Design Competition 1 - Spring 2017

by Max Yi Ren

Background

The Food And Agriculture Organization of the United Nations predicted that food production must increase by 70% by 2050 for 9.6 billion people. While such trend projection requires further scrutiny, it is clear that food production, safety, and wasting issues deserve more attention, and have indeed attracted numerous industries to invest in shaping a new paradigm of farming.

Problem Statement 1

A particular challenge is the management of livestock and poultry. Tracking and monitoring individual cows over a large area is difficult, especially in developing countries where vehicles cost a significant amount and infrastructure (e.g., road and electricity coverage) is limited. Raising poultry in a conventional way involves human labor that could be saved with smarter tools (see this Indonesian farmer explaining his needs). New solutions to these problems have started to emerge in recent years, with the advance of IoT and data analytics.

As an engineering design team, please draft a proposal for a product that could improve the management of livestock or poultry. Your proposal should include the followings:

• A description of your problem: Focus on a country/environment that you are familiar with, and describe one particular problem in that environment, e.g., livestock tracking with no internet access, prevention from theft, identifying diseased chicken from a large population, etc. Provide evidence that this problem does exist.

• A description of your solution: Provide a review of existing solutions (this does not need to be thorough). Explain your solution and illustrate it with sketches. Skectches should be self-explanatory. Explain potential technical, social, political challenges in implementing this solution, and possible measures to address them.

• A description of your user and buyer: Explain who will be using this product, and who will pay for it. Describe potential product attributes that the user/buyer cares about.

• A one-sentence pitch of your product.

Problem Statement 2

In US, one out of every six people lives in a food-insecure household, while we as a society waste approximately one third of all food. See this video for example. Food wasting happens both before and after they reach consumers, due to various reasons including appearance concerns (consumable but less appealing food are discarded by farmers and grocery stores) and our busy life style or lack of social awareness.

As a design team, please draft a proposal for a product or service that could help to reduce food wasting, reuse wasted food, or improve the distribution of food. Your proposal should include the followings:

• A description of your problem: Focus on one specific problem, e.g., smart food storage, consumption tracking, food sharing, etc. Provide a context where this problem exists.

• A description of your solution: Provide a review of existing solutions (this does not need to be thorough). Explain your solution and illustrate it with sketches. Skectches should be self-explanatory. Explain potential technical, social, political challenges in implementing this solution, and possible measures to address them.

• A description of your user and buyer: Explain who will be using this product, and who will pay for it. Describe potential product attributes that the user/buyer cares about.

• A one-sentence pitch of your product.

Submission

Submit a single pdf to yiren@asu.edu with the title “design competition 1 team number”.