Define

Identifying a local, social issue

So, how did we come up with our ultimate challenge statement and solution? It was a long and thoughtful process beginning with out first meeting on campus. Our first meeting was a global affair with dedicated students on campus in LA, as well as students from San Francisco, India, and Taiwan joining in via Skype.

Discover

The answer could be anywhere

Once we had defined our problem, it was time to do some research. Students who were not able to make it to campus performed some online research and entered their findings in this Google Doc.

Reframe

Turning observations into a challenge


After collecting great observations and interviews, we synthesized the information and narrowed-in on a challenge statement. To start off this second meeting, we started by identifying everything we knew about "single-use" items, either from recent observation/interviews or from personal experience.

Ideate

Narrowing our focus on specific points in the system

Prior to starting our brainstorming session, we felt it was important to set some ground rules that would keep the environment conducive to the task. As a group we came up with the following:

Generate

An all encompassing solution

Once we voted on our top three ideas, we realized we could integrate them into a single solution. An iPhone application would have the ability to educate and provide incentives to students for choosing to use multi-use items, and adopting other waste reducing behaviors.

Implement

We propose to start small, grow functionality and scale up.

Start Small.
The best way to begin implementation for the iPhone application would be to start with basic functionality. The initial objective of the application would be to help students make more eco-friendly decisions while dining at Ackerman and reward them for doing so.