PARTNERS
THE GOAL
Introduction to the Challenge
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought a variety of challenges to residents of Chicago and Chicago’s business owners. Businesses that rely on socializing and/or having people in close proximity to one another are especially vulnerable to COVID-19 mitigation efforts, like social distancing and robust ventilation. Restaurants, bars, and cafes are business types that have been able to open for safe on-site service as the weather warmed up in the city.
Now, the City of Chicago is trying to think through how to keep the neighborhood businesses (especially restaurants and bars) open during the late Fall and Winter as the weather turns colder. Takeout and delivery will remain options but they often do not provide sufficient revenue to keep these places in business. As such, designing ways to attract customers to go out to their neighborhood restaurants and stay on-site for their meals is the priority in this design challenge.
What Happens to My Idea?
BMO Harris Bank has committed funding to advancing the identification, acceleration, and scaling of new on-site dining solutions.
As a participant in the Challenge, you acknowledge that other participants and the judging team will be able to view your submissions. While there is no formal transfer of intellectual property rights as a condition of participating in the Challenge, your ideas will be visible in a public domain. Please review our full Terms & Conditions before submitting a concept. Please do not submit confidential information as part of your application.
What is Required
- Solution overview: Participants will provide a summary of your solution including how it addresses needs (people, businesses, public health, the city). Visual and design-oriented collateral is encouraged.
- Feasibility: Participants will present a pathway to scale, keeping in mind that the goal is for restaurant, bar, and cafe owners/operators to be able to quickly implement these solutions as the weather gets colder. Readily available, inexpensive, and non-customized materials should be prioritized.
- Technical overview: Participants will provide an overview that explains how your solution would work from a technical perspective. Particular attention should be paid to explaining what would be needed to implement your solution including any unique materials or capabilities. How might your idea be prototyped? Please do not submit confidential information as part of your application to the Chicago Winter Challenge. Submissions will not be considered confidential.
- Equity overview: Participants will provide a summary of the diversity, equity, and inclusion considerations incorporated into the final design.
- Prototype: Participants will provide visual evidence of concept prototyping including, but not limited to: images/sketches, models, videos, or other relevant formats. We want to understand the process by which you experimented, explored tradeoffs, and validated your idea.
- User research: Submissions will include evidence of human-centered user research, feedback and testing of their concepts or prototypes. Participatory design research methods are strongly encouraged, e.g. compensated co-creation and feedback sessions with community & business members/leaders and/or subject-matter experts. User research should have evidence of compensation for research participants, and prioritize the involvement of individuals representing the typologies of people the designs are intended to serve.
- COVID-19 Safety: Submissions must adhere to the City of Chicago’s COVID-19 guidelines, and clearly demonstrate how the solution is working within these guidelines.
Please note that all proposals that include physical structures are subject to guidelines specified by the Chicago Department of Buildings. Specifically, all structures must be less than 400 square feet and not elevated more than 18 inches off the ground.
Evaluation Phase
Transforming our dining areas (emphasis on structures/infrastructure)
- Indoor-adjacent Ideas – ventilation, heating for areas immediately adjacent to indoor space
- Outdoor Ideas – structures separated from indoor space and on a sidewalk, parking lot, or other open area
Winter Outdoor Dining – Ideas for behavior change
- Broad catch-all category of making outdoor dining more appealing in the winter
How to Participate
Participants are welcome to submit solutions through OpenIDEO.
Who’s Involved
This design challenge is led by the City of Chicago with support from BMO Harris Bank, Illinois Restaurant Association, and IDEO.
The Design Challenge judging team for finalists includes
- Angela Burke – Food Writer and Founder of Black Food & Beverage
- Sam Toia, President, Illinois Restaurant Association
- Denis Weil – Dean, IIT Institute of Design (ID)
- Kimberly Bares – President, Magnificent Mile Association
- Rick Bayless – Chef
- A member of the Food Chain Workers Alliance
- Mabel Moy – Chairwoman of the Board, Chicago Chinatown Chamber of Commerce
- Alderman Tom Tunney – Owner, Ann Sather
- A member of the LTH Forum Team
