NeXgen

IXDD 2019 Student Design Challenge Blog

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Final Design

The Problem

Hunger and food insecurity among the urban poor is a predominant development challenge due to lack of affordability and accessibility of adequate portions of nutritional food. 

Currently, motivated individuals, NGOs, Food Donation Services, Government public distribution system (PDS) and subsidized meal schemes work together to counter the issues. But such organizations/individuals are limited by public charity, resources, and location.

The Solution:  HungerBan

HungerBan is a system to ensure that there’s nobody left behind hungry. It achieves so by connecting people who actually need food to business/people who can provide them. The idea here is to build trust among communities and encourage responsible food sharing.

The use of sensors and IoT devices are to ensure that those in actual need of food get the correct nutrition and portion of food. The same technology backed request messages/ notification to the food providers makes the demand for food more credible, thus building trust.

The solution takes care of the unmet needs of the people facing hunger, i.e. providing them with food that not only fills their stomach, but also fulfills their daily nutritional requirements. Our solution allows people and communities to empathize with the less fortunate, thus allowing them to help and contribute more responsibly.

Though the solution may seem a little tech-heavy and farfetched, we believe that the technology would act as a mirror to society, constantly making them aware about how many people are dying of hunger nearby, which in the current system is often overlooked. The same technology also allows the providers to empathize with the needy at a more personal level due to the personified nature of food request/notifications.

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Final Video!

Finally, we have reached the last part of this awesome experience...

Still pumped up but equally tired and need a long long night!

Some of us are already dead XD

Adios! Had fun :)

Have a look at our video :) 

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Mini Challenge #2

We demonstrate one of our use case scenarios for 

1. A smart wearable/ embedded chip sensor that senses the nutritional needs of the user. 2. A smart fridge/storage that assesses the data from its consumer and sends off a list of food that needs to be stocked to its maintaining businesses.

The person who needs the food visits a nearby vending machine. His wearable chip communicates the nutritional requirements to the machine and the required food is vended to the person. During the vending, the nutritional requirement data of that person is logged into the machine’s memory and is sent nearby businesses ( hotels, restaurants, retailers ) alerting them of any future food items to be dispatched to that machine.

These businesses who are a part of the charity/ corporate social responsibility program are made aware of the food demands of those in need. They respond to it by aggregating the relevant food items that they can help with. (for eg. a restaurant can provide cooked rice, a grocery can provide with fruits.)

A logistics agent (provided by food delivery services as CSR initiative OR by govt.) collects the food and stocks it up in the nearest vending fridge. 

(This fridge is equipped with sensors that detect the quality of food and prevents vending any spoiled food.)

The concerned person just has to go to this vending machine and scan his wearable and collect the food for consumption.

The person gets the food he requires confirming to his daily nutritional needs and thus the local businesses get to help this person more efficiently.

References:

1. Farooq, M. , McCrory, M. A. and Sazonov, E. (2017), Reduction of energy intake using just‐in‐time feedback from a wearable sensor system. Obesity, 25: 676-681. doi:10.1002/oby.21788

2. Lovrenčić, Đeni & Vretenar, Nenad & Jezic, Zoran. (2017). The Challenges of Establishing Food Donation System. 

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Connecting the dots...

In mini-challenge # 1, we directed our focus of study towards major food shortage issues. In this section, we narrow our perspectives and take a closer look at the people, parties involved and problems in between.

For making our case, we’ll limit our scope to the context of food shortage in urban poor communities, more specifically to the urban slum dwellers of Mumbai.

Who is suffering?

Food is one of the basic human needs and it's saddening to know that Mumbai, the business capital of the country falls short of providing half its inhabitants the very same. In 2019, 41.5 % of the population dwells in slums and access to quality food is not a common thing here.

India’s urban areas are often neglected in Indian hunger studies. Malnutrition levels of urban, poor children in slums (54 %) are the worst amongst all urban groups and even higher than children in rural areas (51 %). Nutritional problems such as protein-energy malnutrition (PEM), anemia and vitamin A deficiency continue to persist among these children (Ghosh and Shah 2004; UHRC 2008). 

A study conducted in 2012 provided a better measure to understand the subjective experience of food insecurity amongst Mumbai slum dwellers. We found this study particularly helpful as it broadens the different types/levels of food scarcity by establishing a Household Food Insecurity Access Scale (HFIAS). The study concluded that 66% of urban poor suffered from severe food insecurity.

The categories are as follows:

Domain A) Anxiety and uncertainty about the household food supply: 1- People who worry that their household would not have enough food.

Domain B) Inadequate Quality (includes variety and preferences of type of food): 2- People who ate the same foods daily because they did not have money to buy other foods.

3- Family members of person have to eat any type of food that they did not want (undesirable food) because there was no money to buy the foods they preferred.

Domain C) Less Quantity or Insufficient Food Intake: 4- Person who ate less than they felt they should because they did not have enough money to buy food.

5- Members of the household had to cut the size of your meals because they did not have enough money to buy food?

6- Person had to skip some of the daily meals because they didn’t have enough money for food.

7- The food procured didn’t last, and they didn’t have enough money to buy more? (Severe condition – ran out of food)

8- Person who were hungry and did not eat a meal because they did not have enough money to buy food? (Severe condition – hungry)

9- Person or another adult in their household did not eat for a whole day because they did not have enough money to buy food? (Severe condition – going whole day without eating)

Understanding that subjective experience was crucial to derive needs and create relevant personas for our design.

Reference:

Chatterjee, N., Fernandes, G. & Hernandez, M. Food Sec. (2012) 4: 619. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12571-012-0206-z

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Halfway there!!!

And yesss! The WORK is in PROGRESS  :)  Cheers!

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All work and no chai makes us a dull boi!  Team NeXgen to Khoka Market for a much-needed chai break!

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Mini Challenge #1

Agriculture Context:  The scale of Hunger Food Shortage in India According to FAO estimates in ‘The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World, 2019' report, 194.4 million people are undernourished in India. By this measure, 14.5% of the population is undernourished in India. Also, 51.4% of women in reproductive age between 15 to 49 years are anemic. The Global Hunger Index 2018 ranks India at 103 out of 119 countries.

Needless to say, the statistics don’t make a great impression. 

Food security is a measure of the availability of food and individuals' ability to access it. (Affordability is only one factor.) We found out that the major steps to ensure food security involves  1. Availability  2. Accessibility  3. Utilization

Probing further, we got to know that the major problems related to Food Security fall under access and utilization of available agricultural produce. According to recent FAO 2019 reports:

Food Loss & Food waste is estimated that nearly one-third of the food produced in the world for human consumption every year gets lost or wasted. 40 percent of the fruits and vegetables and 30 percent of cereals that are produced are lost.

The major pain points in the system lie in: 

1. Inefficient supply chain management: Food does not reach consumer markets. While significant levels of food losses occur upstream, at harvest and during post-harvest handling,    a lot of food is lost or wasted during the distribution and consumption stages. 

2. Food is wasted on the shelves and in the warehouses of food businesses either due to excess production.

3. The introduction of new products that are not adopted by consumers, 

4. Labeling errors, or due to shorter remaining shelf life. 

A lot of food could be saved by timely withdrawing it from the distribution network, aggregating it and then redirecting it to the people in need. In our next endeavors, we’ll try to study how could the food wastage in the above processes can be minimized.

References:

1. The State of Biodiversity, Food and Argriculture, FAO Report 2019     http://www.fao.org/3/CA3129EN/CA3129EN.pdf 2.  Upadhyay, R. P., & Palanivel, C. (2011). Challenges in achieving food security in India. Iranian journal of public health, 40(4), 31–36.

3. Nord, Mark. "Struggling To Feed the Family: What Does It Mean To Be Food Insecure?". Archived from the original on 2015-05-18.

4.  Ritchie H, Reay D, Higgins P (2018) Sustainable food security in India—Domestic production and macronutrient availability. PLoS ONE 13(3): e0193766. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0193766

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Identifying the broad ‘Topics’

We started off by listing relevant social and cultural issues that we encounter these days. Some of the topics that caught our interests were:

1. Migration and its related issues 2. Climate change and its effects 3. Communal distrust 4. Fake news and misinformation 5. Food Security and farmer suicides For each of the topics we made a matrix to identify key users & stakeholders involved, the problem they are facing, cause of the problem and what can be done to eliminate those problems. (image below)

All topics were equally enticing but since we had to pick one, we chose to move forward with the issues of food security in India and around the World.

Next Up: Mini Challenge #1 (Pain Points and Secondary Research for challenges related to Food Security )

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Fuel for the Duel

Good work needs good food and thus we devoured some samosas, Aaloo paranthas and Aachar from canteen! Wait!! BIRYANI IS ON THE WAY!! ♥

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Challenging the Challenge

We hopped on to understand what is expected from the brief. What are the current uncertain geopolitical conditions? What are globally predominant social and cultural challenges? What emerging technologies could possibly solve the above challenges? Questions about privacy and adoptability. We engaged our brains and whiteboards to populate some broad themes and listed their involved stakeholders, problems and possible interventions.

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Meet da Folks

Bikram is totally into research believes God is in the Details! Seva is a die-hard sportsman!! When it comes to design, he keeps it simple and sufficient. Rohan is an energetic species adaptable to every environment! Sanket is emotional bro! and thus an empathetic person who wants to bring positive change in society through design! Housed in Design Studio at IIT Guwahati, these funtastic four creative folks will change the World!

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Hello, we are team NexGen. Comprising of 4 enthusiastic designers, we are all set to conquer IXDD 2019 Student Design Challenge.

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Team NeXgen