Students will investigate how local food chains function and who is affected by their disruption by engaging directly with community members and experts. Through a scavenger hunt launch, structured interviews, and evidence-based empathy mapping, students will gather firsthand insights that ground their later problem definition and solution design in authentic user needs.

Students will synthesize interview data from community members and experts into clear, evidence-based problem statements that define a focused design direction for protecting and sustaining local food chains.

Students will generate a wide range of innovative, user-centered solutions to protect and sustain local food chains, then strategically narrow to the most promising concepts using evidence from interviews and ecological research. Teams will produce annotated concept sketches and storyboards that directly connect features to documented user needs and ecological principles, preparing for prototyping in the next phase.

Students will build, test, and refine low- to mid-fidelity prototypes of their food chain sustainability solutions, using structured feedback from peers and external users to improve scientific accuracy, user fit, and overall impact before final testing and presentation.

Students will conduct a final round of authentic user testing with new community members, refine their food chain sustainability solutions based on documented feedback, and present their Community Food Chain Innovation Package to Merced College faculty, Duarte Nursery staff, and local stakeholders—clearly tracing how user evidence shaped their final designs.