Foodata — Insights from a workshop
Earlier this month, we went to the 10th edition of the Lift conference, to enjoy thought-provoking talks but most importantly to conduct our workshop on health, food and data.
Why did we start to work on this topic? As it happens, health is a pretty big topic at the moment. A huge amount of startups are being created in the field of genetics or mobile health. Venture capital firms are eager to put their money in it, as can attest Google Ventures massive investments in healthcare related startups last year. This interest in the field is linked to the apparition of new technologies that can be applied to the health field.
Although, as you might have guessed, we are not that interested in the business aspect of the matter, but more on the impact these can have on our daily life as well as on our perception and understanding of food.
The modern perception of food in the western countries is driven by the understanding of its physiological impact. We are considering food in a very scientific and rational way. How many calories are there? Will I get enough vitamins if I eat that? Although it would be highly simplistic to consider food only in this way. Food as a deep cultural connection, as can attest the different culinary traditions existing all around the world. It is also a social marker, some say you are what you eat, food has an impact on you, but it also true that you eat what you are. Your social status, culture, education, beliefs and values reflect in what you are eating as well as the way you are eating it.
SETTINGS AND ASSETS
From those thoughts we took on the notion of customized food: a food that would be made sur-mesure in order to improve your health in the long run. If developed within a startup, this idea would be likely focusing on physiological data and help you stay fit. For our workshop, we wanted to bypass this bias our participants might have. We therefore needed to give assets that would help build scenarios that would have a more holistic approach to food.
To achieve this, we have created a kit constructed around the idea of customized food relying on four different aspects — medium, data, effect & goal- themselves subdivided in different notions.
Medium: how is the notion of customized food translated into an artefact?
The scenario should be embodied in the design of a food. It might seem as the easiest medium by being directly customizable. It also has a wide range of applications, from revisiting culinary traditions to creating new foods thanks to biotechnologies. But as many contradictory scientific researches show, it is hard to create a proper customized food or diet.
The scenario should be embodied in an object that relates to food. Objects related to food are not lacking. Just have a look in your kitchen: dishes, furnitures… If you are a food aficionado, then you might have also a lot of kitchen utensils. This said, it is also possible to explore the unknown and invent a new object proposing a new way to interact with food.
The scenario should be embodied in a place that relates to food. Indeed, the place where you are eating can have a very unconscious impact on the way you are eating. For example, colors used in restaurants can influence to eat more or less quickly. Moreover, it is also possible to play around the way you perceive and interact with food, in a similar way that what supermarkets do with their department organisation.
Data: what are the data used to create the customized food related artefact?
It corresponds to all the traces you leave on the Internet: emails, social network activity, search engine… Those data are quite common nowadays and a big topic of debate: privacy, security… It can be linked to your leisure activities, your job, your emotional life, your values or beliefs. It is quite well used by companies to do personalised advertisement. Why not use those data for designing your food after all?
It is a kind of data on the rise. Firstly promoted within scientific circles for research, it has extended to a larger audience with movements such the Quantified Self. The logic is to measure the body activity and translate it in sets of numbers that we, or algorithms, have to interpret. It offers interesting problematics on the empowerment of individuals regarding their health and questions the doctor’s expertise. Also we would be keen to extend those data to environmental ones, such as the quality of the air, because of their impact on our health.
Depending of the opinion, the use of the word “data” might not be appropriate. This category brings together unquantified data: your experience, your emotions or your memories. To properly access those data, you need to do self-introspection and actively reflect on it which is hardly transcribed in numbers, at least for the moment. This said, we don’t think it is less valuable than digital data, does it?
Effect: what is the effect of your customized food related artefact?
In this case, the artefact is supposed to have an effect on your body. This seems pretty straightforward when speaking of food. But is is also possible to think of indirect way to affect the body, or maybe in a delayed way. It is here interesting to consider the relation the artefact has with the body, as well as consider potential side effects.
A good example of substances that are playing around with you head are drugs (legal or illegal) or alcohol. More recently you can also think of those headsets supposed to improve your concentration. How can these principles be adapted to a customized food artefact?
Food is a deeply cultural attribute and plays a big role in social events. Who doesn’t enjoy a good meal with friends or family? It has also an important symbolic value as well as showing your social status: someone who has a knowledge in cooking, a gourmet, is likely to be of a upper social standing. It also reflects your personality by standing for your taste and your values.
Goal: what is the final goal of your artefact?
Preventive artefacts are supposed to make you avoid a bad health condition, be it linked to physical or mental degradation. Prevention is often allied with the idea of prediction. If you know what might happen, then you can take actions against it. Data are thought as a way to have reliable prediction, as can show many of the systems based on predictive analysis, such as what can be imagined to regulate traffic jam when we will all have automated cars.
In this case, the artefact is designed to help people heal, from a physical disease or maybe a mental breakdown. Indeed, in Chinese culture, food is considered as a medicine. It is a very complex system that influences your energy called “qi”. In Western societies food didn’t have such as strong stand until recently, when the obesity crisis began to emerge.
To ease the process we created random card combinaisons before the workshop. In order to be sure the participants could create something out of it, we also checked scenarios could be built with the combinaisons.
WORKSHOP OUTPUT
The participants of the workshop were divided in three groups of four to six people. After one hour of brainstorming and production, each group proposed his vision of a customized food related artefact.
Professional Temple Productivity
Wellbeing at work should be a priority. Indeed, employees that are happy are likely to be more engaged and productive. Lunch is often a crucial moment of the day: it helps you regain your energy as well as prepare you for the end of the day. Therefore the canteen is redesigned in order to be perceived as a temple. Here all employees are getting the same meal, saved for some chemicals that are inserted in each plate. Those components are added according to each individual’s behavioral data collected in the workplace as well as data from its personal agenda. They are supposed to help the employee do his work in a more efficient way for the rest of the day.
Peace-Making Cooking
In many families, some tensions exist. Food can be a way to re-establish the dialogue between the family’s members. The Peace-making Cooking involves rings that measure the mood of the wearer through physiological data such as the body temperature, diaries where each member can write down his thoughts on their personal state, and a food therapist, who facilitates meal times. Each person cook the favorite dish of another family member. Then, the member to whom is destined the dish can adapt it with some flavours, powder and other cooking components according to the data gathered reflecting their emotional state. This process gives a new experience to the favorite dish by making it customizable to one’s current emotional state. By associating a person, the one having firstly cooked, with your favorite dish and memories linked to it, dialogue can be established anew between the two persons by smoothing emotions.
Feedback Plate
It is possible to slow down the aging process by doing two simple things: being physically active and having a regular mental stimulation. The Feedback Plate intends to encourage those behaviors after the critical moment of eating, where it is so easy to just lay down and surf on the Internet. The plate records and analyses different data such as your eating rate or the content of your meal. It combines them with other data that can reveal the emotional state of a person, such as the heart rate. Then, you are prompted by the plate to engage in an activity, be it physical, by going out to walk, social, by going to meet some friends, or cognitive, by reading something.
TAKE-AWAY AND INSIGHTS
In our opinion, the workshop was really fruitful as the participants went successfully through the process of extrapolation and produced relevant scenarios. Those scenarios are exploring very different sets of ideas and concepts. They are also aspiring to go out of consensual visions, by trying to see how a customized system can be twisted to serve some specific interests. This being said, it was also really compelling to observe the discussions that happened during the creation process: people were confronting their personal ideas and beliefs about what food is, as well as the role it plays in our life: a social connector, a body maintainer or a mental helper. From this basic and daily topic, the participants were able to tackle complicated issues and concepts linked to health.
From previous workshop made in similar condition, we have noticed some disconnection with the audience when approaching a complex issue with an experts’ topic. For example, introducing the topic of health with a scenario revolving around bacterias and microbiome will let most of the person in the audience confused. At best, those without scientific background will get a rough idea of what you are speaking about. Those with refined knowledge in science will understand the core principles but not what the designer role in it is, and will likely question your legitimacy to work on it. With this settings, it becomes hard to make an eclectic group of people think on the social and health impact that new technologies can have.
The workshop also brings us to think about the difference between the nature of the debate created from the direct discussion happening during a co-construction process, and the one created from the vision of an artist, designer, writer or film director. In the first case, the person is in a logic of construction of an argument to express her opinion. She will have to be able to construct an argumentation of her opinion in respect of other people beliefs and views. It is at the same time a persuasion and empathy exercise. In this regard, we think formats similar to a workshop one, where people are brought together in the same space, are very relevant for creating constructed debate and engaging people with an issue. On the other hand, when faced to an already constructed vision, the reaction of a person is based on a logic of interpretation of what she has encountered. In the worst case, the person will just react in a binary way, “I like” or “I don’t like”, and is likely not to provide any proper arguments on her view, but very simplistic ones linked to her beliefs. Some will try to go a bit deeper in the understanding of the work by analysing it in detail. Only a few will take the time to do complementary research on the topic in order to build their own opinion.
For our workshop, we have used a known form of co-creation, at least in creative communities, which, in our opinion, fulfills the goal of creating constructed debate. This said, we are currently exploring new ways of fostering debate: performance, happenings… We consider them as hybrids between workshops and fixed creative work (eg. movies, books…) that can offer new perspectives on the creation of discussion.
