cherish what you eat
Four designs to love to your food
We view food as fuel, something we need to take in for our bodies to run well. It needs to be efficient and sufficient. We do not utilize the opportunity to appreciate the tastefulness and joyfulness of every meal. I propose four design concepts that enable people to express their love for food.
TRANSFORMATIVE PRACTICES
directly to:
cherish what you eat
Food profoundly impacts our environment, yet our relationship with it is distorted, creating a sense of distance that’s hard to define. We eat every day, making food such an ingrained habit that it often becomes invisible. This familiarity makes it difficult to question, let alone reconsider, our relationship with food. To address this, I propose four design concepts that enable people to express their love for food. There can be a companionate relationship between humans and food, marked by intimacy and commitment. These ideas are intended as starting points for re-examining and improving our relationship with food.
Four designs to love your food
The first design centers on showing love through physical affection, shown to be crucial for relationship satisfaction and for sharing warmth. By holding and embracing warm food, people may feel more connected to both their meal and the world. The second and third designs capture human attention, which can further strengthen these feelings. Finally, the fourth design lets individuals keep drinks close, holding them near the body to keep them warm and safe.
why
Food has a big impact on our environment. Around me, I see people not utilizing this moment of eating to the fullest. Some do not take the time for it, eat it quickly before they continue with their day. Others eat fast because they are used to it, and they do not even notice the great taste.
It hurts because, at the same time, food does have an impact on the world around us. I repent that not everybody can experience their food to the fullest. Every meal could be a very pleasurable and enjoyable moment in the day, where we are aware of the great taste, each other’s company, and feel thankful for what we have.
how:
transformative practices
Throughout the process, I made use of the Transformative Practices framework (Hummels et al., 2019) iteratively. These steps consist of: position and frame, reflect and learn, envision and create, organize and collaborate, collect and analyze, communicate, act and experience, and immerse and empower.
Collect and Analyze
I performed a literature review. Moreover, I set up a qualitative,
one-to-one, in-depth, semi-structured interview to explore the relationship between food and memories, traditions, nutritional value, and taste.
Position and Frame
We eat every day. But what, how, and when we eat is a choice that we make every day. We fall into routines where things tend to become usual and unnoticeable. Because of the efficiency we look for in everyday habits, we do not actively seek to notice.
To make people more aware of the usual, something unexpected needs to happen. By creating friction in everyday habits, a mindless and thoughtless (inter)action can be interrupted. In this interruption, a moment arises where the everyday is questioned. This can be explained on a psychological level: the thought process of humans consists of an automatic, effortless process and a controlled, effortful process. When friction is introduced, the thinking process shifts from the effortless to the effortful process. Everyday habits can be turned into mindful moments.
Reflect and Learn
If we treat our food more lovingly, a moment of thought can exist. What is seen as normal becomes questionable. Our thinking process shifts from the thoughtless process to the thoughtful and mindful process. We can question our current relationship with food. This love can be expressed in various ways, such as physical affection, intimacy, feeling safe, and increased attention.
Envision and Create
In the ideation phase, I focused on all types of love and physical affection in separate processes. The products are self-contained stories, based on different types of love, different experiences, and different movements. These designs help to get a hold on the current relationship we have with our food.
Transformative Practices framework
(Hummels et al., 2019)
my role
I developed these designs during my bachelor’s. I explored four ways to physically express our love for food and proposed four designs to show physical affection, heightened attention, and safety to your food. My bachelor's thesis was awarded an 8.0/10.
These products are the beginning of a process that invites further exploration. There are opportunities to refine these designs and to consider other types of love. Additionally, these designs represent only a small part of the broader field still open to exploration. The interplay between people and culture has yet to be addressed, and the products currently focus on serving and eating food, while many steps exist in the overall process of food selection.
