Design & ResearchExplorations Report

December 6, 2012

ID4250 Exploring Interactions - Sustainable LivingCycle 2 - Iterate

Robbin Kwa1505947

TutorsNatalia RomeroGert Pasman

IntroductionThis is the report of the design and research explorations that were done for cycle 2 of this project. The project

‘Shopping for Food Waste’ is focussing on the current interactions and experiences of young working singles during grocery shopping. The goal is to let them feel joyous while they consciously pick their food products, with respect that they not buy too much food that will eventually be wasted in their households.

The focus for cycle 2 lies in explorating the possibilities of sharing food that is bought. Research is done to get inpiration for new concepts within sharing of food and to explore existing sharing networks. Design explorations are done to test new ideas and concepts with respect to the design goal and interaction vision.

Design Goal

Interaction Vision

Research Explorations

The design goal for my project ‘shopping for food waste’ has not changed since I kicked of with cycle two of this course. My design goal is that I want…

…young working singles to feel joyous to consciously pick their food products

during grocery shopping.

The interaction vision has developed into something less extreme than racing a rally car. I want the interaction to be like making and sharing a photo album of a trip you made. The interaction qualities linked to the making of the album are explorative and conscious in the sense that you have to explore the possibilities with the different photos and be conscious about the message or feeling you want to create with the pictures. Also pleasurable and curious are desired interaction qualities that are evoked by sharing the photo album. It gives pleasure to share your experience with someone else and your friend is curious of what you want to share with him/her.

Fig. 1: The photoalbum evokes exploration and consciousness when making and curiosity and pleasure when showing to someone.

Conceptual trading market visitI wanted to get inspired by existing sharing solutions. I found a nice event that is happening at this moment:

the conceptual trading market ‘Ruilen’. Ruilen is a small market organized by the cultural design organization Mediamatic (Mediamatic.net) situated in an old factory in Amsterdam.

The market was set up with shelving units. It is only possible to trade within different categories (e.g. too daring clothes, lonely socks, picture frames). You could bring the stuff you wanted to trade for something else and just walk around to see if there was anything that you liked. A nice feature was the check-in and check-out counter. If you wanted to trade something, you had to check-in with your OV-chip card (linked to your user account), take a picture of you with the product you were leaving behind and check-out the same way but with the product you were taking. The products were supplied with a chip as well, so there is also an online overview of what is in and what is out of the collection.

Fig. 2: An impression of the Mediamatic ‘Ruilen’ trading market. It is set up with shelving units to display the current collection.

I experienced this market as relaxed and explorative. You could just walk around and explore all the product that were lying there. No one was looking after you and the factory gave me the feeling like if I was in a museum. This market gave me inspiration for the use of RFID tags in the sharing interaction in combination with for example a Facebook account. [Source and more information: www.mediamatic.net/ruilen]

I explored different existing sharing platforms by an online research. Just like the trading market visit, I wanted to get insight in what is already done in the field of sharing within communities and how this is practiced. To begin, I was inspired by a TEDx talk on collaborative consumption by Rachel Botsman. She states that collaborative consumption is the future for our world by implementing the concepts of product-service systems (e.g. carpooling), redistribution of markets (e.g. selling your bike to another student) and collaborative lifestyles (e.g. coworking). [Source: www.ted.com/talks/rachel_botsman_the_case_for_collaborative_consumption.html]

In my search for existing platforms I also discovered online sharing platforms.

Thuisafgehaald.nl is a website for sharing different food dishes with people from your own neighborhood. You can create an account, ‘post’ meals and let people collect it from you home. As a user of this website you can explore your own neighborhood to see who is cooking and has a nice meal to offer. You just pay between 2 and 4 Euros for a meal. [Source: www.thuisafgehaald.nl]

Noppes.nl is an example of a local exchange and trading system in Amsterdam. The concept is that you do not trade services and product for money, but for a fictional currency called ‘noppes’ (meaning nothing in Dutch). People can post services and product they have to offer. If someone needs your service or product, you earn the credits and can start spending your noppes too on things you need. This platform is very unlimited and free to anyone who wants to give and take in an honest way. [Source: www.noppes.nl]

Solidshare is a graduation project on a community that uses sharing to promote communication between the people living in that community. The ‘Afrikaanderswijk’ is a neighborhood in Rotterdam with a great cultural diversity. The concept is to set-up a sharing platform where people can lend their home appliances to their neighbors. The concept actually was very inviting for people to start communication and create a friendlier environment with each other in the community. [Source: Designing for self regulation of a neighborhood, Amine Rhord (TU Delft, 2010)]

Existing sharing platforms/methods

From this research I got some interesting insights for my project. Sharing brings an amount of curiosity, like it is seen in the Solidshare concept. People were curious to get acquainted with their neighbors. I think sharing also needs to go with trust. A system that is based on giving and taking has to be fair, especially when there is no money involved, like with noppes. This insight gave me inspiration to involve friends or acquaintances in the interactions around grocery shopping.

For young working singles, grocery shopping is a fast and routined experience. This is because they live busy lives in the first years they are working. I found an interesting concept that provides a flexible service to pick-up your ordered products.

Recently the large retailing company Ahold bought the online company Bol.com. This gave new possibilities for Bol.com for delivering their products. They want to make it possible that your ordered product can be picked up at your local grocery store of Albert Heijn (also part of Ahold). [Source: www.emerce.nl/nieuws/albert-heijn-afhaalpunt-bolcom]. Also Siemens developed a home delivery box already in 2003. This is a small refrigerator placed on your front porch so during the day (when you are working) delivery services can deliver your ordered goods at home, even when you are not there. [Source: www.emerce.nl/nieuws/siemens-introduceert-koelkast-naast-de-voordeur].

I see an upcoming trend in these services, since online retailing keeps growing. The home delivery boxes create a great convenience for working people who cannot receive their orders, because they are not home when the delivery arrives. This forms also a possibility for my concept in the way that friends are able to share products with each other without the need to physically meet each other. Delivery boxes can be a solution to increase the flexibility of sharing. Also innovative technologies give new possibilities in this. Linking these delivery boxes with social networks and with notifications on your smartphone can be a nice way to contribute to the sharing experience for young working singles (who are generally already connected with online social networks and updated with the latest technologies).

Home delivery boxes

Design ExplorationsAt the end of cycle one I planned on intervening in the current situation with small changes. I wanted to evoke

the desired interaction qualities (i.e. pleasurable, explorative, controlled).

In order to get a feeling of what interventions can do, I decided to introduce small tasks to the current situation. I wanted to see what happened with the interaction qualities, did they change or not, did behavior change or not and most important, did it make the shopping more joyous?

Set-upThe set-up was really simple. I asked 3 participants to each do a task when they were going for grocery

shopping that week. The first to make use of a shopping list, the second to shop at a different time than usual and the last to shop at a different supermarket. During the week I sent a reminder, to make sure the task was executed. At the end of the week we came together and discussed the results.

ResultsOne person thinks a shopping list does help you to manage the products you buy, but it is an extra effort you

have to make. And when he comes directly out of work, there is no time to make shopping list. Moreover, the person says he usually buys the same products and prefers to choose dinner by the discount booklet. The person who shopped at another supermarket had a worse experience than before. He did not know where all the stuff was placed, so the shopping took him longer than it would normally do. The person who shopped at another moment said he was more relaxed, it was actually on a Saturday (free of work).

Give tasks

ConclusionsSmall interventions to create a person’s awareness of what kind of products they buy is not necessarily

contributing to a better experience of grocery shopping. It takes an extra effort to make and bring the shopping list. Shopping in different environments makes the process go slower, because you are not familiar with the environment. It makes you more explorative, but this is experienced in a bad way. The activity takes more time because of the exploration. Shopping at a different moment in the week contributes to the pleasure of shopping. The main reason for this was that there was no need to rush on that day.

The results and conclusions of this exploration gave me the insight that the shopping activity itself would be really hard to change, because people are so trained in it. It is a strong routine that is not easy to break. I decided that I should search for other possibilities before or after grocery shopping. That would be a moment where I can introduce a new interaction that might create the feeling of my interaction vision.

A possible concept I came up with was the ‘sharebox’. A simple Tupperware-like box that was meant to carry one’s food that he/she wants to share with a good friend / neighbor / colleague. During the interaction prototyping workshop I tested this design exploration with my buddy and another fellow student. The goal was to evaluate the evoked interactions and compare them to my desired situation.

Set-upI brought some discount booklets from several grocery stores and a Tupperware box. One participant had

to look for products in the booklets that he/she wanted to share. Then the participant cuts them out and puts them in the Tupperware box. The Tupperware box is given to the other participant. The reason why the participant wants to share specifically these products can be explained and agreements on sharing the money can be made. When the first swap is finished, the roles are switch and the second participant does the same for the first participant. After both swaps are finished, we evaluate on what was pleasant and what was not. Also we evaluate the feelings that were evoked and reflect on these with respect to the interaction vision.

ResultsThe participants were explorative in choosing products, because thinking of what product you can also share

creates a different mindset. Participant one wanted to share a product, because he wants his ‘friend’ to try different products. Participant two wanted to share a product, because she wants to show how much she cares for her ‘friend’. Another motivation was sharing for convenience (package is too big). Participant two felt curiosity when she received the box. Furthermore there were ambiguous thoughts about where, when and how often this transaction should take place.

Sharing Box

Fig. 3: The set-up of the research was to pick product from the discount booklet and put them in the ‘sharebox’.

ConclusionThe essence of sharing the products was clear for the participants. However, a lot of possibilities were left

open: where, when and how do you share? What about different kinds of products, how do you keep them fresh, how do you ensure freshness? These are questions that I should further develop this concept on and eventually test them in practice. Although there was a lot unclear, there were some positive results, like the desired exploration, curiosity and motivations for the sharing. This gave me motivation to continue and develop this concept further.

After this session I did not exactly feel 100 percent confident about the concept, so I continued with idea generation again. Building on the essence of what I wanted to achieve (interaction vision and design goal), I created another concept, the sharing bag and box.

Sharing Bag and BoxThe sharing ‘Bag and Box’ is a concept that consists of two elements. There is a shopping bag that should

motivate, trigger and remind you to think about the possibilities of sharing product that you buy in the supermarket. And there is a box (like a locker) that is situated at the supermarket, where you can store the products you want to share with a friend or acquaintance, so he/she can pick them up at a different time of the day or week. To test the feelings that are evoked by the shopping bag, I wanted to bring this in practice with one participant from earlier research (creative session in cycle 1).

Set-upTo bring this concept of the shopping bag in a different level

of abstraction, I took only the essence of the sharing shopping bag: A separate space where you can put the products in you want to share. I joined the participant with his normal activity of grocery shopping. He took a shopping basket and I also did, to represent the separate space for the sharing products. I explained the purpose of the extra space: To motivate, trigger or remind him of the possibility to share products with a friend (i.e. myself). Together we went into the store and if there was a product the participant wanted to share, then he could place it in my shopping basket.

ResultsThe participant had second thoughts with some products (e.g.

potatoes), to think if it was worth buying. The participant expressed that it would be great if he could share a big bag of potatoes. Also he expressed that it was fun to do, but also remarked that that might be the fact that I was joining.

ConclusionsThe presence of a separate sharing space for the shopping bag

proved to be a motivator for thoughts for sharing. Even though, I have to remark that the participant might have been biased by the set-up of the research (i.e. explaining the essence) and the presence of myself as ‘researcher’ and friend. However, I noticed that the participant enjoyed the shopping more than before and the fact that he was explorative with products (e.g. share larger packages) gives me hope for future development of this concept.

Further research has to be done in the feelings of the actual sharing part; I want to see mutual pleasure and curiosity (from sharer and friend) from the interactions that take place.

Fig. 4: Mock-up model of the share bag. With a seperate compartment for products you want to share.