The brainstorming phase has been a huge success: dozens of people all over the world have shared their ideas, leading to an awesome white board 
!
Starting from all those ideas, we now suggest 5 tracks to investigate, on a team based work. Each track is described below, with two related documents:
- A working document where the group is building the track, guided with questions to answer.
- A forum thread where you can discuss and manage the workgroup.
If you’re interested in a track, register yourself in the working document, and you can also start sharing your ideas in the Forum thread.
Next steps
Over the next 4 weeks, each group will investigate its own track: prioritization of features, macro roadmap, success factors, impacts, etc., and a 5-minute pitch.
- On June 14th, we’ll be launching a survey of tens of thousands of people, enabling each working group to test questions. Get your questions ready before June 12th!
- And at the end of June, we’ll be holding a feedback event on all the leads, and launching another survey based on all the tracks.
The 5 tracks
Contribution app: An app focused on contribution to enable everyone (consumers, reusers, producers, researchers, etc.) to enrich our database qualitatively as well as quantitatively!
What about making the act of contributing in Open Food Facts more effective, accessible, fun, rewarding?
Crowdsourcing is the heart of our project, so improving the impact of contributions seems crucial.
There are many tools to encourage the community to contribute: gamification, machine learning, notifications, alerts, reminders, or other nudges, adapted according to each person’s level of knowledge and personal interests… What would motivate you to contribute more?
working document.
forum thread.
Personal app: Users learn about the scores of their food in a matter of weeks, and might loose interest in Open Food Facts as they feel their learning journey is complete. Part of the reason Open Food Facts was so successful is that it went from generic health/environment messages to product specific ones. One way to be even more impactful and useful is for those messages to be more personal. It might also have positive side impact on retaining users on the long term, as they accrue value and data within Open Food Facts (like personal settings, favorite products or receipts) that we can use to improve sustained value, and a better experience.
working document.
forum thread.
Open the app: collectively we brainstormed 100+ cool ideas for the app to make it more personal, more insightful, more actionable, more useful, more fun and more viral. But of course we can’t do it all. Or can we? What if motivated individuals and groups could easily plug into the app to build their own app inside the app: new experiences dedicated to the needs of hundreds of communities? Scanning one or more products could bring new knowledge, insights and actions. Select and activate the features that interest you and join the communities who build them!
working document.
forum thread.
Knowledge & social app
Agriculture processes, food labels and food processing are complex and not easy to understand for food consumers. Open Food Facts already helps people to decrypt nutritional information and environmental impact of products. We can push it further to help them understand how food is produced, what labels (organic, fair-trade,…) bring and the known impact of food additives on their health.
On this track, we also want to explore how to bring a social component to the Open Food Facts app. Through cooking, food is inherently social, and there are many interesting features to consider: organizing food communities based on specific products, creating/sharing grocery lists, knowing if your neighbor has the skimmed milk you lack to finish your cake,…
working document.
forum thread.
Open Food Facts for several – families, friends, colleagues, patients, and more kinds of groups.
Eating is a necessity for every individual, but often this activity is eminently social: as a family, with friends or colleagues, accompanied by professionals, or as part of communities of interest (orphan diseases, fans, taster communities, solidarity grocery shops, etc.), we have to select products, buy them, check their stock, sometimes recommend them, and so on. Working together on food issues increases our knowledge and makes us more aware of healthier and more environmentally-friendly food. Let’s build an app for any type of group, from 2 to hundreds (or even more?)!
working document.
forum thread.