came out of this day, and I hope that we can use a least some of them, letting Rubens friend to sketch them for our semi-deadline on Monday.

Cheers,
Ellen

Brainstorm

The scene was set to do brainstorms the 13/3 2007

The cleaning of the homebase is our responsibility this week, and the plan was to do the dishes as a part of warm up for the brainstorm but Helene was a true saint and did it all by her self. Well done!

The Brainstorms was to open up and not just to think about the lunch kit but that feeding the volunteers and spectators is …

TO DEAL WITH A MEAL
A meal is just not the food, it is also handling the utilities: from storage in a cupboard, to putting the things on the table, to eat, to carry the utilities away, to wash up, to dry the things and put them all away again.
And what happens when 40.000 is going to do this at the same time?
This brainstorm gave thought both to the system around the way food is going to be served and how to dealing with waste, and at the same time we realised that the the lunch kit also developed.

Other brainstorms:
What is a spectator going to bring him or her?
What does it take for you to put your waste in the right box?
What kind of recycling do we like?
What kind of recycling do we use now and how did we start to do it?

And we had a short look at facts: how are the waste systems working in DK and Germany.

All in all the keywords of the day: stick or carrot, awareness, overview, easy, possible, fun, practical and efficiency.
Important thought was: avoiding food traffic jam, information in general: e.g. if the Germans are told to sort out their waste they will do it. Other kind of information that can be encouraging: what is the next step on the road for the waste?

Walking and talking

Today we started the morning walking the streets asking as many as possible about reusable food ware.
This to get new ideas and knowledge on what people in general think of reusable coffee cups and food ware. And to find out what they want, what it would take for them to use it and what reasons they had for not using it.

We got many interesting answers and ideas out of this.

Many mentioned the hygiene in paper cups as a main reason for using these, they now for sure that the cups are sterile and that no one else but them selves has used the cup before. Others said that a reusable coffeecup is to difficult to carry around. If was developed so it could be attached to their bags. Or it should close properly so that they can be sure not to spill any coffee in their bags when carrying it around.

Some wouldn't mind using reusable food ware, but they do not want to spend the time it takes to wash it themselves, they want to be sure that it is sterile and washed properly. For these it was a question on "how much work will be in it for me" when deciding upon it.

Many mentioned that it was important to create some more awareness upon this specific subject. If more people become aware on why it is important to reduce their amount of waste they might feel a bigger ownership towards it.

Now one of our many questions is how do create awareness the best way and hereby make ownership grow in as many humans as possible?

Others said that if they got something out of it such as a discount when bringing their own cop they would consider getting one.

Starbucks coffee already has a special deal for their costumers using reusable coffee cops, they offer them 20 % discount when buying coffee, this to encourage people to be aware of the environment they live in and stop their wasting.

It was mentioned that the reusable mugs you can get now are to deep to wash properly, and they don't go into the dishwasher. Again a matter of hygiene. Many would like them to be a bit smaller and hereby easier to clean with their hands.

A few people mentioned that they would like to customize their own mugs, so they know exactly which one is theirs, and for the fun of it. If that was possible somewhere they were sure more people would by them.

We also became aware that it is mostly people over the age of 40 using reusable food ware. It was stated that it might be because they have their daily routines going to the same place for coffee, lunch etc. where they might have their cup or plate standing. Younger people are always on the run and therefor they find it more difficult to remember or fit in their bags.

Life goes on

One wise man once sang;

It's The Circle of Life

And it moves us all

Through despair and hope

Through faith and love

Till we find our place

On the path unwinding

In the Circle

The Circle of Life


Working with sustainability you realize that there is more to this song, than a lion, a meerkat and warthog.
I asked my beloved fellow group member to describe this more precisely:

“ 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. Biggest hurdles for cradle-to-cradle packaging to overcome is the on-the-go lifestyle and the fact that we humans never seem to have enough time. So what is a replacement for time? Convenience. You gain time by buying disposable products because you don’t have to clean them, but if we succeed of creating an sexy, fun and easy "lunch kit" that also is convenient, would people use it then?“

That is a good question, but only time will answer that question.
In addition to cradle to cradle, Susanna from Mango communication has been an outside consultant providing us with a different view and tips.
Helene and Anne met her Friday, before the greatest KP party in Vancouver ever; here is their description of that;

“Friday afternoon, we had a meeting with Susanna. She has previously done a lot of researching in her work.

She gave us some very good contacts to check up upon and came to think of some people and companies she would recommend us to take contact to.
It became obvious how much talking to different people from all over can help us to think of new contact possibilities and get new ideas and its amazing how willing many are to help.
She advised us to find out who we easily could "sell" our idea to and focus on them in order to find out what our focus point shall be with the project.

It was a very giving meeting - talking to Susanna gave us some new ways to turn to and try out..”

The whole day has been a big idea day for us. We have turned our heads up and down, worked around corners of our minds and playing with the word reusable food ware, both drawing and describing the weirdest thoughts with each other. One can argue if at this given time of the process, this is the right step to take, but evaluating the day, we found out that it was not necessary the concrete outcome of the day which was of most importance, rather starting the creativity within ourselves. It has been a long time ago since any one of us had worked with idea development, so it was nice to test our own shapes, and start practising again. Have you ever seen Rocky be in the best shape he can be when the film starts?

How does our project relate to environmental sustainability?

Sometimes you have to face an inconvenient truth: if you want things to change, you've got to start somewhere. E.g. you can start on Environmental sustainability, the area we are working on.

It does already exist many steps to avoid global warning. If you recycle more, you can save 1000kg of carbon dioxide per year. By avoiding products with a lot of or wrong packaging you can save 545kg of carbon dioxide, only by cutting down your garbage by 10%.

So what do we do? We work on creating reusable food ware for The Olympics 2010, but are planning to spread even further.

We are trying to develop and design an innovative way to handle food instead of using plastic wrapping that just turns to no recyclable waste, and ends up in a hole somewhere.

How can we educate and engage by feeding people?

We are trying to make non-disposable fun, sexy and easy by designing new food ware. On idea is a portable “lunch kit”, witch you bring when e.g. you go to The Olympic game, use, wash and take home.

Our dream is that our food ware will be made of such a good material that when it finally turns to waste its equal food. You are going to literally and if you want to, be able to eat it. No carbon dioxide at all.

The final product will also serve to educate and engage people, creating a pre-legacy witch will get people to invest and take personal responsibility to create a more sustainable legacy.

Yours,
Ellen

6 months work to be done in 6 weeks!

We had another meeting with our contact person Ruben from Sustainability group. We finished up our contract, and got a good overview over what is expected of us regarding this project.

- Research into the problem, best practises, framing the goal and vision
- Mission
- Ideation, sketches, sketch prototypes
- Validation in users
- Refinement and prototyping validation
- Recommended implementation plan - try out plan

Above you can see the different phases they want us to work with an cover during the next 6 weeks.
We also decided to meet up with Ruben twice a week, every Thursday afternoon and the another day in the beginning of the week where Ruben are to come and work with us.

When we returned to our own office we decided upon our next step, the research phase. Who did we want to contact and what questions do we want to get answered?

Today we decided that it would be good to work in another environment than usually, therefor we meet up in Ellen and Pouria's apartment and worked from there all day.
It has been very nice to be elsewhere. We decided that we should keep this in mind and make sure to change our scenery once in a while.

We divided us into different research areas and mailed and called people we thought could help us gather some answers to our questions.

* DGI- L2002 og L2006, Danish Gymnastic and sport.
* FIFA World Cup 2006
* AOS - Amaury Sport Organization, Tour De France
* Uffe Elbæk - World Out games 2009, Denmark
* DSB - Danish railway company
* SuperBowl
* Air Canada
* West Jet
* Harmony Airways
* Canadian North
* Rail Canada
* Togservice - Railway company Norway
* Roskilde Festival - Danish music event
* Hultsfred festival- Swedish music event
* Qvart Festival - Norwegian music event
* South by southwest - Music event Texas
* Iceland airwaves - Music event Iceland
* Coachella - Music event California
* Vancouver international marathon
* Vancouver international jazz festival
* IOC
* Åre Ski WC
* Torino Olympic 2006
* Bejing Olympic 2008
* Aramark
* Canada Games
* NRC-Recycle
* Vancouver Folk Festival
* Oregon University
* Institute for Sustainable Dev.
* University of South Carolina
* University of California
* Oslo Olympics 2018
* Norges Idretts Forbund

Some has been very quick to answers, some where in Europe so they might answer tomorrow or Monday.

Peace,
Helene