Mobile Food Lab
Internship Project with Grassroots Innovation Augmentation Network, GIAN, Ahmedabad during summer of 2018.
About GIAN- Work, Philosophy… Context
GIAN is a Non-profit organisation based in Ahmedabad, Gujarat. It is a part of the Honeybee Network. As the name suggests, they deal with grass-root innovations. These are innovations that individuals come up with in their own very localised contexts to solve a problem they personally face. Like a farmer coming up with a new kind of irrigation system to increase yield or a village woman coming up with a more fuel efficient way of cooking.
GIAN reaches out to these remote areas, collects these innovations from the grass-root level and then recognises, rewards and helps these innovators. They provide aid and support structures to support these innovations and they document and database all the innovations and make them publicly available so that people might purchase and support these products.
The Mobile Food Lab- How it fits into GIAN
So imagine the same concept, collecting and supporting innovations and applying it to local recipes. That is what the the Mobile Food Lab was a step towards.
Purposes of the Food Lab
1. To collect regional recipes from villages and tribal areas.
2. Teach regionally relevant and nutrition rich recipes.
3. Generate and awareness of healthy cooking practices and introduce new and innovative cooking tools.
4. Create an active network of village and tribal populations to supply knowledge.
History of the Food Lab
GIAN have conducted trips to villages for the past year but these were without proper equipment to give cooking demonstrations.
“A team of female employees went to nearby villages to conduct these cooking workshops. They carried with them utensils in buckets and a few ingredients.”
They faced trouble procuring stoves and water in the villages and could not achieve the required effect due to lack of a proper setup and ineffective delivery mechanisms.
…BRIEF
The brief was to design and make a setup on which these women could operate. It had to be mobile and include the tools they would need to give full cooking demonstrations.
The Ideation Journey
The need for a mobile platform for cooking led me to the …
Closest existing solutions- Food Trucks
Primary Research- Food Truck Park, Ahmedabad
I went and studied food trucks and the components that make them functional.
Why a food truck is not the solution- VISIBILITY
Food trucks are well suited to what their function is, which is selling food. The brief for the mobile food lab was to show people the process of cooking and explain the same.
“People can’t see the cooking process in a food truck. While our goal was to show it.”
The vehicle at my disposal.
Solution- An External Setup
The best way to display and get people in the cooking process is by doing it in the open rather than within a vehicle. So I started looking at how I could have frameworks outside the vehicle.
Deployable Structures
These would extend out of the bus through openings in the walls. These would be mounted on hydraulic hinges, as I had previously seen in food trucks, which made opening them possibly with less effort.
Arrangements
Any extensible structures from the bus would be attached to it and would not provide for an open enough space. It would also restrict the flexibility of arrangement of these surfaces.
The solution was to sever the physical ties between the kitchen surface and the bus. The bus would only act as a carrier for the setup.
CONCEPT 1 - The Trolley
The most effective way to create an independent functional kitchen would be to create it as a trolley.
Designing the trolley — Studying a Kitchen
5 WORKING ZONES of an Indian middle class kitchen
Stove — Where cooking on flame happens.
Sink — Where washing utensils and ingredients take place.
Drying Area — Adjacent to the sink where things are kept to dry after washing.
Primary Work Area — Portion of the surface, nearer to the stove, where ingredients are handled before being cooked on the stove.
Secondary Work Area — This where the pre-preparation for the cooking happens. Often cutting ingredients and collecting them as well as soaking things, happen here. The ingredients are transferred from the secondary work area to the primary before putting them on the stove.
Movement analysis while cooking a recipe
Concept Sketch — 1
Feedback on this Concept
- Cumbersome.
- Might get stuck in uneven terrain.
- Requires modifying the bus.
- Cost of modification would be too high.
- The trolley would be large, cannot be lifted and carried in case of emergencies.
“Try keeping in mind the flexibility of use for all your designs. It should work even if things do not go as planned. Things should function even in moments of design failure.”
CONCEPT 2 - Modularity
I now focussed on making things modular so that they might be easier to carry and would not be very costly to make.
Holding the utensils in a mobile platform
Another challenge was to find a way to hold the utensils in place in a moving vehicle without them clanking against each other.
Carrying the different parts
The different modules would have to be loaded and unloaded off the bus again and again so there was a need for a solution to move them conveniently. The concept of a simple trolley would serve the purpose.
Inputs on this Concept
I discussed these ideas with GIAN and they provided me with a few valuable inputs and suggestions.
1. Why constrain it to a bus? It should be suitable to work with even with rickshaws, cars and small vans.
Make it more INDEPENDENT.
2. Make things multipurpose.
3. Foldability in designs.
CONCEPT 3 - Trolley 2.0
The solution was somewhere in between the two concepts I had presented so far. It had to be simple and effective yet independent in terms of its functionality.
Advantages - Flexibility of use.
PROTOTYPING
I decided to move forward with this concept. I went to a steel fabricator and asked what kind of material would be needed to manufacture the trolley. He told me that the optimum material to use would be 304 grade stainless steel, which is used for heavy duty kitchen accessories. I procured the material and gave the specifications to a fabrication workshop. I overlooked and guided as they made the trolley and fitted the necessary parts.
Prototype 1
TESTING
I set the trolley up in my backyard and filmed it being used to cook a recipe.
Changes and Additions to the Concept
- Height and weight could be reduced.
- The wheels were small and could get stuck at obstacles. Also, Fixed wheels are better than swivelling ones.
- The top storage would work better as a drawer than a box.
- Locking pins were required for the folding parts
- Had to figure out a way to have a functioning sink without running water.
The problem of having a functioning sink without running water
The solution was quite simple, to attach a 2 litre bottle with a brace to the handle of trolley which could be tipped to dispense water as per need.
FINAL CONCEPT
This is the refined and revised model which was approved by GIAN and is under manufacturing right now. It is soon to be put into use for educational and awareness purposes.
