Food Adventures
During the 5th and final year of Industrial and Interaction design, students are required to create their own two semester project. The first semester focuses on research while the second on design.
For my first semester, I was very interested in researching food. I started off exploring the act of sharing food and the importance of food in traditions. From there I started to focus on the family and the role our parents have in forming our cooking and eating habits. I became interested in the idea of “where we learn to eat” as well as the importance of the “family dinner table”.
I also did some research on the food toys on the market for kids. What I found was that there are a lot of plastic replicas of healthy food and smaller kitchen tools that kids can cook with, but the toys that got kids to actually make food all revolved around desserts or candy. I realized that there was an opportunity to create something educational but fun that got kids actively involved with food and cooking.
By the end of the semester I had narrowed my focus to food education for kids. My thesis statement, which help led me to my final design was: How can I expand the knowledge of cooking, fresh produce, and healthy eating habits for kids by involving them in the meal selection and cooking process at home.
During my second semester, the design phase, I created Food Adventures. Food Adventures is a monthly subscription kit for kids. Every month the contents within the package focuses on four seasonally selected produce. The activity booklet provided every month helps educate the kids about the produce and where it comes from. The package also includes recipe card for the featured produce to help get kids involved in the meal selection process. Each package comes with an ingredient or tool that will help the child create one of the recipes included. After multiple rounds of prototyping and user testing, I was able to create a product that fulfilled my design goals.
Below are the books I created for my thesis. The first shows all my research and the second shows my design process.