Redesigning Consumer Goods for a Plastic-Free Future

1. Chrissy led a team participating in Northwestern’s 2021 Kellogg Design Challenge, the largest business design case competition in the country, that took on the redesign of consumer package goods to minimize plastic packaging. The competition sourced innovative ideas from around the country to create more sustainable packaging that would also serve consumers better. It allowed her and her team to strengthen their experience in sustainability consulting and gain a day-to-day understanding of the consumer product design experience to better understand how to create change at scale.

Chrissy demonstrated leadership in sustainability by including a thoughtful, human-centered design process that focused on highlighting diverse voices and making sure their needs were met. Chrissy’s team was the only team from UCLA to be invited to present at the culminating Challenge Day presentations at Northwestern, and were selected as Finalists for KDC 2021.

2. I participated in the project to get experience in sustainability consulting, understand real-world problems that companies face, and gain a day-to-day understanding of the consumer product design experience to better understand how to create change at scale.

3. The project took place in the Fall of 2021, and measurable outcomes included our progress in the competition and overall placement. We were selected as the only team from UCLA to be semi-finalists and invited to present at the culminating Challenge Day presentations on November 13, 2021. After two rounds of presentations, we were selected as Finalists for KDC 2021; one of six teams.

4. My team included other FTMBA ’23 students: Abhinand Sukumar, Ben Heverly, Gabriel Amoako, Hannah Joo, and Yong Shim. The Kellogg Design Challenge (KDC) competition was held by business school students who were part of Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management Innovation and Design Association (IDEA).

The competition was sponsored by Unilever, a global consumer goods company with headquarters in London, that offers a range of products including beauty/personal care, food, and home care products. The company describes itself as a “driven by our purpose: to make sustainable living commonplace.”

5. The Kellogg Design Challenge is the largest business design case competition in the country, with participants from top-tier schools engaging with a sponsoring company to solve a complex real-world problem through human-centered design thinking. The prompt of the 2021 challenge was to minimize the use of plastic in lotion bottles, while creating a better consumer experience for lotion users. During the weeks we worked on the prompt, I led my UCLA Anderson team in the sustainable design iteration of packaging, which included analyzing interview and survey responses and translating them into a usable design for people of various backgrounds and needs. I conducted meetings and contributed my community engagement experience from my previous career in architecture and urban design experience; my background working on affordable housing projects allowed me to understand how to take qualitative and quantitative input from diverse voices, translate into important design requirements, and visualize into concrete product designs that could then be iterated on with more user feedback. After we finalized our project, I also led the communication aspects of the project to define how we would communicate our process, logic, and final result to competition judges, who were Kellogg professors and Unilever employees.