InteractiveGrocery: Process Book

sarah calandro carnegie mellon university information.interaction.perception stacie rohrbach fall '10

A NEW APPROACH TO food SHOPPING

Over the past 150 years, the US Food System has experienced dramatic changes in an attempt to mass produce food so that more people have access to it at a lower cost. Through industrializing farming practices and utilizing science to make the growing, preparing, and transporting of food more widespread and efficient, we are able to produce more grain and beef than we ever have in farming history. The western diet that has materialized due to the industrialization of farming, while inexpensive and convenient, is high in fat, sugar, and empty calories. It is the only diet in the history of humankind that humans can not thrive on. The effort to make food cheap and convenient has resulted in widespread disease that is a global problem. There is reason enough for change, but the problem has become so big that it seems almost impossible. Where do we begin?

After talking to people, conducting surveys about how people make decisions regarding their food purchasing, and following people around the grocery store to document how they shop, I decided that the context of this project should be the grocery store and the audience should be the people who truly want to be healthy but live in a space of food confusion.

I choose this group because they are more interested in finding the solution and, therefore, are more likely to implement a solution. They are also victim to a larger system that they believe they are subject to.

I choose the grocery store because it goes straight to the root of the decision-making/food confusion problem. We live in a culture where we get most of our food from the grocery and by getting our food there, we don't know where it comes from or, in many cases, what it is.

This prototype will strive to teach people about the problem with food industrialization`. It will illustrate for them high level affects of the processed food industry and also personalized information about how the food they buy affects them. With this tool they will be empowered through learning, grocery shopping, and seeing data visualizations of the food they buy and consume.

i. project proposal What and Why

Research, Audience, and Context

Concept: Learn, Shop, Visualize



i. project proposal Process Overview



ii. topic development What I Studied Effectiveness

Food Packaging Labels provoke confusion

#'s/facts are relative to what?

impersonal

disconnects us from food source

As Don Norman would say, these things "make us stupid." We don't have to think in order to come to a decision. These rating systems make decisions for us. And while they may help us to make better choices, with-out them, we are a lost (and dumb) people (when it comes to what food is). In order to learn, we need to be able to understand food in such a way that we can make these decisions quickly, on our own.

Provoke learning using macro and micro views to teaching cooking, growing, and sharing food in a community.

Discloses the problem of industrialized food. Teaches how to navigate the processed non food landscape.

Health = Nutrition / Calories. Still a somewhat quantitative approach but composes a food-targeted diet that excludes processed foods.

Nutritional Rating Systems

New Food Rhetoric andSchools of ThoughtJamie Oliver's Food Revolution

Carolyn Steel's 'Sitopia'

Michael Pollan's Food Rules

Warren Belasco's Appetite for Change

Joel Fuhrman's Eat to Live



GoalAn attempt to understand the effectiveness of the nutrition label. Do people use it? How do they use it? Does it actually work for them? What are their rules of thumb when using it and do they actually trust it?

FindingsMany people do, in fact use the nutrition label. It seems that people either blindly accept the information in it or they question it and seek for other sources of information.

Overall, most people do put their health in regards to their food intake as a priority.

Food health is a topic of great confusion. People just don't know what is healthy and they are confused by the mass amounts of misleading information on food packaging.

They need something that teaches them the truth about food and discloses all of the hidden information found in the grocery store.

iii. research Survey 1



GoalTo understand people's food shopping heuristics and get a sense of what they believe to be true about food, diet, and health. What kind of food do people believe to be healthy and what kind of food do people generally feel they have access to? How swayed are people by food-packaging and buzzwords? Do people buy food in the same way they proclaim to? Do people buy food in the way that they believe to be healthy? What do people believe that healthy and natural is?

FindingsPeople definitely want to eat healthy.

People generally believe whole foods to be more healthy than processed foods though, they don't always know why and are confused as to what constitutes as

'processed' and what constitutes as 'whole.' P

People use nutritional jargon to talk about their health. Not many people talk about types of real whole foods as being healthy, rather, they talk about fat, fiber, sugar, calories, etc.

People are very sick of the processed food debate. They think it's unfair and out of their control. They try to be healthy but truly being healthy is impossible if you don't have a lot of time or money.

“It’s disheartening to reflect on something over which I feel little control. We need to eat and we do the best we can. But it’s not perfect.”

“I like food. A lot. I don’t really think about how and why I buy things, usually. I just buy.”

“I’m sure there are unhealthy things in the food I eat, but it is entirely too inconvenient at present to change that. Perfect food is not available to the masses, and that which is fairly close is hardly affordable on a regular basis. It feels like a losing battle.”

“A more compelling reason for me to change my diet than ‘don’t eat that, it’s unhealthy’ would be ‘don’t eat that, it causes cancer in lab rats’”

Survey 2



GoalTo understand how people shop while they are shopping. What food heuristics do they use as they move the store? How often are they influenced to buy things they weren't planning to buy? How aware or unaware are they of the food they buy (do they just pick stuff up or do they pay attention)? Do people know anything about processed food and whole food and do they take this into consideration when shopping?

FindingsPeople habitually shop packaging and labels because it is the only way to know what's in food products.

Everyone has their own food shopping system.

People value eating healthy and oftentimes eat certain things just because 'it's healthy.'

They don't have much knowledge to back up why they believe it's healthy; 'the box says it is, there are only 120 calories.'

People use package-labeling to determine what is healthy and what is not. They don't use food rhetoric.

People like to get in and get out of the store without much hassle.

Patterns are important. The way items on the shelf stand out based on color contrasts, etc influence what people see and what they buy.

Food convenience is very important. Oftentimes, it's more important than food healthiness. Pre-made items are really popular, and hence, so is processed food.

Grocery Store Shadowing / Interviewing





teach people who want to be healthy why it's important to eat (and truly enjoy) real food.

illustrate that, while we are subject to what's available, cheap, and convenient in the grocery store, we do have the power as consumers to completely change the food landscape (supply and demand).

attempt to shift people's language from nutrition rhetoric to food rhetoric.

give them the knowledge to rely on what they know about food to make food purchasing decisions rather than rely on abstract, impersonal nutritional data and packaging buzzwords

Don Moyer's Napkin Sketches

This tool should:iv. design implications

v. story development







Systems / Narrative Diagrams









Medium and Form Structure

Print Concept




Digital Concept




Final Concept to Develop



The Making

Storyboards



Your neighborhood food store.

$00.00$58.24

You need a few days

food worth of


$00.00

The Making

Storyboards



Magnesium Stearate

maltodextrose

folic acid

fructooligosaccharides l-carnitinetaurine

hydrochloride

potassium chlorideyeast extract

calcium caseinate

hydrolyzed corn gluten

autolyzed yeast

textured protein

gelatin

carrageenan

whey protein

malt extracttrans fat

cobalt proteinatetrisodium phosphate

Guar Gum

Guar Gummaltodextrin

riboflavinthiamin

sodium bisulfite

monosodium glutamate

corn sugar

high fructose corn syrup

enriched flour

xanthan gum

sorbic acidpropylene glycol alginate

aspartamepotassium bromatenatural flavors artificial flavors

citric acidYellow #6

blue 1green 3 caramel color

hydrolyzed soy proteindextrose

food became more: highly processed.

in different combinations and amounts.

The Making

Storyboards

Your Grocery Kart $ towards food

$12.89

$1.99

$0.00

$ towards sickness

$15.21

{not} food

food

$25.43



The Making

Storyboards

Why do you choose these?

than real food



The Making

Storyboards

Buy food


$00.00


$00.00



Final Project

Screen Images



Final Project

Screen Images



Final Project

Screen Images



Final Project

Screen Images



Final Project

Screen Images



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InteractiveGrocery: Process Book

Documents

food health

produce food

kind of food

food shoppingsurvey

food intake

food purchasing

changeindustrialized

howthe food