Earning few extra bucks couldn't be easier for housewives in Ahmedabad, if a model development by National Institute of Design (NID) is put into practice. All they have to do is cook a tad extra and leave the rest to delivery men, who would pick up the food and hand it over to customers.
This tiffin service model was developed by post-graduate students of Strategic Design Management (SDM) at NID and proposes linking caterers with several housewives. This was just one of the service design models that they developed.
As a part of a three-week course called “Service Design,” 14 SDM students divided themselves into four groups to design services of different kinds. The four groups toying with the idea of designing services like giving someone a special experience on occasions like birthdays and others, rating companies and their workplaces, campus newspaper and availing fresh fruits in the campus.
Asked how this model was different from Mumbai's dabbawalas, Shashank Mehta, faculty at SDM, said, "Dabbawalas will deliver food from your residence to office only. But in our model, we proposed to collect tiffins from housewives and deliver it to whoever wants it."
"The idea of the 'Service Design' course is to expose the students to the emerging domain of service sector in the country and allow them to imbibe the dexterity and knowledge of lending design interventions to create better services," Mehta said.
"My team has designed an online service that will enable people to sell things they do not need any longer. The idea is to reuse and create more value for things by giving them to the person, who needs them," said Disha Kaushal, an SDM student. "We have started the service on the campus on an experimental basis and have sold a few items as well."
