Design For America: Food Apartheid in Cincinnati
Spring 2023
The University of Cincinnati's chapter of Design for America (DFA) is just one of many chapters around the nation that is dedicated to using the design innovation process for social good within our communities. The UC chapter accomplishes this through semester long design sprints.
Programming led by: Katie Van Gulick, Leah Riben, and Marcus Djuhadi
Team Leads: Danny Smoroske, Emmet Meiners, and Greta Tebbe
Design Sprint
A design sprint is a condensed version of the design process. We identify a problem space, immerse ourselves in research, reframe our research question, ideate on possible solutions, build prototypes, and test designs.
Identify
There are many areas that are currently living under food apartheid, especially areas that are close to the University of Cincinnati.
As students, how can we lessen the impact of food apartheid within our local communities?
Low income, Low Food Access Area, 2019 (www.ers.usda.gov)
Immerse
After general secondary research about food apartheid, we got the opportunity to interview experts in the field. We got to dive deeper into what questions our secondary research had brought but also learned valuable information that only comes from first hand research and experience in this area.
Reframe
After conducting our research, we began creating "How Might We" statements to focus our efforts on for the upcoming weekend. After dot-voting on which ones we felt encompassed what out research most reflected, we condensed them into 3 general sections to explore.
Ideate, Build, and Test
Final Solution
Our group came up with an app called Swap&Save. The goal of the app was to create a genuine awareness about food apartheid within college students.
Students would be able to donate meal swipes and voluntarily learn about food apartheid as they scroll through the app. In exchange the would get coupons to local grocery stores that need more business.
