College debuts menu ratings
Annabelle Fowler
Issue date: 3/13/08 Section: News
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Kazuaki Okumura '10 was a member of the team that addressed the campus' food waste problems. The team realized that one of the reasons why students wasted food revolved around the fact that they did not like what they chose to eat at dining halls or had different food expectations. The solution Okumura helped to think up focused on improving communication between students and dining services to reduce waste.
Yuki Yoshida '10, who was not part of the original team, thought the project was an excellent idea from the start.
"I was barely sitting through the presentation," she said. "Food waste is one of those things I saw and let go so often that I felt it was about time to do something about it. I could hardly wait to jump in [on the project]."
After Winter Term ended, both Okumura and Yoshida began to work together to make the Middelicious project a reality. They decided to make dining feedback easier by setting up an online rating system.
Around 20 students tested the initiative in its beta version, which used a free online blog with a poll system to gather data.
Yoshida and Okumura selected their acquaintances for the trial, yet they chose a diverse population so they would be able to collect more accurate results that spanned the spectrum of student preferences on campus.Ratings were easy to place on the beta blog, but updating the blog's information and analyzing and processing the collected data was cumbersome. Okumura explained that he would have to change the polls manually every evening, updating them with menus for the following day.
He also pointed out that the fact that the blog was an independent Web site created user inconvenience, as students might have difficulties or not have the time to access a new Web site.
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