Wicked Solution for a Wicked Problem: A Case Study on Food Sustainability.
Introduction:
Food sustainability is a general problem that is wicked in complexity due to the broadness of the theme and the fact that there is no “one solution that fixes all”. What we will see on this case study is a small overview of one of the many aspects of this issue and two possible ways to improve. A result of my first group project in my Ironhack Bootcamp for UX/UI design.
How Do we Decide on the Issue Within the Issue:
As we mentioned food sustainability is a huge problem that should resonate within each and everyone of us. But how do we work on something so big when we are limited, not only in numbers, but in resources too?
The best way to proceed is to start big and, through research, funnel down into a problem, and only then begin to consider solutions.
Firstly, though the use of a CSD Matrix, we began to write everything we knew on the subject: What we knew for sure; What we suspected to be true; And lastly what we had no idea if it was true or not; As soon as that was completed we proceeded on to the research in order to challenge our certainties and assumptions. Beginning with secondary research is always a good starting point. It’s a great and affordable way of gaining insights. When we were ready we moved on to a more “hands on deck” approach through interviews. For this case study we took into consideration two main sets of players on the subject: Food Producers, and Consumers. What is food sustainability to these people who sit on opposite ends of the spectrum?
We focused our in situ research on two places: Markets and the people around them. The very first thing we concluded from interviewing local market sellers was that no one at the markets was simultaneously a producer and a seller. The sellers themselves all bought from farmer’s markets or from people they knew with crops, sometimes both cases even overlapped. As such this required a small adjustment on our study group. We considered from then on only Local Food Sellers and Consumers.
The fact that the sellers don’t grow the food they sell was only one of the many insights we were able to gather from our interviews. Everyone seemed to have their own ideas on sustainability as a concept and how to achieve it. Naturally, we had to regroup all of these insights and for that we opted for a physical affinity diagram where we put all of our insights across the board (literally) and began to notice certain patterns.
Collectively, everyone agreed that sustainability was a issue of the utmost importance, however it also seemed clear to the interviewees that the younger the generation, the less they cared about the sustainability of their food choices. Even though it might seem that young people care a lot about the environment nowadays the fact was that only a few were spotted at the markets, with the majority of youngsters doing their groceries either online or on supermarkets. “Supermarkets are really unsustainable, but since they are so spread out, do a lot of marketing campaigns, and have products available all day long and all seasons long, they are a big commodity which younger generations don’t bother to go against” as one interviewee put it.
Curiously, although the two groups shared some insights they had different ideas on how to approach it. Because of that we decided to separate our findings into two empathy maps: One for consumers and one for sellers. For those who are unfamiliar with the term, empathy maps allow for UX researchers to get in the role of the people in their focus groups by dividing the insights they gave by the senses: What, in our case, do consumers and sellers do, think, hear, say and see?
Once we reorganized all of our findings we were able to gather enough data to consolidate into two user personas: again, one for sellers and one for consumers:
In order to get a clearer view of the issues these two groups faced, we proceeded on to creating two costumer Journey Maps comprised of their experiences at the market (for Sara this represents one full shift, while for Rui represents only one trip).
As we can see the costumer journey maps draw out a clear connection: Information. One (Sara) has the knowledge on sustainability that the other one (Rui) wants, but they don’t know how to connect that bridge between themselves. This is simultaneously our problem statement and our How Might we Help: How can we help Sara reach Rui in order to fill each other's information gaps?
Solutions and Implementations:
Once we had the problem determined it was easy to proceed on to the ideation stage. For this, we opted by a simple mind map brainstorming. All our ideas were spread across the board again and by using the Dot Voting method we came down to two viable solutions: A physical one and a Digital one.
For our physical solution we decided to go with a community building idea. Theoretically it could function somewhat according to the storyboard bellow. But after concept testing, we realized we could also add a few improvements such as: Governmental Aid; Food Bank partnerships; Creating a Recipe book with other preservation tips every X sessions or season in order to create a reward system and motivate people to go for more that just one session. Marketing campaigns, especially digital ones were also suggested to improve attendance rates.
In essence the gatherings would be centered on the food that wasn’t sold at the market. When we spoke to sellers they explained to us that they had a strict 24h sell circuit, and that whatever they didn’t sell in a day, they would keep to themselves. Once they arrive home they aim to preserve as much as possible in order to prevent food, and ultimately their money, from being wasted. In our scenario, excess food would result in the majority of the material for the class, and the welcome basket we see (given only to first time participants, like Rui’s case in the storyboard). This would allow Sara to physically reach Rui and at the same time drive people towards eating more consciously by buying food that was locally sourced (thus also driving people to her business).
Also of extreme relevance is another feedback provided to us during the concept testing: Finding a way to connect our two solutions, which, in turn, brings us to the introduction of our digital product. It is a food waste management app that would essentially allow the user to scan a desired food through a picture and have the app deliver a result comprised of: Estimated expiration date; Recipe Suggestions; Create Reminders; and other options such as: More Recipes; Storage Tips; and Contact our community (thus connecting both of our solutions).
We can check the storyboard for this case scenario as well, for a more visual idea of how the implementation would work.
The key points to retain from our digital solutions are many: The pragmatism of the app; the global access (as it doesn’t have to be region locked); The community building aspect; A list for local markets near by where the users can shop and meet the people behind the app; A list of compost sites to go to when the food you scan is no longer usable; Etc…
We also have the option to either do a quick scan on food or a more detailed scan where we can insert what type of product we aim to analyze (meat, dairy, fruits, vegetables, etc…) and then depending on the type inputted, you can also enter other relevant information when calculating consumption, such as date of purchase, date of packaging and how it has been stored. This would appear on the form of a dropdown menu according to the type that is inserted. Once all of the information is inserted the app would deliver the same result screen, however with a more accurate estimate of the state of the food scanned.
In Conclusion:
Our project ended with the low fidelity sketches for our digital product, which we can see below for reference. We presented how progress and solutions publicly in class, and despite not having the opportunity to test these low fidelity sketches we received great feedback on our ideas. We believe that connecting people like Sara, who have genuine interest in spreading their knowledge, with people like Rui, who want to learn but don’t know how to start, will shorten their informational gap and help people not only be more sustainable, but also more prone to support local markets. We heard good feedback from all of our concept testing and, as mentioned, in our presentation as well, and feel confident that the our personas would take our solutions fondly.
Unfortunately the sole purpose of this project was to ideate a solution and not to implement one. As such, regardless of how good the feedback or how confident we feel the fact of the matter is that these solutions remain in the theoretical field, but we hope that one day we can have the opportunity to implement them.