Project Goals
This project was created in response to a brief given by the the Royal Society for Encouragement of Arts, Manufacture and Commerce for a Student Design Awards competition.
My chosen brief was Tomorrow's Menu, and thus I focused on promoting new relationships with food that are more secure, regenerative and culturally appropriate.
Research
In order to promote new relationships with food, I had to first understand our current relationship with food. To do this, I conducted primary research via surveys and ethnographic research and to investigate how we food from an economical, technological, social, political, environmental and geographically.
From this research I was also able to develop personas to better understand my audience.
Key Findings
From this research, what stood out to me was:
- The environmental impact of livestock farming
- People generally found it difficult to change food habits, even if they wanted to.
My conclusion is that meat is not a sustainable form of protein, however people generally stuck with what was familiar to them; often struggling to break habits.
This led me to designing an app which can motivate users to vary their diet.
- The environmental impact of livestock farming
- People generally found it difficult to change food habits, even if they wanted to.
My conclusion is that meat is not a sustainable form of protein, however people generally stuck with what was familiar to them; often struggling to break habits.
This led me to designing an app which can motivate users to vary their diet.
Visual Research
Drawing on emotional design and gamification principles, I looked to examples of ad campaigns which changed people's perspective on various foods, personified food items and informal and down to earth tone of voice.
Iteration
From here I began to iterate to create my own visual identity for the app. I used my own illustrations to create a character which would gamify the experience. Learning from my visual research, I implemented playful copy.
Final Outcome
My final outcome for this project was an app which incentivised users to vary their diet through the gamification of their own personal character who is affected by their choice to eat meat or another source of protein. The user creates a streak of meatless days within the app and are encouraged to continue their progress by the avatar.
The app offers alternative sources of protein in the form of a menu while also showcasing the real-life impact their choices have in the form of statistics in the app.
The app offers alternative sources of protein in the form of a menu while also showcasing the real-life impact their choices have in the form of statistics in the app.
