More than a year ago, I worked, along with Dave Chiu and Haiyan Zhang on designing Fresh Start a service design project to prevent obesity that I am very proud of. The elevator pitch for it is:
“Two friends sign up for the Fresh Start service and make a commitment to cook with each other on a regular basis. On scheduled days, the Fresh Start service delivers to each of their homes a recipe, along with the required ingredients. Each friend receives a recipe with a different half covered. Using communication devices in their kitchens, each friend talks the other through their half of the recipe. At the end of cooking, the friends remove the sticker to reveal the complete recipe.
The Fresh Start service helps people develop healthy food habits they can utilize throughout their lives. By activating existing social networks, the Fresh Start service enables both the cultivation of routine and education through a process of learning by doing”
Curious? Well we’ve presented the project to the Design Council, TechnoGym and wrote a paper for CHI 2006 and now we’re presenting it at the poster session of Emergence, a service design conference going on in 2 weeks that Dave will be attending as well.
All details of the project will be released soon as we are also putting together a website for the conference.