MyFresh: designing heatwave support around daily routines
The brief
Strate partnered with MAIF on a semester-long studio brief about climate adaptation. MAIF is a French mutuelle, an insurer owned by its members. It asked how it could help people prepare for climate-related harm. Our group focused on heatwaves.
Could a service help someone adapt a heat-exposed day before harm occurs?
Mapping the climate-adaptation ecosystem
I mapped 64 organizations and 251 documented relationships across France, including public agencies, municipalities, emergency groups, insurers, utilities, and local organizations. The map became a shared orientation tool for the studio, showing how prevention, response, funding, infrastructure, and public information connected.
I maintained the dataset in Google Sheets and rendered it with Cosma. Cosma exports a self-contained HTML network, which let me publish the graph as a live, inspectable artefact rather than a static image.
The first MyFresh concept
Melvin, Timothy, and I focused on heat. We began with three observations: heatwave support can be hard to find, access to drinking water becomes urgent on a hot day, and exposure can vary from person to person.
Our first proposal was a standalone app combining an AI chatbot, an interactive map, and an intelligent planner. It could suggest cooler activities, reorganize a day around the heat, find water and cool places, and plot routes with more shade using Google Solar API data.
It was intentionally broad: one tool that could help someone prepare before going out and adapt while moving through the city.
From standalone app to familiar tools
Feedback on the first concept pushed us to make the service more specific. We compared four heat-exposed days and found that control over time mattered as much as exposure. A student could move an activity by an hour; a construction worker might spend all day outdoors without control over when or where they worked. MyFresh could help people who still controlled part of their day, but it could not replace changes from employers, transport, housing, or public infrastructure.
Instead of asking people to install and learn a new app, we moved MyFresh into tools they already used. An opt-in email briefing could prepare the day, Google Calendar could hold suggested schedule changes, and an AI-powered advisor in WhatsApp could answer a request for a cool place or drinking fountain.
Information could arrive when it was useful without introducing a new interface or habit. The walkthrough follows that flow across a single day.
Reflection
The stakeholder map and MyFresh approached the same problem from opposite ends. The map showed the public agencies, employers, infrastructure, and community groups involved in climate adaptation. MyFresh translated that network into the support one person might encounter during an ordinary day.
Moving MyFresh into familiar tools made that support easier to reach, but it did not give people more control over their time. Someone could act on a suggestion only if they were able to shift an errand, training session, or commute. When work, housing, or care responsibilities left no room to adapt, employers and public services had to do more.
- Context
- MAIF is a French mutual insurer owned by its members. It brought Strate a semester studio brief asking how an insurer could help people prepare for climate-related harm. Our group focused on heatwaves.
- Objective
- Map the organizations already involved in climate adaptation across France, then develop a service concept for everyday heat exposure.
- Method
- I built an exploratory stakeholder map of 64 organizations and 251 documented relationships. My team first proposed a standalone MyFresh app combining a conversational agent, maps, and schedule planning, then moved those interactions into email, Google Calendar, and WhatsApp.
- Outcome
- The simpler concept met people inside tools and routines they already knew. The scenarios also clarified its limit: MyFresh could help someone who controlled part of their day, while people with less control needed changes from the systems around them.