A Look Back at the Global Service Jam
I attended a 48-hour Service Design Jam Atlanta held at Georgia Institute of Technology hosted by Global Jam last weekend. It was a great place to learn and create contacts with service design professionals.
During this workshop, we brainstormed around the topics of Sustainability, Education, Urban Planning, and Inclusivity.
After this, I chose my interest topic of ‘Sustainability’ and formed a team of four designers (Betson Joseph George, Morgan Platt, Palak Gupta(Me), and Sharon S Rogers) based on similar interests.
Later, we discussed and brainstormed potential topics and scoped our problem to ‘takeout waste.’ Then we carried out a quick hour-long user research, interviewing restaurant owners, employees, and foodies in the neighboring locality of Tech Square.
We jotted down our research findings to get a clear picture of the scenario with food takeout packaging.
Through this research, we discovered the following:
The packaging reflects the quality of the food.
Restaurants don’t want to clean containers for reuse.
Packaging is dependent on the food type and location.
Takeout is overpackaged, with not everything getting used.
Subsequently, we mapped the generic service model of a restaurant focusing on takeout service to find loopholes leading to the production of an insane amount of trash that may or may not be recycled.
After a wonderful workshop showcasing different service design mapping methods, including Service Blueprinting, Journey mapping, Persona, Service Origami, and value chain Mapping.
We picked the Service origami tool to showcase the takeout service's current and future state. We chose this tool to represent the service because of its fluidic nature, and we were aiming for a more circular mapping style instead of linear like in other methods.
To visualize the different categories of information, we used different colored sticky note pyramids, where white holds all stakeholders involved, orange maps the tasks involved, and blue showcases other factors.
After mapping the As-Is journey, we found the gap with the cleaning of utensils (aka Boxes). From the user’s perspective, they are either busy or lazy to clean and don’t want to carry their boxes around. Similarly, companies have limited staffing and are already engaged with current tasks at restaurants. Hence it is easier and more efficient for them to use disposable packaging.
Due to reluctance to clean boxes from both parties, we decided to bring in a third party, ‘the cleaning company.’ They will pick up the used utensils and drop them off after cleaning and adding another back end to the service. The service’s front end will have a deposit box allowing users to deposit the used box in exchange for a code. The code provided could be used to take another clean reusable.
This model could be a one-time deposit/ purchase model or a subscription model, depending on the convenience of the store.
Now, why a deposit box? The deposit box was introduced to assure the customers of cleanliness and avoid the extra task of collecting and storing used utensils in a bigger box.
Further, to demonstrate the future state of the concept, we modified our AS-IS origami map to a TO-BE by adding in the possible modifications in the current system and visualizing them using a pink sticky note pyramid.
Finally, we created a mini mockup of our concept for product visualization and concept testing.
To View our public presentation at the Jam, Navigate to YouTube through this link:
If we plan to take this project forward, we would like to collaborate with the government or an external company to take the initiative in implementing the reusable dish system across the country, making the world a cleaner and healthier place to live in.