CoPlant
2023
DESIGN THINKING AWARD
Winner
Guan-Bai Chen
Designers / Creators / Authors / Leaders
Christina Ip, Chen-Yu Chiu, Guan-Bai Chen, Juwon Lee, Zhuoneng Wang
CoPlant is a service that leverages network effects of the student community to nudge community members into lifelong plant-rich dieters. We pilot the concept with CMU (Carnegie Mellon University) dining. Students at CMU buy and enjoy plant-centric bentos cooked by student chefs, who cook meals inspired by their background using locally-sourced vegetables prepared by CMU dining. This creates a diverse range of carbon footprint-friendly meals being readily available on campus. With more and more people joining the community, network effect will grow stronger, accelerating the plant-rich trend.
Students at CMU can buy and enjoy plant-centric bentos cooked by student chefs. Any student in the community can opt-in to be a student chef after receiving training by CMU dining at CoPlantLounge, incentivized by earning more money. As student chefs, they can cook meals inspired by their background, using locally-sourced vegetables prepared by CMU dining. This creates a diverse range of healthy and carbon footprint-friendly international meals being readily available on campus. The student chefs deliver bentos to CMU dining who will distribute the bentos to vending machines on campus.
