His process combines his curiosity and imagination with research and a meticulous eye. In his personal practice, he creates work and writes on themes of transnational and transracial identity, family, loss, and healing.

Roots: Korean Diaspora

Hello

Yilan Sun

Sum is a food sharing app for organizing shared meals with family, friends, and neighbors based upon the ingredients each person can contribute in order to prevent food waste, save money, and foster community. The app was originally inspired by addressing the problem of household food waste, and evolved to embrace the spirit of pot lucks, dinner parties, and community events as well.

Based on the interviews we conducted to learn more about peoples' experiences with sharing food, we found out that there were many concerns about trust and food safety. 

Our first iteration was a platform for people to post their unused, soon to expire, or leftover food for others to pick up or exchange, but we had found that our idea had already been implemented by an app called Olio. After meeting with their design team to learn more about food sharing, they also expressed issues with trust and hesitancy. Their ongoing solution was to incorporate user transparency features and rewards, and encouraged us to do the same.

In the US, we have a contradiction in which millions of impoverished and working class people struggle with food insecurity, yet 150, 000 tons of food is wasted by Americans every day. In addition, food waste is the world's third largest emitter of greenhouse gases- a large majority happening at the commercial and retail level. The system we designed hopes to both address food waste and build a culture of care and hospitality surrounding food.