DATE
April - July 2022
Food for Future
AI social platform for Sustainability
DATE
Jan - March 2021
RESPONSIBILITY
User Research
User flow
Ideation
UI design
Visual design
TOOLS
Figma
Miro
INTRODUCTION
In this project, we are happy to have this opportunity to work with Enpuls.
Enpuls is a semi-governmental, non-profit organization based in the Netherlands which has its business focused on sustainable ways of living. Since they would like to encourage people to talk more about sustainability, they wanted our team to help with seeking a solution.
We are a team that consists of 6 members, Alice Markmann, Stella Wong (me), Björn Grauers, Gelson Veloso, Juliana Hernandez Baez and Susanne Månsson.
With the given topic of this project, “Negotiating the uncomfortable: Exploring deep conversations around (un)sustainable futures”, we have tried different ways to examine ways of communicating.
DESIGN PROCESS
TO REDEFINE THE TOPIC AT THE FIRST MEETING
Enpuls wants the team to take a start from the very beginning - to explore conversations as a human rather than a designer. Additionally, they would like our team to explore the case from the first social experience, then start from that and find the thread to connect the society or in relation to the planet. After discussing among the team and the stakeholder representative, Maurijin de Heus (Mau), there are two important points highlighted for this project, they are:
1
How to support meaningful, deep, reflective conversations around sustainable future(s) connecting not just on the individual level, but also on social and planetary levels?
1
2
How to support “response-ability”(cultivating collective knowing and doing)?
A RESPONSIBLE DESIGN PROJECT
As having a conversation is an essential element in this topic, it is crucial to get to know the role of the designer in the project. According to Papanek (Papanek, 1985), responsible design means designing for people’s needs rather than their wants. Therefore, through this project, different methods have been tried out in order to find out what is the need of people when having a conversation, how people think about having an uncomfortable conversation and how could these conversations apply to the sustainable topic.
RESEARCH
1. Desktop research
As the very first step, desktop research was conducted so as to figure out some fundamental concepts and ideas for the topic. Sustainability has been a big issue these years. According to Sustainable Development, there are 17 goals that are agreed upon by world leaders to work on in order to strive for a better world by 2030.
2. The 1st workshop -
First-person methodology
PLATFORM Zoom and Miro
PARTICIPANTS 6 persons
PURPOSE
To find out more about the participants’ daily behaviours towards sustainability and how conversations about sustainability could be started under different situations.
HOW
All participants needed to fill in the table under different circumstances, such as thoughts about sustainability, ways and the result of sharing the thoughts. After filling in the table, every participant had a chance to present his/her previous experience.
The first workshop brought up an overview of sustainability.
RESULT
The first workshop was general research letting the participants share their own experiences about the conversations of sustainability, it gave the team a chance to get an insight into how people usually experience uncomfortable conversations and get to know some general thoughts about sustainability.
3. The 2nd workshop – Something about uncomfortable conversations
PLATFORM Zoom and Miro
PARTICIPANTS 6 persons
PURPOSE
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Identify what makes a conversation (un)comfortable from other users' perspectives.
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To define a “safe space” for a conversation
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Determine what kinds of settings, topics, and relationships would affect a conversation
HOW
The participants were directed to think about a personal experience of having an uncomfortable conversation, and then answer the tasks and questions that were prepared on the Miro boards.
Considering to create a comfortable and safer space for the participants to share their experiences, 6 participants were divided into two small groups in Zoom’s breakout rooms.
After the breakout rooms section, every participant was asked to join the big group again for the reflection session.
RESULT
The second workshop was conducted and inspired by the concept of “the path of expression” from the Convivial Toolbox (Sanders Elizabeth B.-N, Stappers, Pieter Jan aut, 2012). The path of expression is a strategy of taking the participants from observing the present, then back to their memories of earlier experiences, then forward to dreams for desired future.
Through the workshop, we got some interesting thoughts about linking conversations with relationships, and how relationships and conversations could lead us to a sustainable future.
4. Interviews – conversations about a (un)sustainable future
PLATFORM Phone call
PARTICIPANTS 4 persons
PURPOSE
To know more about how people talk about (un)sustainable future
RESULT
The interviews were conducted privately with the closest friends and family through phone calls and face-to-face conversations.
After the interviews, we realized that people usually feel curious about the future but on the other hand, have difficulties in imagining and that we considered this “difficulty” could be considered as a “need” for the people.
5. A conversation with food – The conversation napkin
LOCATION Hässleholm, Sweden
PARTICIPANTS 4 persons
PURPOSE
To test the settings of having a conversation
HOW
Participants were invited to the gathering with waffles and coffee served on the table. Napkins with questions were distributed to every guest for writing down their answers during the conversation. The whole conversation was divided into three parts:
1. What is the future for you?
2. What do you think about sustainability?
3. What do you think about the term “changemaker”?
RESULT
Inspired by the concept of Death over Dinner and the community project The Big Lunch, we considered food and drinks could be a medium to bring people together. Based on these, a tea-time gathering, Conversation Napkin was launched to test out the idea.
In this 3.5 hours gathering, the participants shared their opinions while eating. At the food table, some deeper conversations were carried out around the questions such as discussions about the “near future” and “far future” and thoughts about sustainability.
6. The 3rd workshop – Fictional scenario-building
PLATFORM Zoom and Miro
PARTICIPANTS 6 persons
PURPOSE
To try out the Speculative design method
HOW
Throughout the workshop, participants were divided into pairs. There were four types of cards for the participants to compose the scenario, they are Time card (blue), Terrain card (green), Object card (red) and Mood card (orange). Participants were asked to choose the Time card and Terrain card, while the Object card was an optional choice and the Mood card was an assigned card. After picking the cards, participants had to sketch and describe a future scenario base on all the settings.
Follow with the scenario building, there were some questions asked from the individual level to public levels, such as:
1. How would you feel if you have to live in this future scenario? (individual level)
2. What changes would you make to your own life if this scenario might be in your future? (individual level)
3. What changes would you want the others (policymakers, local government, companies) to make if this scenario might be in your future, or part of it?
4. Do you consider this a sustainable or unsustainable future?
RESULT
With the help of the scenario cards: time cards, terrain cards, object cards and mood cards, it was easier for the participants to imagine and “build” the future.
According to a survey that was conducted after the workshop, most of the participants found that the scenario building was interesting and this has successfully triggered more interesting follow-up conversations based on their created scenario. And, based on the result of the activities, the idea of having scenario-building has been decided to be one of the main contents of the project.
Let's have a CONVERSATION over the dining table.
DEFINE & IDEATE
After researching, we have a clearer picture of the project. According to the result of the findings, here are some important elements that would consider adding to the project, they are:
Based on these elements, we have also defined our first target users as change-makers at Enpuls, which are the employees of the company.
Food for Future,
Think for the Future.
Before lunch.
Simple Onboarding.
DATE&Time matching for the lunch gathering.
AI Conversation assistant to lead you through the conversation about the future.
Animated gifs made with Python in DrawBot
During lunch.
Audio-Based Function
Hi! I am Karma, your conversation assistant.
Sustainable Topics for the conversation
AFTER lunch.
A social platform for sharing.
TESTING & FEEDBACK
In order to try out the concept of the design, we decided to start the testing with the stakeholder. Therefore, the target users of this app were first sent to be employees. The prototype of the app was sent to Mau and two of his colleagues. And that, they provided some feedback.
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They suggested that the app could have different target users so that the functions could be broadly used in other forms of gathering, such as a gathering app between companies
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The contents of the questions could be set more interestingly so as to foster and motivate users to join the app
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The scenario-building part could be more defined and instructed
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The concept of the design could be considered to be present in another form besides “app”
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The design could consider more about how the conversation could go further after the gathering
After receiving valuable feedback from the stakeholder, some improvements are considered as future work.
1. To open up the design for all changemakers
Considering the target users of the “Food for Future” was too narrow, the design could open up more opportunities for different types of gatherings and allow people to host a sustainable gathering among different social groups, including family, friends, colleagues and even strangers.
2. To have customised settings for the gathering
As the setting of the gathering is also an important issue for creating a safe space for people to have a conversation, a more flexible and customized setting could be added to the design. For example, the shape of the table, and the way of having the meal would also change the way of interaction at the dining table. Moreover, the number of guests and the age group could also be a factor that could affect the content of the conversation, such as if there are children in the gathering, the conversation would become more educational for purpose. Additionally, a group dividing system could also be another function for the design in case the users want to have competitions in teams.
3. To have more interesting topics and ways of communicating
Referring to one of the feedback from the stakeholder, the content of the questions should be set more interestingly. To deal with that, I would suggest having a “gameful” experience in order to enhance the excitement of the gathering. For the content, there would be topics for users to choose from due to different preferences, such as users might choose several different categories about sustainability and all the questions in the following games would be about those topics. Besides, it could also be different types of questions, such as speedy quizzes, IQ questions and debate topics. And for each game, there would be a level of difficulty for the users to choose so as to enhance the experience.
4. The design could be in another form
It would be interesting to execute the design in another form besides digital, such as a drinking or an eating game with sustainable questions. For future work, a prototype of a board game would be a possibility to try out different topics for the content.
CONCLUSION
It has been a pleasure to have a chance to work with Enpuls, thanks for their understanding while working during the pandemic period as it has been a challenge for us to work 'together' separately.
Throughout the project, most of the workshops and tests were executed virtually and these were also valuable experiences for the team.
Based on all the findings, the lunch lottery app “Food for future” was developed as the solution for the project – to gather colleagues to have sustainable conversations around the lunch table. Yet, this design idea would be only one of the thousands of ways for triggering conversations, and this app idea has opened up more design opportunities and would potentially lead to other forms of design in the future.