Improving the Project

Today was another day in which we talked about our posters for the food displays. We still need to get the signs approved by Mr. Morris. Once we reached a better understanding of how the signs would be constructed, Mahea emailed him during class. During our class period on May 4th, we have to take a break from the project in order to take a physics test, which could have a negative, neutral, or positive effect on individual multipliers. Compared to other groups, we appear to be far ahead since we already installed our prototype at 'Akahi while the others were still creating theirs. However, we still have other assignments to complete, such as our posters and the oral presentation, and certain events, such as the test and this week's unusual schedule, are impacting our timeline. Hopefully, we can improve our current timeline in order to accommodate all of the things that we need to accomplish.

Learning and Improving

I am very happy to see the progress that my group is making. I am very proud of the work that they got done while I was gone. Because we now know that just putting up display portions is not enough to make an impact on the students, more ideas need to be implemented. This includes creating signs in order to get the attention of the students and to make them aware of the waste. Today I will post on our junior page that signs will be up, urging the student body not to waste. Again, I am very proud of our group and we will continue to do what we were doing (portion examples) plus more (creating signs) to decrease the waste in 'Akahi.

Brainstorming Ideas to Improve

    Today in class we did a lot of thinking. After about a week of our project being implemented we have found many ways to improve it. The first idea we had was to create posters to draw attention to the display plates. Our plan was to make two eight and a half by eleven papers and put a construction paper backing on it to make a nice boarder. One of the papers will read "Take ONLY what you can EAT!" and it also will read "If you are NOT sure then please take the proper portions.". The second paper will read "You can always come back for more". We found out from Mr. Blake that we need to get these approved by the Akahi coordinator as well as the Akahi Student Center. We also thought about a way to make kids realize that they are wasting so we think that putting a big sign above the carousel will help. We are not yet sure what we are going to put on it, but it needs to be approved.
    Besides brainstorming, we went to go set up the portion displays as a group today since we all had the same free time. Todays lunch was Portuguese Bean soup. Setting up was really easy today because all three of us worked together and each made a display.
      Here is what our signs are gonna look like as of today.

Nacho Cheese

  Today I had to set up the proper portion display before lunch started. I went down to lunch thinking that it was breaded beef because that is what the schedule said. Instead we had nachos. The problem between the two is determining portions. The breaded beef comes in a patty and 1 patty is equal to 1 portion, while the nachos has chips that can't be measured well with tongs. Other than the chips everything else was easy to portion because the serving utensils (i.e. spoon) were equal to 1 portion. I displayed these above the two main serving lines.

   Somethings I noticed at lunch today were that people are taking more than the proper portion and some people don't even eat much of their food. Shortly after I had set up the displays, people started to serve themselves. I watched and noticed that not many people looked up at the displays. This was kind of upsetting because we may be potentially adding to the waste instead of decreasing it. Another thing I witnessed at lunch was a student who sat down with a big plate of chips, chili, and cheese at a table near me. He put in his earphones and looked at his food; took a couple of bites, then just stood up, grabbed his tray and left. He literally dumped a whole plate of Nachos. I think this shows that people are not seeing or paying attention to the displays. I think next week we should implement signs above the displays to attract attention to them (we talked about it in class yesterday, Amber mentioned it in the previous blog). I also think that we should create a sense of shame/guilt or some punishment to deter people from wasting a lot of food.

The Sandwich Conundrum

Today was my turn to go to 'Akahi in order to set up our project. The main course of today's lunch was the sandwich bar. At about 10:15 in the morning, I went inside of the dining hall to make the displays. While I made the sandwiches, I noticed that the proper size for the sandwich fillings was two ounces, which is equivalent to two slices of turkey. In general the food items served with tongs are the only ones where the serving sizes on the labels are not helpful in the sense that the tool was not made to measure portions. Although I considered adding other food since each plate only had a sandwich, I decided against it because the officials indicated on our menu that sandwiches were the most wasted food items for that day and nothing else. I made one plate for each of the lines and one of the servers helped to place them at the appropriate locations. During class we talked about how we wanted to design posters to accompany the food. The accompanying material will probably be the main change to our prototype because we want more students to consider the displays as they move through the line.

L(a)UNCHED THE PROTOTYPE (if you could call it a prototype)

It was mentioned in earlier blogs that we agreed that we would alternate taking turns to go down to Akahi and prepare the plates of food for the day. Today was the first day of our experiment and I had period 5 free, so I went down around 10 am and readied the plates of food. Today's entree was roasted chicken, and on the calendar that was given to us, only the roasted chicken was flagged as "high waste." I found it kind of hard to make just a plate of one chicken thigh, so I added the appropriate serving size of rice and carrots to the plates, just to make it look a little livlier. I set the plates up at the beginning of the buffet lines, and propped them up with another plater underneath. I hope that people took notice of the plates though!

I'm thinking of making an announcement in the Seniors page on facebook (and having Allie or Amber do the same for the Juniors page) about our experiment so that they understand what we are trying to do and will hopefully pay attention to the displays. 

More Cooperative Work

Our group has completed the project proposal and detailed design and we are now moving on to the next stages of the project. So, we decided to create a powerpoint on google docs in order to prepare for our presentation. Along with that, we also decided that for the first week we will experiment with just sample portion sizes and then the next week we will have the sample portions and signs to see if that will make a difference. Since I will not be here from the 25-30, my group will keep me updated on progress. Also, the day that I was scheduled to go down early to set up, Ku was also scheduled for that day so it worked out well. We will continue to keep in touch over the course of the week.