Creating the habit of transitioning healthy snacks between the home and work context.
The Food for Thought Design for Change collection has been designed to discourage unconsidered eating decisions and help females bring order to their snacking habits to create a healthy routine of taking regular snacking breaks. The approach aligns itself with an eating personality many can identify with, ‘the stress eater’.
First conceived as an affirmation that the things we have around us are now a mixture of analogue and digital, I approached the project by examining the contexts and items that were prompting our eating decisions, rather than examining the outcomes of decisions we later regretted. The majority of research and documentation in these areas was visualized in behaviour maps and eating portraits that, from a distance, merely presents visual complexity and disorder. Extending its reach beyond the traditional conception of the “plastic container” the collection aims to translate seamlessly between the home and the workplace. Accompanied by witty graphic elements that are both reflective and persuasive, fridge stickers create an inviting home for the objects ensuring they are not forgotten or tossed with the abandoned selection of lidless containers.
With shapes and sizes that were consciously considered to relate an intuitive sense of portion control, the objects may be stacked and combined in any way the user sees fit, sealed with surface magnets. The simple yet sophisticated forms, material and colour palette indicate a level of thoughtfulness rarely brought to traditional eating containers. The collection is accompanied by a haptic (vibration) feedback workstation that subtly encourages the user to take regular breaks, using a small motor to pulse the grey mouse pad periodically at regular recurring intervals. In varying permutations the workstation allows for a subtle alert, invisible to others in the environment but engaging for the user. Providing a transitional home for the containers the collection is filled with design prompts in contexts that would formally be overlooked.
The series ranges from reminder graphics to minimal magnetic containers to diligent desk wear. Through this multifaceted, personal collection positive eating decisions and habits are encouraged and formed. The range and regularity of use is far broader than traditional eating vessels, creating a seamless transition between the home, and the work environment. Using real accounts of female eating behaviours, the items in the collection ambitiously attempt to change behaviour through the use of subtle sensorial prompts, considered design details and purposeful product placement.
Photography by Andrew Matautia
Styling by Annabelle Nichols
Behaviour change is about challenging peoples perceptions. What is food? do we know or are we guessing?
Balancing bowls is a series of 3d printed balancing bowls and preparation boards designed to be customised to specific dietary requirements. The simple form is dictated by the notion of eating a balanced diet as the ceramic bowls only balance when they have the appropriate portion of food in them.
The bowls are generated through a parametric model and the volume is dictated by the user’s body mass index and activity level. The bowls are then 3d printed in ceramics or glass blown and cut depending on the users’ preference.
The minimal measuring bowls are accompanied by an American ash chopping board which visually helps the user to plan out their meal ensuring they have a combination of protein, carbohydrates and fruit and vegetables. The chopping board can then be flipped and used as an eating board which has a simple CNC routed cavity with a personalized volume to suit the user.
A beautiful, simple yet personal approach to a global health issue shows us how the customizable nature of parametric modelling, 3d printing and CNC manufacturing can influence people’s habits and behavior
In order to change behaviour we need to understand it. Designing a new way of engaging with users.
Method cards are designed to engage, inform and invite a selected group of participants to begin a week long food experiment. The five young female adults were given card that provided information about their weekly endeavour, whereby they would take a photo of everything they ate for a week. The participants would describe their experience and directly upload it to me via Instagram. Cards were also designed to engage question and conversation. There was a simple change in opacity and thickness of card indicative of what was informative and what should be written on. The cards aimed to be inviting, understandable and contextual.
Styling by Annabelle Nichols
Photography by Andrew Matautia
In order to change behaviour we need to relate to it. Challenging the traditional conception of the nutritionist log, replacing calories with context.
Taste Portraits: The personality behind the palette. Taste Portraits have been designed to help bring a broader contextual understanding to the traditional nutritionists eating log. This approach promotes a more holistic process, aiming to provide an over view of eating behaviours as oppose to focussing on the numerous, sometimes countless foods and food groups. Daily calorie curation overlooks the larger contexts and factors that influence poor food choices. Extending the reach beyond generalized information into personal tools and idiosyncratic insights, Taste Portraits become individual behaviour maps that enable change by enhancing the participants understanding of the broader factors that influence the way they eat.
Nothing food a provocative design project about the potential projections of 3d printed food in 2040. It combines natural food with biochemistry and current processed food methods. Comparable to Ferran Adria’s famous gastronomy in which Adria liberates new tastes and developed new methods such as nitrogen-infused foams Nothing food tricks the eye by promising tastes textures and nutritional value, yet in reality each sample food attains no nutrient value at all. The main question for this project aroused during the conversation with a biochemist. How do we define eatable? Is it based on whether we will recognize the object as food outside the body? Or is based on whether the body will recognize it as food once it is inside?
Nothing food is a cautious concern for the future of unconsumable consumption, manufactured meals and forgotten food.
Styling by Annabelle Nichols
Photography by Andrew Matautia
Behaviour change is about finding the space where no one is looking, building momentum, with a clear mindset.
TEDx Wellington Women aimed to inspire women around wellington to find their groove, build momentum and inspire change in their community. As a designer it was important to design assets that were both reflective of the TEDx brand but also synonymous to the integrity of the event. The icon of the event became the moving silhouette of a women visualised through simple red lines that embody the concept that when we build momentum and inspire change we must have a calm mind and an active vision. A combination of playful and familiar element brought this project to life along with a range of inspiring women.
Behaviour change is about moving forward in your own direction. Designing a brand that fits a vision.
With the aim to create a new identity for a fast growing organisation we set the goal of coming up with a design that was feminine, modern & simplistic which communicated everything the foundation is and has become. An innovative organisation that inspires, mentors and encourages female leadership throughout New Zealand needed an identity that represented the forward thinking nature of the organisation yet at the same time showed versatility of direction
Tempt me, entertains the idea of preparing healthy handfuls in advance of purchasing decisions. Navigating temptations in the cafe environment inspired the development of a food wallet. The object from a viewerís perspective appears as a minimal corporate accessory, but for the user, the prevalence of tactile feedback nudges the Corporate CafÈ Creature to purchase the coffee not the cupcake. By providing a space for healthy snacks, the concept aims to trigger her to prepare as oppose to purchase.
Providing a prompt in the cafÈ context the solution is subtle and sophisticated. White food safe silicon pockets seamlessly slide into the tracks proving a home for healthy handfuls. Black tracks are located on the inside of cleverly conceived construction to ensure easy access. Subtle scores in the silicon ensure pouches can be easily removed for cleaning and refilling. By utilising an existing connection between the user and her wallet the concept not only provides a solution to temptation but ensures engagement when leaving the house and arriving in a purchasing decision. This internal trigger based on pre-existing behaviour encourages action. Tempt me as an intervention combines subtle design with tactile feedback to actively prompt positive and pre-planned decision making in a context where spontaneity and temptation normally prevail. Using simple yet sophisticated design details, the intervention can be seamlessly integrated into a Yong female adults lives.
Styling by Annabelle Nichols
Photography by Andrew Matautia
Blocked Up is a playfull approach to the waiting room. This is a system that allows the user to interact with the architecture and seating to create personalized areas. Giving them access to their electrical devices for entertainment whilst subtly dividing up the space. Wall dividers are accompanied by a modular furniture system the encourages the user to change the seating arrangements to fit their circumstance. The modular furniture system is made up of three blocks of different dimensions these blocks can be combined and stacked to create different seating systems. The third component to the waiting room system is ‘inform’. Inform is an interactive lighting device that lights up when it is your turn to be seen by a doctor or the patient you are waiting to see has finished in surgery. The lighting device is controlled by the nurse’s reception area so you are aware they haven’t forgotten you as they have you on record. This allows the user to have the freedom to move around the hospital if needed, visit the cafeteria or pay for extended parking without the concern of missing their space in line or missing their significant other go into recovery . The combination of the three dimensions of ‘space’ aim to create a more personalised, user focussed waiting experience. A simple, smart , human approach to the experience of waiting.
In order to change behaviour we need understand the context the behaviour is established. Creating clear scenarios that people can relate to.
Generating ideas through what if questions and scenario sketches allows people to actively engage in the design process focussing on ideas that they like, without providing any formal design solution. Questions were provocative like, what if your fridge talked to you? or what if you could half your buying behaviour? By generating questions with small sketches, I encouraged the participants to choose scenarios that might help them without any specific visual or tangible elements that could sway their decisions.
Coming soon.
