Communicate current offerings
Help diners find what is already being served, including dishes they might overlook.
For Dining Teams
Earlier signals, defined together
Dining teams already run complex operations with care and expertise. Daki would like to learn from them, and to explore together whether voluntary, privacy-conscious input from diners could add useful, earlier feedback.
No pilot is in place. Harvard is the intended setting for an initial experiment. Neither Harvard nor Harvard University Dining Services has endorsed Daki or agreed to a pilot.
Hypothesis
What if some feedback arrived before the meal?
Much of the feedback dining teams receive arrives at or after service. Daki is exploring whether voluntary interaction with diners could provide earlier, more structured signals about what people are considering, looking for, unable to find, or planning to choose.
Signals would be voluntary for diners and shared with dining teams only in aggregate. Scroll sideways on small screens to see the full timeline.
Possible uses
Ideas to test with dining professionals
Each of these is a hypothesis. None has been demonstrated, and some may turn out not to be useful. We want dining teams to help decide which are worth testing at all.
Understand interest in options
See which dishes or categories diners are considering, in aggregate.
Identify recurring unmet needs
Notice what diners repeatedly look for and cannot find.
Test advance meal intentions
Learn whether intentions submitted ahead of time are useful operationally at all.
Receive feedback sooner
Hear about interest before a meal, not only after it or at the end of a survey period.
Support ordering and preparation
Explore whether better planning signals could inform ordering and preparation decisions.
Help shape the experiment
What we would like to learn from you
Before building anything for dining teams, Daki wants to understand which information would be useful. These are the questions we are bringing to conversations.
- Which decisions would benefit most from earlier information?
- Which feedback do you already find actionable, and what is missing?
- Which signals would be useful in aggregate, and which would be noise?
- How far ahead would a meal intention need to arrive to matter?
- Which systems hold the authoritative menu, allergen and nutrition data?
- What privacy, security and approval requirements would apply?
- What would make a small pilot too much work for your team?
- What would a useful pilot need to measure for you?
Tell us what would be useful
or write to maverickyasuda@college.harvard.edu
Principles
How Daki intends to handle diner input
- Aggregated, not individual. Dining teams would see patterns, not any person's history.
- Voluntary for diners. People choose whether to plan or share anything.
- Collect only what a question needs. Each signal should be tied to a stated purpose.
- Institutional data stays authoritative. Menus, allergens and nutrition information come from the dining team.
- Alongside existing systems. Designed to fit the tools and workflows teams already use.
- No sale of identifiable data. Diner information is not a product.
Help shape the experiment
If you work in dining services, food-service operations, sustainability or campus life, we would value a conversation about what would and would not be useful. Students can join the waitlist to take part in early testing.
The waitlist is a short Google Form. Joining does not give immediate access; it helps Daki recruit early testers and understand dining contexts for the first Harvard-focused experiment.
Work in dining, research, or campus life?
We would like to learn what information would be useful to you before anything is built for dining teams.
Or write to
maverickyasuda@college.harvard.edu