Executive Summary

College is a new experience for all first-year students, many of which are coming from different areas, states, and countries.  These students gain a new sense of independence and a way to redefine themselves with new habits.  In our search for a wicked problem, we, as Team Wellness, saw an opportunity to provide students with the tools to lead a successful, healthy, and happy college experience.  Many students when they go to college develop bad habits, which is the root of our problem.  Habits such as over-eating, not eating enough, eating fast-food, and not getting proper nutrient is at the forefront of our problem.  We, as 4^th year students at the University of Denver, saw the eating habits at the various dining halls on campus.  With a buffet style and no guidance or education, students freely grabbed anything they wanted.  In most cases, meals that lack nutrients such as pizza, fries, and hamburgers.  Through further research, it became evident to us that it was more than just our own anecdotal experience, since we are all college students that have seen this firsthand.  Online data from the National College Health Risk Behavior Survey found that as many as 35% of college students may be obese or overweight.  Obesity is only part of the problem, and we have observed that every student has their own individual goal of whether they want to gain weight, lose weight, or maintain while getting proper nutrients.  Inclusivity is important to us, as we want every student who uses our app to benefit from the features.  A survey conducted by Statista in 2019 titled “Percentage of U.S. Students that Described themselves as Underweight or Overweight” found that only 52.1% of students were “about the right weight”.  We want to improve this percentage.

            With our issue defined and a target market of colleges, the four stakeholders that we communicated with were University of Denver Student Nick Gillespie, Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion Gina O’Brian, Local Supplier at Hyndman Peak Beef and Cattle Jeff Brendel, and College Student Parents Mr. and Mrs. Di.  In the success of our challenge project, it was crucial for us to receive feedback and recommendations from diverse perspectives.  Through this, we ensured that there was not any bias and that we navigated the wicked problem of student wellness and healthy eating with a system thinking analysis.  Our interviews taught us that healthy eating is interconnected with other pillars of a student’s wellbeing.  These include, sleep, exercise, stress management, social life, and much more.  Even if a student is eating healthy, they may not be exercising or getting enough sleep which will have an adverse effect on their wellbeing.

            Our group, Team Wellness, came up with many solutions, such as expanding the Wellness LLC, including a seminar during orientation week, having credit hours for certain activities, and general education sessions around the dining halls.  All of these ideas are great, but we decided to stick with our dining app idea.  Our app will be free to use for all students and encouraged for them to install as part of their new college life, much like how they use canvas.  The app will be personalized to each student, who will enter their age, activity level, weight, gender, and goals which will be used to calculate how much they should be eating.  Students can then track the meals they eat and see a percentage of how much they ate for the day.  For instance, after selecting one of various meal options after breakfasts the student may see “30% complete, good job!”.  A design criterion for us was to make this app fit seamlessly into college student’s lives and have it saved time rather than be a hassle.  This is why we have developed software that can pair the students meal swipes, meal plan cash, and flex cash which can all be used through the app and use their phone to swipe in rather than their DU student 87 number card.  With the app interface, we are able to implement our other solutions into a community tab for students to use.  The Wellness LLC can advertise their events, the Coors Fitness Center can post online workout, and students can search for various resources that they might need to benefit themselves.  Our app is able to streamline all of this useful information into one area that allows students to view information that pertains to them.

            The Wellness app will be sold to Universities, such as the University of Denver, in a subscription model with an initial fixed costed up front of setting it up.  The initial app development will cost us around $4,000 to make and each subscription will be $3,750 for a school the size of DU.  To create a shared value for each stakeholder, Universities will get value out of the data collected on food students eat.  Universities can use this to reduce waste and create a more efficient dining experience for Sodexo.  These Universities that buy our application can advertise what our app offers to new students that are considering attending the school.  Taking an entrepreneurial route will create value for all stakeholders, the community, users, universities, ecosystem, and us as Team Wellness while still remaining profitable making around $16,759.64 in the first 4 years.