The Uneatables

karoline k project iii green week process pdf fda dgc year02

In teams of 5, produce and present a pro-ject during Green Week at London College of Communication. Work in an efficient and productive manner and explore a given theme. Identify a problem and create an ap-propriate design solution. The final project should engage, provoke, challenge and/or excite the audience in a meaningful way.

the brief

This PDF is interactive. Navigate by click-ing on the sections on the top of each page, or simply by reading one spread at the time. The audio is embedded and there are a few links leading to websites and a video.

about this pdf

brief collaboration research insights concept development pitch further development execution response reflection


In preparation for the forming of a team, I produced a one minute audition tape. As I was unable to attend the first session, this was the basis of which I was picked by a group.

As a team building exercise, we met up and played a visual card game called set. It involved identifying matcing sets based on graphic differences or similari-ties, a great lateral thinking exercise, and brought out our different personalities and approaches to visual problem-solving. We discussed our strengths and weaknesses and agreed on a manifesto to ensure an enjoyable and productive collaborative experience

getting to know each other audition tape

the team - eco lab

Madelene King, Sofie Greenwood, Eldon Pickles, Sarah Gray and myself

We agree to: Be nice. Work. Ask for help. Be open to com-promises and try not to be precious about our ideas. Communicate well. Allow for mistakes. Learn and have fun. Do our best to produce a project that will challenge and excite our audience in a meaningful way

group manifesto


our given topic: waste

To get things started, we had a quick session of throwing words and questions about waste on the table.

This was followed by a week of talks by ex-perts from various fields within design and sustainability. To gather our research and insights, we created a collaborative blog: http://eco-lab.tumblr.com We chose a simple grid-format to allow for an easy overview of the various contribu-tions by team members. It was a great way to share key findings and track progress.

What is waste? What isnt waste? Why do we waste? What do we keep? Where do we waste?


According to IMechEs recent Report: Global Food; Waste Not, Want Not published 2013-01-13 up to 50% of the food produced worldwide never makes it to any plate. Thats between 1.2 2bn tonnes of wasted food. This is occurring despite a growing popula-tion and millions of people who go hungry.

Up to half of the food bought in Europe and US is never consumed by whe so-called consumers who instead, trash it. Furthermore, as much as 30% of vegetable crops are not being harvested in the UK as they are likely to be rejected by the retailers based on the physical appearance.

Supermarkets say their customers demand physically perfect food, albeit they were probably the ones convincing the customers that fruit and veg looks a certain way in the first place. Personally, Im annoyed that we dont even have the option of buying imper-fect fruit and veg. I would happily buy it, and I think many others would, especially if it was a bit cheaper. Some might say well, there shouldnt be a need for it to be cheaper as it is perfectly fine foods, but I reckon we have to start somewhere. It is natural for people to pick food they believe to be tastiest it goes back to the times where had to carefully pick i.e. the berries that wouldnt kill us. So although a lot of people are likely to be conscious enough to say that they wouldnt mind buying odd-looking fruit and veg, I think many would still pick the nicer looking ones without thinking. However, if the price on the physically less attractive vegetables were lowered, many people would buy them especially students and people on a budget, who already have a hard time eating healthily due to the high prices of fresh fruit and veg. It would also become more obvious, how strange it is for all fruits to look the same, and maybe slowly it would change consumers perception of good fruit and veg.

blog post: the state of waste

Two dutch designers Waarmakers have come up with a simple, and great way to re-duce waste. Theyve created the sustainable rubbish bags named Goedzak ( meaning Good Bags or Goodie-bags) which encour-ages people to discard unwanted items in good condition that they would otherwise have thrown out. The bags are clear with a noticeable design, and bypassers are able to pick up things they need. Maarten Heijtjes and Simon Akkaya are planning to team up with a chain of Amsterdam second-hand shops who are to pick up the bags before the bags are fetched and disposed of with the rest of the trash. This is an example of a very simple, yet effective design solution that is also cost-effective. I think the fact that it has been carefully designed, is what makes it work and stand out from traditional charities clothes collection bags etc.

practice review:



review of existing campaings and charities

Feeding the 5000: FareShare, FoodCycle, Love Food Hate Waste and Friends of the Earth

is a partnership between farmers and group of environmental charities that campaign for better use of surpluse food

Gleaning Network UK coordinates teams of volunteers, local farmers and food redistribution charities in order to salvage this fresh, nutritious food and direct it to those that need it most. We contacted the Gleaning Network UK to find out about their food picking events, but unfortunately there were no upcoming events that fit our projects time frame

I spoke to Chiara from Food for good. She used to be a student at LCC, and started up the social enterprise in her final year. Food For Good aims to reduce the amount of wasted food by donating it to charities and avoiding it going to landfill. They transport unsold and perfect eatable food daily from local restau-rants to charities. Chiara really liked our approach of comparing human beauty complexes and projecting them onto vegetables. She told us they were currently working on something similar called Against Cosmetic Supermarket Standards


human-centered design workshop

with Obie Campbell and Kate Burn,social designers from Participle.On behalf of my group I took part in a really interesting and useful workshop on human centered design and research methods. Participle designs for behaviour change which often takes a long time. They believe that its not just ideas that matter, but real change on the ground in communities.

Prior to the session, I spent 40 minutes interviewing two people outside my usual network. I interviewed a lawyer and a med student in Peckham to hear about their relationship with waste, recycling habits. By basing your insights on real people, even if its just a few youre more likely to find problems that affect a large amounts of people in society.

Based on our interview stories, we went post-it mad, and filled the wall with differ-ent insights and quotes using a system Im guessing is called Point so we organised the post-its into

Its a really useful way of detecting recurrent themes and issues, as well as problems and needs that might besolved by design. Some of the things that stood out regarding waste were:

ProblemsObstaclesInsightsNeedsThemes

There are too many tescos

Id like to have the option of buying wonky food

Id buy at local shops if they didnt charge me for using cards

Social pressure from my friends made me recycle more

I feel safer when the lights are on, even when im not at home

How can I recycle when I dont even know if Ill have food?

Based on these insights we had a table discussion on the problems, obstacles and needs people might have when it comes to dealing with waste and making the right choices.The human centered design workshop was fantastic.There were lively discussions on all tables and post-its flying high


possible challenges to tackle

Design a system where consumers have the option of opting outof packaging

Create a campaign the supports consumers in demanding more wonky fruit and veg

Adapt current coffee shop designs to eliminate use of disposable cups i.e. wall of personal mugs for regulars

Create a platform where students can demand less waste at uni

Adapt products so the they cry if theyre put in the wrong bin

we picked this one

insight analysis

Following extensive research into areas of sustainability and waste, we decided to focus on a subject which we were all drawn towards - food waste. In particular fruit and veg that gets discarded because of their aesthetics. We found it interesting, how we project our own needs to look good onto the things we eat. Its an interesting paradigm, which became the basis of our approach and project.

How have we gotten here? When did we, as con-sumers and citizens start demanding only beautiful fruit and veg? What would our granparents say? Did it happen because when we got a choice? Was it when we started importing pretty 1st class fruits, and neglected our local produce? Is it because we used to be hunter/gatherers and dont want to die of a bad berry? Have we forgotten our power as consumers? How do we remind citizens of their power to change unreasonable, shallow systems?



ideas on the table

To get an idea of the ideas in our respec-tive heads, we drew and explained them on cards. It was very useful for seeing trends, and discussing positive aspects of each idea, and then see if we could bring the good bits together to form one idea. We discussed possible format, modes of engagement and the message. Because the subject of sustainability can be quite heavy, we agreed to have a humourous tone of voice. Ideally, wed like people to laugh at themselves, and their silly preference for pretty foods.

An installation where we fill a wall with identical looking carrots, to show people how creepy it is

Portraying people with character next to a veggie that looks an awful lot like them. Paradigm installation

Small stickers in a MISSING style for supermarkets. The stickers notify odd looking fruit as missing

A campaign that somehow uses all the foodporn on instagram. Get instafoodies to photograph their waste after preparing their meals

The uneatables, like the undatables, but with vegetables instead.

we pickedthese two


state of collaboration

Although it proved a bit difficult to live up to our manifesto, we tried to devise tasks in a clear manner, so as to manage our time well. Deadlines were set for the completion of various tasks, and we com-municated regularly via group text mes-saging and meetings. If any team member missed a session we tried to make visual recaps which turned out to be a good way to review the session anyway.


These are examples of visual recaps from group meetings where we discussed our concept aims, strategy and message


pitch day - slide one

Defining the issue: food wasted due to aesthetics


pitch day - slide two

Our insight: we project our beauty ideals onto food


pitch day - slide three

Our goal: get ugly fruit and veg back in the stores

How?: generate debate amongst as many people as possible


pitch day - slide four

Introducing: The Uneatables - A series of short, funny videos where fruit and veg act in formats well known from popular videos. All videos lead back to one platform from which we will link to charities involved in the same cause.


pitch day - slide five

Also: to bring the campaign from digital to physical well make Missing stickers, that notify fruit and veg as mission -gueriall style.

pitch feedback

The feedback we got was positive. Our slides were simple, and our peers under-stood where we were coming from, and found the human/vegetables comparison funny. We were also one of two groups who got green light to be on the final show. One remark was that the name the uneatables might give the wrong impres-sion, that you cant eat the vegetables. We tested the name on different people, and found that they were smart enough to get it. In fact, the majority found the spin off of the TV-show the undateables really funny.

We decided to go with the consensusin the group and kept the name.


green


logo development

When designing the logo, and identity of The uneatables we all came up with suggestions. Our final choice was based on the following considerations: Avoid cliches such as: classic green, happy fruWits and veg with big eyes etc. Mood: left out and awkward, rather than happy or sad. Type: handdrawn, to compliment the home-made videosTone of voice: human, real, home-made and awkward.

eldon picklesmadelene king myself


website

The website was going to be the platform that brought everything together. Our videos, our purpose and ways for people to get in-volved and links to charities. We bought www.theuneatables.co.uk, and set up various social media sites.

We wanted it to be really simple, as our videos were quite different and proposed this layout. The final website was okay. None of us were familiar with coding, which meant that the website could have been better, better aligned and less template-y. It did, how-ever, have everything we needed on it, and worked for the purpose.

Website set up on wix by Eldon, finished by SofieMy initial website suggestion


video

The benefit of doing the videos individually was that we were able to make our own schedules, now that project 3 was running concurrently with this project.

Research of viral video styles, led me to confession videos - a recent youtube trend where, mainly adolescents, confess secrets written on small boards. This style and tone of voice, became the basis of my film titled confessions of an onion.

The copy was written after watching numer-ous, quite depressing confession videos on youtube. The cheesy music by Nickelback also fits the depressed teenager mood.

It shows an onion who is really self-conscious about his look and skin (it keeps peeling).

Everyone else gets picked before him. In the end the onion makes himself cry.


posters

The initial idea of missing stickers re-ceived positive feedback due to its engag-ing and underground nature. However, as our project progress we felt that it fell a bit outside of our dating theme. Instead, we decided to make a series of lonely hearts ads by vegetables. These were still engaging, as theyd be open-source and available for anyone to download and print, and they also suited the scene, a university, better - as we could put them up practically everywhere.

As I drew the original logo, I did the post-ers in a similar illustrative style. The copy was handwritten by different people, to give each poster personality. They were printed on the risograph, using scrap paper to avoid excess waste.

I researched the language of dating ads and applied it to the context of vegetables (!)

Sofie was in charge of planning the exhibition space, and we made use of the space allocated to us, by setting up a table, where a red pepper sat patiently waiting for his date to arrive. Both exhibitions were well-received

The many posters, freely placed around our stand attracted a lot of attention, and people found them both funny and sweet. Made-lenes video with chloe carrot was viewed and adored by many. Overall, our light, and humorous tone and style was easy for the audience to digest, and we received many positive comments

Exhibition space and show response

fantastically cute campaign for ugly food at LCC green week!

Kate Burn, participle



I think we carried out a successful project. Despite very different ideas of participation we managed to create something quite nice and engaging, which made people think about the way we treat fruit and vegetables. It has been, at times, to manage time when group members failed to do what they said theyd do - which is funny when you look at my initial audition tape. - but that in itself is a good learning experience, even if it means grinding ones teeth at night. Patience, openness and tolerance are all valuable soft skills Ive improved throughout this project. It has been interest-ing to work with sustainability - an area where your design has to make an impact or change behaviour to be successful.

reflection

guys what time are we meeting today?

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Documents

The Uneatables