Malleable mindsets: journey of the Reframe Prototype
by Yejin Eun and Marcia Higuchi
Welcome to Learning out Loud! This is where CFIL collaborators reflect on what we’ve been learning and trying in this experimental space. Thanks for joining us on our journey, and if you have any thoughts on what you’re reading we’d be happy to hear from you!
Question sitting at the centre of Reframe prototype
“How might we reframe the value of all foods through transparency to consumers regarding the journey of food, how much energy went into its production, and how important it is to treat it all the same?”
Reflecting on Reframe journey
The feedback loop of Reframe above shows a consumer mindset that influences vendors’ choice of avoiding displaying “imperfect” food, reinforcing the idea that perfect and fresh food is always available and more desirable; By imperfect we mean food with uncommon shapes and bruises that seem not as fresh, but are equally nutritious as the others. Our prototype aimed to intervene in this consumer’s buying choice through communicating and educating the fact that imperfect and not as fresh foods are valuable, desirable, and as nutritious as the perfect ones.
A big part of the Reframe journey was understanding what exactly we were trying to focus on since there are so many mindsets and customs in different cultures that require the act of “reframing” regarding our relationships to food. Working with two distinctively different business participants to act on Reframe — a farmer’s market and a large grocery store chain — we learned diverse contexts, constraints, mindsets and interests of the participants (co-designers and their teams, consumers, and farmers) who were involved with the reframing actions. Discovering invisible layers of the experience of Reframe based on these different contexts and perspectives, we navigated the complex shift attentively, attempting to bring particular strategies and actions most relevant for each participant.
Phase 1: Concept sketching
Tackling the vicious consumer feedback loop that the Reframe prototype is shaped from (fig.1), we started the prototype journey by understanding the participant’s responses to our first idea sketches, and the two collaborators decided which direction among concept sketches they wanted to try out. Through observing their reactions, we were able to identify what the biggest excitement and constraint points were.
In an early prototype test, we visited the farmers market to talk to farmers directly about their relationships to food, and to find out what feasible intervention we could make and what the biggest barriers would be. We assumed farmers would have their imperfect food for sale and the customers would be the ones not buying them, but the loyalty and trust to each farm seemed to play a role in the consumer behaviours towards imperfect food. Also, the average customers at the market seemed to be more familiar with the impacts of their consumption choice, and we had to be aware of their perspectives compared to conventional grocery store consumers.
With the grocery store, we quickly realised how their business environments were distinct from the farmer’s market, and would require different strategies and directions. We had to adapt our experimentation to embrace the decision making process in a corporate setting, less exploratory and more rigid environment. Beginning to step into realistic actions of Reframe, we started sensing the fundamental differences of our two participants, and we were urged to learn how to work with them independently.
Phase 2: Rapid prototyping
The farmers market was intrigued by the idea of offering an agency for farmers (fig.2) to bring more “imperfect” produce to interrupt consumers’ expectations. The grocery store, on the other hand, leaned towards signage installations (fig.3) rather than direct communication with the consumers, being mindful of the existing set up and their decision-making process as we briefly mentioned above. Co-creating actions and engaging with the idea of Reframe, the experiments started to diverge, influenced by their operation structure, culture, and scope. We will unpack this separately in the following paragraphs.
Reframing “imperfect” food and the context of circularity with the farmer’s market
The farmers market is dedicated to creating a local food network that reconnects people and the growers. Their vision of promoting a resilient community that values people and the land overlaps with CFIL’s objectives. Therefore, our assumptions about the definition of waste and also the concept of circularity were challenged. Talking to farmers at the markets who work intimately with the food they produce, unpicked tomatoes at a farm were not being “wasted”, but nurturing the soil. Asking the vendors to consider bringing “less desired” food to the markets was also not feasible for farmers who work tirelessly to plan, grow, harvest, transport, and sell at the markets.
Tackling the space to bring the concept of Reframe, we noticed the amount of farmers’ knowledge and existing practices contributing to a more regenerative agriculture and food system — their own actions to engage with circularity. Celebrating and acknowledging their community’s effort on an open space like their social media channel, seemed more urgent and compelling to invite others to join the ongoing practices that some of the farmers were already engaging in. Working with the co-designers who share similar ambition, we constantly pivoted, learned, unlearned, and discovered new relationships that a circular food economy and culture might require.
Reframing “not as fresh food” with the grocery store
Our grocery store partner is a chain of supermarkets that operates across Western Canada, serving a different role as a more standardised wide-reaching food actor. Therefore, each step of the Reframe actions had to sync with their corporate decision-making process and related considerations and engagements. To implement a simple signage, we had to go through detailed suggestions from decision makers at the company to cause minimal confusions of the brand’s identity and messages, and avoid drastic disruptions in the environment since the process to embrace actions will take longer. This surfaced a key reflection about larger corporations’ capacity to adopt the quick and nimble practices of rapid prototyping, as even small interventions underwent extensive review processes.
To navigate how to tweak consumers’ expectations towards fresh and aesthetic food at the grocery store, the Reframe team’s thinking and acting had to be “reframed” for the corporate environment. Not only creating small interventions to the established infrastructure, but also how to package the idea of Reframe as something that could bring positive impacts (increasing sales on the most wasted items which have high margin points) on the company’s business performance. The design team and the business co-designer thought this would be one of the fastest routes to support shifts which Reframe aims to initiate, however, the confirmations and approvals on the signage installations were thorough and took longer than anticipated, leaving not enough room to wiggle and redirect the experimentation.
Overall Learning
Co-creating the tangible experience of the Reframe concept with such distinctive types of business participants led our actions to be flexible and malleable to accommodate their diverse contexts of how “less desired” food could be introduced in each environment. Navigating a wide range of constraints and challenges, the Reframe prototype had to be constantly reframed itself, changing its outfit to promptly shift towards different interpretations and implementations of the idea. These moments of adjustments revealed our own assumptions and expectations to the complex system. It showed us that learning to act on systemic change means letting the unknowns guide us, and trusting the process; and this is where the learning emerges.
Disclaimer: the opinions and perspectives expressed within each of these posts are solely the author’s and do not reflect the opinions and perspectives of all CFIL participants.
