certificate on Management of technology
Alimentarte: fighting informational ASYMMETRY in the food market
Abstract. Informational Asymmetry is considered to be one obstacle to achieve a market equilibrium betwenn consumers and producers. Objective: to develop a tool to reduce informational asymmetry in the food market, promoting intelligent food consumption and disseminating nutritional information.

Methods. We developed a web-based service as a mean to disseminate information, delivering it at the point and time of purchase decisions. It allows access to databases with nutritional, gastronomical and economical evaluations of food products, indexed by their barcodes. The service can be accessed through a smartphone, tablet or computer. A further development is to make an app that could run locally, without internet access.
A human-centered design approach allowed to identify that people do not wish to read just nutritional judgments or information. We found that people also wanted to hear gastronomic and economic opinions regarding the set of food alternatives they face. They also want to build their own criteria, collaborate and publish them in the database.    

Team: Kuan Chen, Stephen Li, Austin Shieh, Ernesto Montemayor, Victor Villalobos (coordinator)
Technology: Amazon EC2, Ruby on Rails, Human Centered Design
Outcomes:
  • Award from Mexican Minister of Consumer´s rights
  • Scientific presentation: "Using Behavioral Economics to improve the promotion of healthy dietary patterns"
  • Paper published in a diffusion magazine in Mexico
The project is in the process of being transferred to a governmental institution for deployment and public release.