For the Global Design Future forecast, my team have chosen the topic of “Personalised delivery meals: integrated with edible vaccines in 2039”.
What I have particularly paid attention to is how the food industry in the future would provide their products to customers in terms of service.
In other words, I focused on how people will consume foods(Personalised delivery meals) rather than which foods people will consume(Vaccine-integrated food).
Global Trend #1 — Foods are delivered to my front door
Food delivery industry became the most prominent one in the food market
My forecasting started with extensive desk research on how the food industry will look like in the future by deeply understanding the recent industry trends from both past and present. Amongst them, a notable trend that I have witnessed was that food delivery has emerged as an unbeatable operating model with consumers’ needs in the food industry. Hence, it became inevitable for business sectors to adopt this system by either combining it with an existing service(e.g. Most of the grocery supermarkets started delivering their products to the doorstep) or partnering with a new third-party food delivery services(e.g. Deliveroo, Uber eats, etc.).
Today, the scale of the food delivery service industry is estimated to be about $13 billion. As some experts suggest, online food delivery could become a $365 billion worth of industry globally by 2030, including all potential markets such as groceries and pre-made meal kits (Wilson, 2019).
“Home cooking could evaporate”
Driven by these growth trends, investment bank UBS released a report called ‘Is the kitchen dead?’ in 2018, making an estimation for the future.
“There could be a scenario whereby 2030 most meals currently cooked at home are instead ordered online and delivered from either restaurants or central kitchens.”
The perspective of UBS forecasting the potential growth of food delivery is made up of 3 main drives: Lower meal production cost, the development of logistics and the demographic behaviour pattern of millennials. When it comes to the production of food, they have predicted that robots would be in charge of cooking by the industrialized preparation process. For the advance of logistics, it is also stated that what humans are currently doing would be replaced by factory automation, including door-to-door delivery being established by adopting new future technologies such as drones or self-driving cars.
I am also seeing this trend optimistically. Especially I believe that ‘Robots’ will be a saviour of the competitive food industry, since decreasing the delivery cost will be the key to increase margin. According to another research, driverless mobile equipment will benefit the companies by lowering the cost, especially, liberate them from a considerable financing expenditure: managing employees (The California Review, 2016).
Global Trend #2 — The appearance of premium healthy foods
The production cost of ‘legit food’ is not cheap
However, I disagree with the drives from USB when it comes to ‘lower meal production cost’, which also eventually make me disagree with them predicting ‘kitchen to be evaporated’. No matter how ‘dark kitchens’ with robot chef can reduce unnecessary costs made during the production process, it can barely lower the overall cost, since the price for the ingredients is not being impacted by the changes in operation.
In terms of ingredients of meals, unlike decades ago when people used to believe that mass-produced food would solve food crisis situation, we are now rather facing multiple challenges caused by reckless mass-production including climate change, soil eutrophication, ecosystem collapse, etc. (Blanchet, 2016)
Making up for our irresponsible behaviour
In the first discovery phase of a Global Future Design project, my team focused on fish farming and vaccination in particular. During the research, we witnessed a vicious cycle of fish farming: 1)Feeding fish with fatty fish. 2)Genetic mutations in the fishes. 3)Destroyed sea bottom by fish feed pellet and fish waste, causing water pollution.
Therefore, some experts believe that vaccination which enables ill fishes to be healthy and edible could be a reasonable option for this notorious fish life chains. Vaccines reduce antibiotic dependence in food production as well as preventing infections in farm animals and aquaculture (O’Neil, 2016). Disease prevention and control are crucial in order to maintain sustainable aquaculture, both economically and environmentally. (Gudding et at., 2013).
However, many current ways to vaccinate fishes have failed to be safe, effective, easy to use, and cost-effective, which allows wider use of vaccines (Hoelzer, 2018). Scientists claim that it would be solved when scientific obstacles are overcome, but so far, it is still funding-dependent due to the high-priced vaccination (Hoelzer, 2018).
Global Trend #3 — Automatic selection of my meal
The emergence of customer needs for a healthy and balanced diet
Besides the ecological aspects of reducing the cost of food production, there is another apparent issue with poor nutrition and diet of meals, because of the lack of food variety which causes fewer options (Blanchet, 2016). In other words, if you do not carefully pay attention to having a balanced diet, you might as well miss some of the nutrients that your body requires due to the oligopoly of the most consumed food. People who acknowledge this situation have begun to try to balance their nutrition either by taking supplements or by planning their diet considering the nutrients.
With such needs, meal plan services based on a balanced diet have appeared in the market. Customers do not need to study about good foods and the right meals and are free from the pressure to prepare a perfect meal. Recently, several meal-kit delivery companies such as HelloFresh and HomeChef which offer fresh, pre-portioned, healthy and customised diet plan delivered straight to your doorstep, have appeared in the market and become popular among classy people.
To add on that trend, even today, Thriva, a personalised health company launched a new service which will allow people to design a meal which meets exact needs of their body — based on their blood, partnering with VitaMojo, the restaurant and software company (Thriva, 2019).
Hamish Grierson, co-founder of Thriva said: “We believe that empowering people with information to make better choices is the first step to enabling us all to stay healthier for longer.”
Nick Popovici, co-founder of VitaMojo said: “There is no one-size fits all approach to nutrition, that’s why personalisation is at the heart of everything we do”
“Our unhealthy obsession with choice”
Especially in modern society, people not only tend to become too busy to input their time and effort for meal planning but also psychologically, they are reluctant to make any decisions whether that is big or not. According to the research conducted by Cornell University, the average of daily decisions that an adult makes is about 35,000 each day. Furthermore, researchers state that we are making 226.7 decisions each day on food alone(Graff, 2018). This flood of choices has now caused people to have more and more issue of not wanting to choose anything anymore (Salecl, 2013).
Psychologist Barry Schwartz claimed that people tend to give up their freedom when they get multiple options. To borrow the example he used on his TED Talk if you go to see a doctor and the doctor says “To treat your symptom we could do A or B. A has these benefits and these risks… and B has this and that.. so what do you want to do?” then you would definitely ask them again “what should I do? If you were me then what would you choose?” Obviously, you have “patient autonomy” but you want to pass your right to the doctor (Schwartz, 2005).
Likewise, philosopher Renata Salecl states that people easily give their power of choice away to someone who sort of knows and tells us what to do, due to many reasons (Salecl, 2013). (I will not address those here. Literally, I could write over 5000 words only for that) In the same context, when it comes to decision for meals, people seem to hand over their choices to nutritionists.
To sum up the current trends,
Weak signal #1
The food-delivery market has grown and became a huge part of the food industry.
There are dozens (if not hundreds) of new startups delivering food: À La Carte Express, Bento, Deliveroo, Deliverd, DeliveryHero, EatFirst, Farm Hill, Favor, Fluc, Foodora, FreshMint, Gourmaleo, Homer, PepperTap, Radish, Spicy Radish, SpoonRocket, SupperBell, TinyOwl, Thistle, Wizrd, Zomato, Zoomer, Zume. Legacy food ordering websites (like GrubHub.com, Seamless.com and Just-Eat.com) now have their own drivers, while titans like Uber, Amazon, and Google have also entered the fray(The California Review, 2016).
Weak signal #2
Even though the needs of healthy and right food have emerged, the cost of legit food production is expensive.
some experts believe that vaccination which enables ill fishes to be healthy and eatable could be a reasonable option for this notorious fish life chains. However, it would be utilised when scientific obstacles are overcome, but so far, it is still funding-dependent due to the high-priced vaccination
Weak signal #3
Modern people are using a service that helps them plan their meal automatically.
Then, what drives future trends?
Based on the global trends and the weak signals that I found throughout my research, several key drivers have been concluded:
- The growth of urban population and the congestion of the city are likely to increase the use of food-delivery service.
- The development of logistics enabling ultra-fresh food to deliver before it is rotten(Glatzel et al., 2016) may assist meal-kit service to deliver three meals a day.
- The acknowledgement of the drawbacks caused by reckless mass food production such as a disturbed ecosystem is likely to affect people’s choice of foods. Because of this mindset, people try to buy ‘good’ food which means having the right process such as being grown in the right circumstance. An increase in the demand for ‘good’ food which costs more could boost ingredients prices and ultimately raise the food prices.
- The nature of modern people who feel the anxiety of choice can strengthen the demand for automatic menu selection for their every meal.
- Advances in technology and artificial intelligence will allow diets to be personalised based on personal information.
The Design Experiment
The insight from wide-ranging research leads me to imagine how future food-related service will look like. Based on the various drivers mentioned above, the project will draw on future food delivery services. In particular, we have chosen ‘personalised meal box’ which is automatically selected and delivered based on personal information(preference, health condition, etc.) in consideration of modern human behaviour. My team prototyped the artefacts to address our concept and also, to provoke some questions about the future.
Provocation:
- What if there is a food-delivery service to deliver personalised meal box for every meal?
- What if people do not need to worry about what they eat and what should they eat?
By this provocation, I aim to make people indirectly experience the future scenario. This experience gives the audience an opportunity to think about the upcoming future by putting themselves in the future trend. The message is a warning about the blind follow towards the advancement without filtering out the side effects. I hope the audience will understand more about the matter of convenience and discuss/debate about the relationship between humans and services.
Design Concept:
What would the service model ‘personalised meal box’ look like?
Since the artefact contains the future scenario, I built the forecast story first. We divided the big question above into 4 separate parts to make sure the concept to be developed structurally. As I mentioned at the beginning, the first part “what foods will be in the box?” will not be addressed in this article because this is more about service delivery rather than food production. Following scenario is the future trend that you might capture in 2039.
The future scenario will be…
- What foods will be in the box?
: vaccinated and nutrient-modified foods based on personal health condition, automatically selected plan based on personal preference - How the package will look like?
: contain the information to build trust between a customer and providers, 100% recyclable and sustainable material, integrated function to preserve foods fresh - How the package will be delivered?
: delivered to the door by a self-driving, driverless object (could be drones, robots, etc.), managed by big companies who equipped advanced logistic systems (could be Amazon, etc.) - How the service will work?
: ordered by the virtual assistant(such as future Alexa) by scanning condition or mind reading, the personalised meal is planned by Artificial Intelligence without the need for manual labour
So, what will we experiment?
We will see how people capture the message through the artefact and what sort of issues will be discussed.
Structure of the experiment:
- Stage 1: Prototyping and Testing
- Stage 2: Presenting in the workshop
- Stage 3: Final Output
How will we present? the artefact — Video
We have chosen a video type artefact which has been inspired by many unboxing videos on many YouTube lifestyle channels, allowing us to easily communicate with our audience.
Stage 1: Prototyping and Testing
1st Prototype
For the first prototype, My team prepared the future scenario with all plausible and preferable elements based on the research.
The Artefact
- Delivery:
Amazon eventually monopolizes the world’s logistics systems and Amazon created Amazon robot for delivery called ‘Delibot’ in consideration that the typical type of urban dwellings are not eligible for the mobility of self-driving cars and there are so many regulations around flying delivery units because of the security issues.
However, as you can see at the beginning of the video, the Delibot also seems far from perfect. - Package:
Everything has been paper-packaged which is eco-friendly due to the regulation of the UK government.
Recycling drones are flying in the sky to collect used boxes directly after use. - Food:
Since the price of the ‘good’ food is so high that the portion of food became so tiny, as well as people who cannot afford the ‘good’ ingredients started to detoxify ‘average’ one. Inspecting of the food condition, cleansing impurities and topping up vaccines and extra nutrients are included a general process of cooking.
Feedback and Reflection
: ) “The video is so interesting that I didn’t know that how time passes! It felt like watching vlogs!”
: ( “I am sorry, what was the topic?”
: ( “You have to decide on one topic... will be great to make this video concise and small”
After the first round of prototyping and testing, we realised that actually, the video is missing the part of the personalisation of the meal and focusing more on the food vaccination part. One of the viewers mentioned that food scarcity and detoxification is the topic of the video. I found out that the audiences are confused about the topic because of too various descriptive elements.
2nd Prototype
We decided to delete the delivery part to leave it to the audiences’ imagination. Because I noticed that if the artefact contains something debatable by just seeing the element not thinking, people keep being stuck on a single part rather than the whole story. In terms of food, the scenario has enhanced the personalisation integrating with food-vaccination and removed the detoxification and cleansing part.
The Artefact
- Delivery:
-
(delivered to the door by a self-driving, driverless object (could be drones, robots, etc.), managed by big companies who equipped advanced logistic systems (could be Amazon, etc.)) - Package:
Everything has been packaged with 100 % recyclable materials due to the regulation of the UK government.
The Package contains the food information where the ingredients come from to allow customers to trust that the food is ‘right’ and certificated. - Food:
The meal is composed of Herb and vaccine booster, Vitamin supplement veggies, Farmed salmon from UK coast and organic spinaches. Every component is personalised by personal dietary needs. People consume the required nutrients through modified foods, not a tablet or vitamin pills. - Service:
(Instead of Delivery part, we added service experience part)
Alexa observes the user 24/7 to read their condition and preference. A virtual assistant(Alexa) scans the user’s body to check the body status and order the right food. Hence, the customers are possible to get an automatically selected and perfectly personalised meal without ordering verbally or physically.
Feedback and Reflection
“As a topic, is it fish? or is vaccination more broadly? Or is it about educating the consumer?”
“I like the fact the Alexa could tell you, ‘you need this sort of food in you’”
“Does Alexa scan you before, then you know what you need, then it’s ordered for you and delivered? Then my question is….”
After the second round, many feedback was still the confusion about the topic. Based on the feedback from the first prototype, we had tried to narrow the size of the topic down by removing some of the elements, and even the length of the video had been shortened from 8 mins to 3 mins. Besides that, Interestingly, the audiences were interested in Alexa part that we did not really pay much attention when we create the scenario. We thought that we could show more about Alexa part for the audience engagement.
“…It’s about fleshing out a space to bring out all possibilities and have a critique. What is the unexpected consequence we want to crack open the other possibilities and unexpected consequences of the world you are building?”
Above all, we realised that our artefact does not have any room for discussion. Because we were showing only the process of the service, not the phenomenon caused by the service. We understood that is the reason why we kept being questioned about the service, not about the consequences and critique. So, we decided to change the direction that the video can show the tricky situation among using the service, in order to enable the galleries to understand what we are trying to say.
And repeated iterations…
Stage 2: Presenting in the workshop
Thanks for the support from MA SEDI, we could grab a chance to show our artefact to multidisciplinary audiences to see how people communicate.
In the presentation, firstly, the galleries have gotten to read 3 different types of card which are about the background(drivers) of the future scenario: 1) How will our food be delivered to us? 2)Who will decide our food? and 3) What will we be eating?
These 3 cards helped the audience put their shoes on this project properly and to be prepared to see the main artefact which is the video containing the provocation.
In addition, we showed a tangible package and a receipt form to support the video. The package reflects on how the providers try to build trust with customers by offering the information that customer is curious about. The receipt on the box gives the audience the context that what is in the box and how much the cost is (a lot).
The Package:
- Everything has been packaged with 100 % recyclable materials due to the regulation of the UK government.
- The box is not disposed and reused (The delivery carrier will pick up)
- The screen on the box shows various types of information:
1)the food information: where is the origin, how it has been produced, the certification from the government and verification from experts
2) the diet information: how this diet has planned, how my health condition is and how my body status has been improved.
The Video:
- Alexa observes the user 24/7 to read their condition and preference. A virtual assistant(Alexa) scans the user’s body to check the body status and order the right food.
- When it comes to the preference, Alexa will read a person’s mind through checking physical signals such as facial expression or grumbling. And this data will be accumulated and reflected through the process of machine learning.
- Hence, the customers are possible to get an automatically selected and perfectly personalised meal without ordering verbally or physically. What humans do is just following what systems make them do.
The provocation:
What if the system is hacked by future crime?
Then, who decides our meal? who would control what we eat?
Is it okay to be just reliable on the system, that is saying ‘this is only for you’?
Stage 3: Final Output
The Future Scenario: a service model “personalised meal box”
The Provocation:
To ensure our artefacts(video) addressed unintended consequences we asked ourselves “Who would control what we eat”
Conclusion
From the project, I could obtain many insights on what people think about the future, not just only the advancement by cutting edge technology but also the change of people’s mindset. And within the experiment, it was valuable for me to explore what kind of future is possible, especially, based on the grounded forecast.
A future service model of the food industry “Personalised meal box”
With my forecast, the future of the food industry would be much more diverse than ever. Human started thinking about sustainability and quality of the foods unlike to the past when they greedily and recklessly develop food for the quantity. This trend, backed by technological advances, ensures ‘micro personalization’, the highest quality. This is not a distant future story or not a fool in consideration of current evolution in Biotechnology, Systems Engineering and Service Design. What the future service needs to do is to support this behavioural model and to educate the customer not to lose this mindset.
The provocation “Who would control what we eat?”
Designing future service perfectly geared to the convenience of eating, one question keeps arising, is that “Then, there is nothing that human can be involved with! all we will do is just eat!” Sounded great, but it reminds me of the problem of modern people — they are not choosing anything.
“Now, we live in times with a lot of information, big data, a lot of knowledge about the insides of our bodies. We decoded our genome. We know about our brains more than before. But surprisingly, people are more and more turning a blind eye in front of this knowledge. Ignorance and denial are on the rise.”
(Salecl, 2013)
Fear of choice from modern people seemed to be resolved by transferring one’s choices to the experts, but in fact, humans became more and more denied the phenomenon that is happening in front of them. I would like to warn this situation by combining with the food and health that is the basic needs of a human being.
Speculative Design and Service Designer
Throughout the Global Future Design unit, I was able to explore the role of service designer in speculative design. Before starting this class, I thought that future design(or speculative design, I need more time to figure out how to define the difference between them…) was just about predicting and designing a service or situation that fits in the future context. So, I had regarded that the job of a designer was no different from the traditional concept.
However, after going through a series of processes, I realised that the role of the designer could be extended to the role of the social activist. From my understanding, the point of speculative design is to throw a question about the future with the possible conversations so that it gives the society the opportunity that they can consider the question and reflect on the current and future decisions. As a social activist who influences society, I tried not to be biased towards the trends. If I took just what I want to see and listen to among the trends, my scenario will not be able to get sympathy and consent from anyone.
In the end, the GDF unit and the experiment have played a big role in taking me to the next step of service design. It was a great time when I was able to solve some of the curiosity about the scope, role and attitude of service designer that I’ve been wondering so far.
Bibliography
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