a Chef divides all product labels and certificates into five categories: Animal Welfare, Climate Change, Health, Environment & Ecosystem and Fair Trade (the ACHEF categories) and allows better alternative products to be found for these categories. By using the camera of a mobile phone, the barcode of a product can be scanned and a better alternative can be found on the spot, by comparing the individual scores of the ACHEF categories.
The scores are determined by the standards of the labels or certificates of the products, divided into the according ACHEF categories. The higher the standard of the label or certificate, the higher the score of the ACHEF category.
If a product has no label or certificate, or if one of the categories has not been rated by a label or certificate, users can add a score. These users have been divided into 4 groups, scientists, organisation members, company members and private investigators (everyone else).
The score of a registered scientist, with the according argumentation, has the heighest weight amongst the manual scores. All other user scores weigh less and therefore have to be added more often to change the score of the scientist. The second heighest user group is that of registered organisation members, the third highest are the users registered as company members and the final and lowest in rank are all other users. As is set in the graduation demo, 10 privat investigator votes weigh as much as one scientist vote.
These user scores can fluctuate, depending on how much support they receive by the users. If a user score with argumentation receives a lot of support (by clicking a link "I support this score and argumentation") the score increases in weight. If users disagree with the score or argumentation, users can choose to click on "I do not support" this score and argumentation. The score would then decrease in value.
Future prospects could be that the user could see how the personal ACHEF buying habits were over a period of time. These can then be compared to friends on social networking sites. This way someone could be ranked as #1 in Animal welfare amongs his or her friends, or #4 in buying Fair Trade. This could encourage the purchase of ACHEF better alternative products by using the element of competition.
