pl a y a ga me wit h old p ieces!

a co ncept f or p eop les i n te ra c ti o n s w i th l e fto v e rs

Milou Foole 1355104 Exploring Interactions - cycle 2 - iterate interacting in tomorrows society - sustai nable living - Natalia Romero & Ger t Pasman

INTRODUCTION
This report gives an overview of what I have done during the iteration phase of Exploring Interactions. Theres no extensive flashback of the results of the first cycle. However, some of the initial results such as the design goal and the interaction vision were altered during this second cycle and these changes are reported. What I aimed to come up with, is a concept for a design that will strengthen the link between stored food and deciding what to have for dinner. I have tried to report the research and design explorations in a clear way. Most of the content is placed in a chronological order, with some exceptions since work is often made in parallel. I hope that the work is appreciated so that I can continue, and build new prototypes as son as possible. Enjoy, Milou

strengthen the link between stored food and deciding what to eat

DESIGN GOAL
Effect
R eme m be r & i ns pi re youn g c o u ples t o use l e fto ve rs for di nner
In order to come up with concrete design ideas following from the design goal, the design goal itself should be more specific than it was in the first cycle (Supporting young couples to feel proud and inspired to use leftovers for dinner). Therefore, the effect feeling proud and inspired was changed to remember and inspire. For me personally it makes the sentence clearer, but there is also a difference in its meaning. Throughout the research I found out that people from the user group mainly struggled with having the overview of what they have at home, in the kitchen as well as when shopping. The second difficulty is knowing what to do with leftovers, people often find it more easy to think of a meal from scratch, having to include a leftover feels like a restriction rather than a source of inspiration.
overview of while shopping looking forward to make something with ... reducing food wastage

s to ra g e w as t e

Design & research explorations

d e ci s i o n
In the first cycle, I analysed the entire process of dealing with everyday meals. In this cycle, I focus on strengthening the link between storage and aqu s i t i on decision, of which Ii already stated that it should be stronger. The goals and questions on the next page were made in order to get more insights into this specific phase. Later in this report, a new interaction vision is included as well, which is more helpful when focusing on the details of the specific storage-decision phase.

p re p a r a t i o n c o n sum pt i on s to ra ge waste
I n t e r a c t i o n Vi s i o n Sh o ppi n g f o r, a n d w e a r i n g a s h i r t t h a t m a k e s t h e pe r f e c t m a t c h w i t h y o u r o l d pa n t s
t h ro w n a w a y
fashion & surroundings

d e c i s i on aquisition p re pa r a t i o n c o n su m pt i o n s to ra g e w a s t e
good memories jacket is torn

enjoying old outfit s t o re d

shopping

enjoying new outfit

forgotten

dull pants without that jacket ...shape

I like...

proud that Ive created this would my partner like it?

decision aquisit ion

throwing away? or shopping to revive? fitting snugly worn that kind of outfit too many times

totally different from before

...colour

...style

exited about those pants again

DESIGN & RESEARCH EXPLORATIONS

Goals & questions From the first cycle, it had become clear that a major cause of food wastage in young couples homes, is that they do not base their decision on what to have for dinner on the leftovers they have, since they experience that as a limitation rather than an inspiration. Therefore in this cycle, my main research goals are, To find out how users could: - be reminded to use their leftovers for dinner - get their dinner-inspiration from leftovers To answer these questions, I formulated more concrete questions for explorative research: 1) Would subconscious reminding of leftovers successfully remind/inspire? a1) On which moments should they be reminded? a2) Which senses should be addressed? 2) Would obvious reminders of whats at home inspire? b1) On which moments should users be reminded? b2) What kind of reminder will be inspiring? Exhibitions I have visited the exhibition De Etende Mens (The Eating Human), in order to get general inspiration for the project. The exhibition existed of art and design that was based on the theme of food. Unfortunately there where no projects on food waste and despite of all the nice work, it did not give me that much inspiration. One think I liked n particular and what has possibly been the inspiration for concepts, was the molecule structure model made from toothpicks and olives as an example of using food creatively. I also visited the graduation show of Design Academy Eindhoven. The images below show what ideas I saw on how to expose food in a nice way.

These where the basis for my research and design explorations, as presented in this chapter. olive-molecule, Premsela 2012

inspiration for exposing food, DAE 2012

DESIGN & RESEARCH EXPLORATIONS

Context mapping sessions At the start of this cycle, three context mapping sessions where held by me together with my buddy Pauline, each with a young couple that was not aware of our aim before the start of the session. The aim of the sessions was to find out more on the problems of food wastage as experienced by these people, to get detailed knowledge on what the food waste evoking problems are, and to get concept ideas trough co-creation and discussing product scenarios that we made. Context mapping sessions - sensitizing books A week before the actual sessions, the participants received a sensitizing package, including a workbook (Sleeswijk Visser et al. 2005), lists for reporting grocery and wastage,and some sweets and coloured pens. The aim of the books was to give insights to both our participants as to us. The pages of the workbooks are shown on this page. The first page was to get insights into personal food-related behaviour, for which we also gave Pick-A-Mood stickers (Desmet et. al., 2012) The second page had as a goal to see how people reacted on reminding their previous dinner. Also, the were asked to think of a meal already in advance. The third task was to reflect on opinions and emotions related to cooking. Finally, the were asked to show us (and themselves in a way) what their kitchen looked like.

sensitizing package

the four pages of the workbook

DESIGN & RESEARCH EXPLORATIONS

Context mapping sessions - discussing problems After discussing the workbooks during the sessions, we revealed the specific topic we wanted to address: reducing food waste in the home. This immediately evoked discussion, which we asked them to write on mindmaps that we provided. One of the main issues that came up, were the fact that people first thought thy had a clear overview, but later realized they actually did not have a clear overview of what they have stored (whether being in the kitchen or being in the supermarket straight form work). Also, people found it hard to use leftovers in a new meal due to planning/ time issues as well as how to use an ingredient in a different type of meal as the previous day. Additionally, it was mentioned that people bought or prepared more than they consumed.

problem-mindmaps

DESIGN & RESEARCH EXPLORATIONS

Context mapping sessions - co-creation Making people think of problems was partly meant to guide them into a mindset for thinking of solutions. In the first session, that was done on new pieces of paper. This did not really work and therefore, in the following sessions we let people write on post-its that they could paste next to the specific problem on the mindmap. The co-creation was meant to filter more problems out of the solutions. However, people did not come up with a lot of real design solutions, they more often thought of rules for their behaviour.

pasting solution ideas during sessions

problem-mindmaps with solutions

DESIGN & RESEARCH EXPLORATIONS

Context mapping sessions - evaluating product scenarios We ended the sessions with letting participants come up with positive and negative comments on four design concept that we made. In order to make them judge the concepts rather than their appearance, they were presented as storyboards. It turned out that most participants did not like apps, and did like practical concepts with a clear link to their goals (reminding and inspiration) rather than a vague idea that would change their behaviour on the long term.

DESIGN & RESEARCH EXPLORATIONS

Theory on influencing behaviour subconsciously Two lectures of PUUE and Materials for Design respectively, were a source of inspiration for me. The first lecture was on Embodied Cognition (Valentijn Visch) (Hung & Labroo, 2011). The fact that embodied experiences can influence cognitive processes was something that I wanted to explore further. In the course of Elvin Karana, evoking meaning and influencing the senses with materials was discussed. To me it became clear that the material of the products for this project would indeed be very important in order to evoke the intended interactions. Therefore, I will try to make models out of the same materials as where the final product should be made of.

materials experience

Cipria, by Edra, 2009

Ty Nant water bottle, Ross Lovegrove, 1999

// materials gratify senses

// materials evoke meanings

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CONCLUSIONS
New Interaction Vision This is more specific for the particular stages that are addressed. It could be used when developing the concept.

Playfully making a new combination out of anyones previous combinations & new (blank) stones.

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DESIGN & RESEARCH EXPLORATIONS

Design ideas Subconscious Initially, I tried to find out if people could be reminded and inspired by addressing the senses in a subconscious way. Besides visually (showing nice pictures of leftovers throughout the day) I thought that smell of ingredients could work. Associative Although I really liked the idea of subconsciously altering behaviour and choices, I realized that in practice, it would easily become a reminder of the meal of the last day rather than ingredients. That would be exactly the opposite of what I intended, since then people would not be inspired to make something else with the ingredients. However, it would be useful to make people be involved in next days meal in the evening, so that they could plant a nice dinner idea in their mind, so that it could grow throughout the day and so that you would really want that meal when making the real decision. I came up with several ideas to integrate a playful, associative process in the storage phase of the meal process.

Obvious I also thought of more obvious reminders, that would either be inspirational or very practically providing an overview.

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DESIGN & RESEARCH EXPLORATIONS

Associative thing embodied From the idea to make something that was both subconscious and related to loose ingredients, and that could be included in the regular behaviour of the user (in order that the user would really use it), I came up with the concept that is shown in a model on this page. The idea is, that different bowls, are enabling you to store leftovers in a qualitative way to make the difference between nice fresh thing and stored leftover smaller. These bowls should be as a puzzle, evoking associative thinking and seeing new possibilities by placing the bowls in another way. They should be made of a qualitative material such as porcelain, which also makes the link to normal tableware more obvious. The plate under the bowls is bigger than all bowls together, in order to evoke more different positions, and to enable people to place other, loose products on the plate as well.

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CONCLUSIONS
Testing the model I tested the model in the IP workshop and with other users: Lisa and Gerben, a young couple living together that did not participate in the research before; Mathia, which had participated in the contextmapping together with her boyfriend; and Arjen and Aileen, who had participated in the observation-sessions. The main conclusions and insights that Ive got from their feedback was: turntable The platform should be rotating, so that nothing stays in the back of the fridge and content seems new and fresh all the time. all bowls unique Uniqueness will lead to a conscious decision what to put in which bowl and what to do with it later transparency Either the lid or the bowls should be transparent suitable for microwave, oven, dishwasher With this, and a nice material, users are happy to find a product that is (finally) useful for all purposes, rather than having bowls for cooking, presenting and storing lids should not get lost When lids are not in use, the should have a place date of storage Should be integrated in the concept in some way reminder-item It could be useful to have a piece that youll take with you and be aware of on the moment that you decide what to eat. Timing is very important, a shopping bag or wallet is something you see already after shopping, maybe a key chain could work

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CONCLUSIONS
Improvements for the concept Here are some improvements embodied, as mentioned on the previous page turntable additionally, bowls should sit in the plate, so that the puzzle would evoke some form of ordering lids should not get lost

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CONCLUSIONS
Detailing In order to be able to actually build a proper model, I made a solidworks model showing the details. This model is not showing any material properties and the height in relation to the triangular shape may be not ideal, however the way the lid sits in the bowl, the bowl sits in the lid, the angled walls that invite looking in the bowls and that are necessary for some clay techniques, the way the rubber is kept in place around the lid, the edges on the bottom, and the chamfering of the stone edges are made clear.

tr a n s p a re n t l i d s i ts i n b o w l

rubber edge

cer ami cs, gl ass, r ubber bowl s: di ff erent shape, si ze , ta c tu a l e x p e r i e n c e cor ners fit on knobs in plate

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l i d s to re d u n d e r b o w l w h e n u n u s e d

APPENDIX
1: References Desmet PMA, Vastenburg MH, Van Bel D, Romero, NA (2012). Pick-A-Mood; development and application of a pictorial mood-reporting instrument. In: J. Brassett, P. Hekkert, G. Ludden, M. Malpass, & J. McDonnell (Eds.), Proceedings of the 8th International Design and Emotion Conference, Central Saint Martin College of Art & Design, London (UK), 11-14 September 2012. Hung I. W. Aparna A Labroo: From Firm Muscles to Firm Willpower: Understanding the Role of Embodied Cognition in Self-Regulation - Journal of consumer research - Volume 37, April 2011 Karana E. - Lecture 2 of the course Materials for design, 2012 Sleeswijk Visser F., Stappers P.J., Lugt R. & Sanders E.: Contextmapping: experiences from practice CoDesign: International Journal of CoCreation in Design and the Arts Volume 1, Issue 2, 2005 Visch V. - Lecture Embodied Cognition as part of the course Product Understanding, Use and Emotion, 2012

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