FINAL CONCEPT

Overview

FOCUS SHIFT

Over the last few weeks I was working on my Focus. In the beginning of this process I had my theory around a future environment and how healthy wouldn’t become a choice anymore, but that it would be given. For a long time that sounded very interesting and I got very excited around the conflicts it would create. Due to workshops and talking to people I realized more and more that there was a big gap between what I am doing and what reaches people. More and more I understood how important it was, also in critical design, to invite people to a space that they are familiar enough with to convey the message.

In this post I will give a quick overview on the main points I came across on the journey to my final concept. The area I am presenting are based on the findings from the research and the conflicts that were arising.

 

FIRST FOCUS

TARGET INDIVIDUAL NEEDS

It all started with the two findings during research that represented controversies between scientific knowledge and humanity.

My focus started to be on Nutrients only and I basically stated, that Nutrients are easier to quantify compared to our needs.

To make this Hypothesis more relevant I packed it all up into a story.

People’s bodies are all different. The chemical complex is individual that leads to individual needs. In order to function in optimal health the personalisation of nutritious feeding requires targeted solutions. Fueling up our body is done more efficiently through building blocks of individual nutrients. By measuring the physical needs through biotechnology, we are able to be updated at any minute of what deficiencies we are having in our bodies.  Regulated eating times will no longer be required. Daily breaks are not curated around food breaks but facilitate social interactions and rituals.

Grocery shopping and the concept of fixed meal times are taught in history classes. Real food fulfills the purpose of extracting nutrients instead of shipping them around the world. Food distribution will be exchanged by distributing light weight nutrients directly to people.

Making healthy food decisions has nothing to do with the weakness of humans willpower. Are your desires for unhealthiness so big you can consciously decide to sabotage your body yourself.

---

 

This space has allowed me to ask a lot of questions and by going through about 40 what if questions I landed with a couple intriguing tensions and open questions.

Taking this further it brought me to some funny concepts.

and even further, there where a lot of questions.

…until I realized there was something missing. So I found myself not knowing what to do with all this.

With this question I then took a big step back and looked at it from a different perspective.

---

 

A FOCUS SHIFT!

The funny thing about this was, and probably the biggest learning in this project, that even though it was a drastic shift in the project, it felt like I just pulled it together and everything made a little bit more sense. I stepped away from the world I created and focused on today. What was really happening in todays world and why are we really getting sicker and fatter. Well I came across this conflict that enlightened my view on things.

 

 

So basically after struggling with the fact that Nutrition was a young science and we couldn’t make statements that applied to everyone, as well as stop blaming the peoples willpower for everything, I figured it was our evolution and how we are not fast enough evolve for the environment around us.

Since our inborn preferences for Sugar, Salt and Fat were designed for identifying nutritious food and those preferences are used to the food industries advantage, we no longer use them for that function. The food environment is making it extra hard to say no, since we are made to love these things.

Well I thought how could we catch up with todays environment. A sense for nutrition perhaps?

 

This area sounded so exciting and I really liked how I could create arguments around it. When it came to creating a nutrition sense I soon realized I was going a lot into the direction of mental decoding instead of emotional solutions. Basically Design solutions rather than Scientific research.

Could I use our other senses to feel nutritious food?

 

---

 

Focus more. SUGAR.

Yeah. That exploration was fun too, but again, if I say I can sense nutritious food, I need to know what that really means and as I leaned in previous research there was not enough knowledge in science to really say what we all should do. It is individual. Of course we know how important vegetables are, but we don’t know how grains or meat really affect us and so, I decided to focus on sugar only. There is a lot of good research in this area. Robert Lustig is one of the leading researchers that opined the danger of sugar.

As Diabetes rates rise not just in the United states but also in China and India along with a lot of other ‘Mismatch Diseases’, researchers realize more and more how dangerous the impact of sugar really is on society.

So, I thought I am going to focus on a ‘sugar sense’. Yes, focusing even more. That made it easier to get my head around. At least thats how it felt like in the beginning. 🙂 Well, I of course opened the topic up again and looked at all possibilities I had in the area of Sugar and that was not as small as it first sounded. Obviously.

Questions like:

What if we all had to prepare for getting diabetic? sounded extremely interesting. In my opinion not even that far away if we look at the statistics and that in 2030 65% of the people will be obese.

After a brainstorm workshop with people to ask questions about a sugar sense and if they could relate to diabetes, and other big realization happened. Again, I didn’t know how little people understand of what diabetes is and how we don’t think of ourselves to be a target. It was an eye opener and I knew I would step away from the topic in this project.

---

 

FINAL FOCUS

 I cleared my mind off of everything that I was thinking of. Looked at the strong arguments I have created and didn’t give up on believing that there is something that will allow me to create a design solution and with what I will reach the people around me. I thought my message was strong and important enough to put into a concept.

 

These slides are from my Gateway presentation on April 11.

 

 

Discussion Workshop

This week I created a small workshop around the 4 opportunity areas.

For each opportunity area I used a little task to get the participants into the topic based on todays perception and experiences.

Opportunity Areas

During my research I decided to work with the idea of addressing complete individualism in our physical needs. The 4 opportunity areas are the base for a idealistic world of not having to make healthy choices anymore.  With this idea I split the food from the nutrients and use these abstract numbers and scientific forms to make them more tangible. The goal is to create experiences around this idea of addressing individual physical needs through new evolving technology to then play out and critically question what impact that could have on different social interactions.

 

Sneak Peak into Research

During some initial research and reading I realized how uncertain we are about defining what healthy living is. Although there is a lot in the media, it appears to be an art in itself to navigate through the offers today and make healthy choices.

Thats the space where I feel like I can use the techniques of Design to create a critical view on how society has created the ecosystem around our food habits.

Choosing of my interviewees

For my primary research I chose to work with a specific group of people and their knowledge as well as relationship with Nutrients and food.

Nutrition Science

These people helped me to understand the possibilities of how far we are with the science in understanding food and Nutrition. What technologies we are having today and how young the science of understanding what food does to us still is.

some insights from the Interviews with Dietician, Physician, Chemist and Nutritionist:

Athletes

To talk to Athletes the motivation was really to see how people with enormous discipline work with food. Athletes do a lot of testing on their own and often deal with weight gain and weight loss more than 3 times a year.

All my Athletes were in a very different field and had a very different attitude to their food habits. All of them keep mostly a diet without extra sugar and know exactly what makes their body work. What gives them energy and what makes them physically do what they want to do.

some insights from the interviews with divers Athletes:

Why I chose not to work with Weight watchers or any other Weight losing community?

“it’s a learning experience in the limits of science!” – Gary Taubes

Since science doesn’t 100% know, it would be difficult for me to say I know it better than somebody else, since that is not at all possible and true. We are extreme individuals and have very individual needs, but our culture in food habits and rituals and the offer of so much chunk, makes it a matter of willpower and food habits.

Kick off Presentation

During our Kick off all the thesis candidates shared their topic in a 5min presentation. During my presentation I wanted to give a small taste to think about nutrition from a different perspective. 

Brief

Introduction

In my degree project I am to investigate into food, nutrition, and the role that food plays in our lives. It aims to challenge our current understanding and definition of ‘food’ and ‘healthy food’, play with topics such as eating habits and food cravings, in order to provoke a critical discussion about the intimate relationship between food and the body and the consequences of your choices.

“We probably as a culture have got our values inverted. We would rather spend our money on rent than we would on the best food ever.” -David Wolfe, Food Matters

Growing up on the mountains right next to farmers, fresh vegetables and fruits and being surrounded by the people that cook fresh only, my world of food was simple. I didn’t have to think about healthy or not, everything was fresh and homemade and as a child we played outside in the fresh air so much, we would just burn it away right away. Even though that was the case, I have always been very interested in nutrition. I remember as a 8 year old, I would unpack the chocolate, break it into pieces and tell myself how many little pieces I was allowed to eat over time. Things have changed over time and traveling around the world gave me a new perspective. Also making my own food decisions was not as easy as I thought. I used my body to experiment around food behaviours and what food will do to my body to then feel and see results and create a very sensitive reflection process towards food with my body as the tool. The process of what our mind goes through when thinking about food and how often food is given not enough time to think about, is interesting to me.

Making food decisions and dealing with planning what to eat everyday, can be just that extra decision we don’t have the energy for after a long day. How often are we desperately looking for an inspiration on food to make for dinner or my next lunch break? Does food how we interact with it today still fit into our lives?

 

Final Brief – Intimate Food