MOTIVATION & PROBLEM DEFINITION

Every year, over a hundred billion pounds of food waste is generat-

ed by people across the country. Not only does this mean that nour-
ishment necessary for our survival is going unused, but so has the
resources gone into producing it. In addition, food waste has detri-
mental effects on the environment.

OnePlate’s mission is to help users control the amount of food they

eat so that they don’t generate as much leftovers. In turn, this
reduces the amount of food wasted on an individual scale, rolling
over to a global shift in the way we view our food and our left overs.
EMPATHY &
Users repeatedly said that UNDERSTANDING
they found it difficult to USER/CUSTOMER
communicate with their NEED
HOW-MIGHT-WE server the amount of food
they wanted through words.
QUESTIONS PROTOTYPING &
TESTING ITERATION
Through extensive testing and reiteration, we
addressed users’ main concerns by:
- Improving the ease of cleaning the product
- Increasing waterproofing capabilities of the
plate even during expansion
- Increasing the aesthetic value of the
prototype
Grace Du, Lucy Song
Janet Xu, Conor Blackburn

EVOLUTION OF THE CONCEPT

Our initial sketch of the design
was very elementary and features
our initial idea of having dividers THE FINAL PROTOTYPE
to separate the different food cate-
gories, a circular plate shape, and The final design for the plate focused on the
affordability and accessibility necessary for
the togglers.
use in a large scale dining hall. This meant
Then, in our first prototype, we made it that the final product had to be simple, us-
out of wood and changed the shape er-friendly, and be well equipped to function
of plate to a rectangle because it was
n
in a dining hall environment.
mechanically easier to create. Our plate
here is completely flat and does not
The final prototype is made from a single
have the ridges necessary in the plate.
sheet of flexible plastic and a few metal
Next, in our second prototype we snaps. The final design was inspired by origa-
mi bowls that can be assembled out of one
changed the material to acrylic and
sheet of material and then can be unfolded
kept the rest of the shape, design,
when finished. By including multiple sets of
and dividers the same. We found that fold-lines on OnePlate, it can not only be
a rectangular shape would not be suf- folded into a plate, it can also be folded into
ficient for our final design because it four different sized food vessels. This allows
is harder to measure the volume and the user to be able to easily select what por-
the divider size would differ depend- tion size they would like with just a few
snaps.
ing on the size you toggled it to.

O N E P L A T E