We, Singaporeans, are a food-loving people. We will queue for hours to sample our favourite dishes, and our hawker culture is recognised by UNESCO as an intangible piece of cultural heritage. But the flip side is less palatable – food contributes to more than a fifth of global greenhouse gas emissions, and about a sixth of Singapore’s. What would it look like to enjoy food in a sustainable way? This was the starting point for Yeo Sinlin and her team, one evening at the close of 2020.
Delivering through a mad rush
In late Dec 2020, ChannelNewsAsia had reached out to better.sg for support to build an app as part of its Climate Conversations series (you can see the app in the episode here at 33:55). The objective was to construct a food-tracking app that would calculate the amount of carbon produced by local Singaporean dishes, relative to a sustainable diet proposed by scientists in a recent Lancet paper. Of course, all of this was expected within a tight deadline of 1 month, no less!
Developers, designers, and researchers across the better.sg community answered the call to action. On 10 Jan 2021, the project kicked off with more than 20 volunteers, diving into a design thinking process organised in 2-week sprints. Within the first sprint, a working prototype was created to be filmed for the episode. Sinlin describes this period as ‘intense’, which seems like an understatement. The development and design teams met more than 10 times in 14 days, with Zoom meetings going on into the early mornings as COVID restrictions prevented the team from being able to meet.
The filming took place on a balmy Saturday afternoon, starring the ClimateDiet team’s Minimum Viable Product. Over the next two months, the team would go on to complete the key features of the App in preparation for CNA’s live broadcast on 22 Mar 2021. The product was launched and visitor traffic spiked during and immediately after the episode was screened.
Sinlin tells me how impressed she is by the dedication of the volunteer-run team, and the quality of work produced within such a short time. In particular, special shout-outs to Shawn, Wen Tjun, and Suan Khai in the developer team, and Azy, Zoey, and Jasmine in the design team for their exceptional contributions.
Move fast and break things
When asked what her advice would be for better.sg project teams embarking on similar journies, Sinlin emphasises the importance of building relationships amongst teammates. Even with the tight timeline, she ran an initial get-to-know-you meeting before diving into the work properly. When the pace of work moderated, the team held two dinners to get to know one another better. As the project was volunteer-run, Sinlin thinks it is essential for the team members to understand one another’s motivations and goals, such as to better support each other in the process.
Sinlin thoughtfully observes that the fast pace of development forced the team to make some critical trade-offs. For instance, the team couldn’t conduct user research to hone in on the specific pre-existing problem that the product could solve. Instead, they approached the project with a clear product vision, centred on meeting CNA’s immediate needs. As a result, the app has limited organic reach and potential for virality.
For instance, as meal-logging currently takes a few steps on the app, some users may not be motivated enough to follow through. Also, the app requires manual maintenance in its current form, because some key design decisions had been made out of expediency instead of long-term efficiency. These reasons likely contribute to the team’s ongoing challenge of securing a sponsor organisation to take the app to the next level.
In addition, Sinlin is wistful that while the project had initially drawn a lot of interest as better.sg’s first environment-related effort, the team had not been able to fully harness volunteers’ interests and skills. In this case, the exploration process was truncated due to the urgent need to ship.
Next Steps
With that said, the team is grateful for the experience of shipping a product under such tight deadlines. On her part, Sinlin sees a lot of potential in volunteers’ passion for environmental sustainability and encourages anyone with a good idea as well as an interest to lead, to post on the better.sg website. Presently, the team is still exploring how best to take the project forward. Any interested sponsors who are keen to understand more about the Climate Diet app are invited to get in touch with the team at sinlinyeo@better.sg.
