<aside> <img src="/icons/bug_blue.svg" alt="/icons/bug_blue.svg" width="40px" /> A graduation project, to improve the acceptation of insects as food. A multicultural exploration into the meaning of eating insects, resulting in an adoption framework and a collection of products.
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Quick find:
Context Variation by Design | Design Thinking | Food Design | Multi-cultural | User centric Research and Design | Explorative Research | Co-creation | Literature research | Base of the Pyramid | Experimental Research
The goal of a graduation project is to show knowledge of all phases of the design process, knowledge of the methodology as taught during the master of Design for Interaction, and an individual and independent working attitude.
This contributes to reaching more potential of insects as ingredients in the Netherlands as well as in Thailand and Cambodia.
<aside> <img src="/icons/bullseye_blue.svg" alt="/icons/bullseye_blue.svg" width="40px" /> GOAL
To design a product or product service combination, which contributes to increasing (multi-contextual) insect consumption
By improving the acceptation (by improving the meaning and understanding) of insects as ingredients, in the Netherlands as well as in Thailand.
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The products offer customers a chance to – in their own way and their own speed – explore the endless possibilities of insects as ingredients. I created a model, identifying five different elements that people tend to need during their exploration. The model visualises these elements, and how everyone has their own preference of how to move from one element to the other - all together offering many exploration possibilities.
The product line consists of a tapas package, raw ingredients, a breeding bowl, a packaging wrap, and an information flyer explaining more about the products and their connection to Asia.
The packaging wrap is added to include any existing cookbook, to create a clear link with the Asian context, and to create unity between the products.
This project started with the creation of a clear goal and planning. The silver lining of this project is the Context Variation by Design-approach (Kersten, Cruz, Diehl and Van Engelen, 2015), with the most important characteristic of designing for more than one context.
A visual on the right shows the highlight of the approach: explore in multiple contexts (c) the users (u), markets (m), networks (n) - collect and cluster all findings, and explore solutions that could directly or with limited adjustment fit the different contexts.
DESK RESEARCH / LITERATURE STUDY
The first phase of the project is a thorough literature study, with the main result that the target-group is treated as group and not a set of individuals. Resulting in the second phase: active research studies in different contexts. These studies were executed first in the Netherlands, and later during a three month travel through Thailand and Cambodia.
EXPLORATION IN THE NETHERLANDS
In the Netherlands, I mainly focussed on understanding the meaning of insects as food, and the different aspects influencing this meaning.
One key insights was that other research about the acceptance focussed on individuals, while eating often is a highly social event. In social environments, people are more open to try out new food and enjoy the insect dinner.
Another key insight is that people need different ways of exploring and becoming more comfortable with the option of insects as food - some for example prefer to prepare the ingredients directly, others need it processed and hidden in known food such as samosas or cookies.
EXPORATION IN THAILAND & CAMBODIA
In Asia, the focus was to study the contexts concerning their food culture, the consumption of insects in specific, and in general the relation and meaning of insects.
One key insight here, was that the more tourists there are, the more people pretend to not accept insights - but if you dig deeper this seem to only be a reaction to the disgust of foreigners to insects.
SYNTHESIS & ADDITIONAL EXPLORATION
Back in the Netherlands, all results were clustered. These were combined with an interview with a start-up company (Essento Food AG) in Switzerland specialised in producing insects as food.
SOLUTION EXPLORATION
The results formed a starting point for creative idea generation sessions and individual brainstorm sessions. As support, several extra context analysis were executed resulting in inspiring collages and a better understanding of the context of the specific target group.
