The problem
Imagine being in a supermarket and picking up a jar of chocolate spread. What do you know about this particular jar? Probably the brand name and the ingredients.. But what if you're interested in different aspects on which you can base the decision of whether or not to buy? For example, did the cacao farmers get a fair price? Did the cows who produced the milk get any sunlight at all? What does all these numbers stand for in the ingredients list? Were the cacao beans genetically modified? Many questions that are nearly impossible to answer (or with a lot of trouble to go through) while being in a shop.
Information about aspects such as human rights, animal welfare, environmental friendliness and sustainability remain in most cases completely unknown to the customer and withhold the possibility to make decissions based on these aspects.
Society's current response is to apply labels and certificates to products that are produced according to certain guidelines. However, a few problems occur with this solution: there is a lot of confusion about the many different labels and certificates that appeared over the last few decades and consumers do not know what they mean or stand for. Also, consumers could be interested in a product that has a specific label or certificate, but have no idea if it is available in the retailer they are currently at.
The solution
a Chef divides all product labels and certificates into five categories with each their own colour and icon: Animal Welfare, Clean Energy, Health, Environment & Ecosystem and Fair Trade (the ACHEF categories). Then it allows the user to find better alternatives by applying scores to products for these categories. The big challenge is to retrieve the enormous amount of information that is needed to determine a score. But once overcome, awesome things can be developed: the customer could scan the barcode of a product inside a store (by using the camera of the mobile phone) and find alternatives that have better ACHEF scores, before a purchase!
Once all products and their labels and certificates are stored in a database, the best alternative can be found for those products that don't have a label or certificate. Namely, the similar product that does have a label or certificate. And the higher the standards of those labels and certificates, the better the alternative will be. But how to get the information from the products that don't have a label or certificate, or those categories where no label or certificate applies to? The solution might be simple: by creating a collaborative web 2.0 environment.
The remaining ACHEF categories can be rated by the users of the a Chef website. These users have been subdivided into 4 categories: Scientists, Organisation members, Company members and Private Investigators. If a scientist rates a ACHEF category of a product, this score weighs the most of the 4 categories. The rate of an organisation member weights a little less etc. All members will have to register with their parenting institution: scientists with their university, members of the organisation with their organisation etc. Every user gets their own profile page on which a list of products that they rated and their parenting institution is displayed. The institutions have their own profile page as well; a summary of who they are and what they do and a list of their members.
a Chef offers a tool that allows people to find healthier, environmental friendlier, animal friendlier, fairer or cleaner products in a mobile environment. During the development of the prototype it became clear that the website has great potential to function as a comprehensive online community platform, with many useful features.
