The overall winner at the McMillon Innovation Studio’s Fall 2022 Demo Day was an interdisciplinary student team at the University of Arkansas that developed a tool to improve logistics for the Northwest Arkansas Food Bank’s mobile pantry.
The Innovation Studio team tackled the mobile pantry’s challenge in allocating food supplies that had been hindered by a lack of useable data. The team was able to improve the estimation and distribution processes for the food bank by creating a digital dashboard that gathered user information.
“The ‘human-centered design’ mindset that (the studio) preaches allowed us to really step into the shoes of who we were creating solutions for, ensuring that we were able to tailor whatever we created to their needs,” said team leader Jack Norris.
Established in 1988, the NWA Food Bank stores and distributes food to food pantries, soup kitchens, shelters and food-insecure families and individuals across four counties in Northwest Arkansas. Its mobile pantry makes monthly stops at 20 cities across Arkansas and provides shelf-stable products, frozen protein and fresh produce on a first-come, first-served basis, according to its website.
But the studio team realized some people were being turned away due to depleted supplies and wanted to help.
Demo Day is the Innovation Studio’s capstone event that is held twice a year and showcases the learnings and prototypes developed by student teams after a semester. Winners receive gift cards to local restaurants.
Design teams followed three tracks in Fall 2022 — entrepreneurial, organizational and social — and tackled a range of emerging problems identified through partnerships with industry, nonprofits and across campus.
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