News:
MIFresh won second place in the 2009 CHI Student Design Competition.

Project Statement
Detroit, Michigan is a declining American rust-belt city faces serious poverty, health, and unemployment crises. Juxtaposed with this dire situation is the fact that in the United States, Michigan is second only to California in the diversity of its agricultural products. If just 20% of current food spending in Detroit was shifted to purchases of local produce, 4,700 jobs would be created and average earning per household would increase by $400 per year.

Through a comprehensive contextual inquiry process, our team discovered that low consumer demand for fresh local produce was the greatest obstacle to increasing consumption of Michigan grown fruits and vegetables and that the ideal location for an intervention to increase consumer demand was the local grocery store.

We propose a sustainable system, MIFresh, consisting of public displays and interactive kiosks in grocery stores that provides financial incentives, awareness, and education to create sustained demand for local produce.

The team
We are a team of University of Michigan, School of Information graduate students who are committed to make a difference and help put local food first in Michigan. Working with City Connect Detroit's Food & Fitness Collaborative, the team aims to create a reliable, cost efficient system to create synergies between local farmers and grocery stores in order to increase availability and accessibility of fresh, healthy produce.