Translator: Rea Bedalli Reviewer: Saúl Chinchilla
Good afternoon,
My name is Suresh Jayakar,
and I am a user experience designer.
I work at a local agency called Kluge.
Today, I'm excited to talk to you about design and design thinking.
Design thinking is a process,
a way to solve problems.
We're naturally taught to take the best choice, and to execute that,
to think convergently.
What design thinking does, is encourage us to think divergently,
to think outside the box, and to come up with creative ways
that might not even exist.
We often look at problems through a microscope.
What design thinking does, is to look at it through a telescope,
to look at the big picture,
to see how things work from a holistic perspective.
And we do that by talking to our users, by empathizing with them,
understanding their problems, and defining those problems,
and then creating solutions that we can then test and validate.
My family and I moved from India to Southern California in 2003.
My mom, who is a nurse, got a job at Centinela Hospital in Inglewood.
During those first few weeks, we stayed at a hotel near the hospital.
Initially, we didn't have a car,
and everywhere we went we had to walk or take the bus.
I remember taking walks with my dad in the neighborhood,
and you know what? There is one thing that really stood out to us.
There weren't many grocery stores nearby.
Here we are in beautiful California, Southern California,
where a lot of people live,
and we had trouble finding bananas, apples, and tomatoes.
Currently, I live in a city called Torrance.
It's about 20 minutes away,
and its unbelievable,
but where I live there are two grocery stores right down the street.
In a two-mile radius, we have nine grocery stores.
That is not the case in South L.A..
In South L.A., many parts of it are described as food deserts.
The federal government, defines a food desert as a neighborhood
where fresh fruits and vegetables are not easily accessible to people to buy,
and it's simply because of a lack of grocery stores and farmers markets.
For some of the people that live in South L.A.,
it's a real struggle to find fresh produce,
and here are some of the reasons:
One, there are a ton of liquor stores,
and fast food joints on every corner,
but grocery stores on the other hand, are few and far between.
Number two, without a reliable means of transport
getting to a grocery store is often an issue.
And number three, currently some of the popular grocery delivery services
aren't available in parts of South L.A.
Even if people were willing to pay that premium,
it's simply not available for people to use.
About six weeks ago, I participated in a hackathon.
You might be wondering, what the heck is a hackathon?
A hackathon is a design or technology challenge,
where people come together to solve real problems in their communities.
When we were presented with some of the problems that South L.A. has,
food access really stuck out to us.
Even though I had only experienced that for a few weeks,
it really stuck with me, and it's something I've never forgotten.
The community health council, which is a nonprofit organization based in L.A.,
they released a report a few years ago,
talking about food desserts in South L.A.
They also reported that South L.A.
has one of the highest rates of diet related health issues,
and that is a problem my team and I wanted to solve.
And what we came up with was a produce truck.
The produce truck is like a food truck,
but instead of selling tacos, or sandwiches,
it would sell fresh fruits and vegetables.
During the day they would go pick up produce
and post on their website and social media the locations they would be that day,
By working with few central locations in every few blocks,
and by operating in the evening when people come home from work,
they would be able to cover a lot of ground, and a lot of people.
A few weeks after our competition,
I was doing some research, and turns out, somebody already beat us to our idea.
There are a group of people in Boston,
that are solving the same exact problem in their communities
that are food deserts.
They sell fresh fruits and produce across different neighborhoods,
and this summer alone, they have sold about 4,000 pounds of produce.
We know it is an idea that works, because it has in Boston.
And it shouldn't take living in these difficult neighborhoods
to empathize with these problems that people are having.
It's going to take people from all walks of life;
designers, donors, developers, all of us to come together to collaborate,
and use design thinking to solve this big problem
that our community is facing today.
Design thinking is our answer,
because sometimes traditional ways of doing things just doesn't work.
These are a few of the pictures of the produce truck in Boston.
Thank you.
(Applause)