FOOD FOR THOUGHT
Our focus at the moment is on the food industry and what we can do to help reduce food wastage. We all recognise that immersion is the first step. We have to learn what when why how who before we can begin ideating and proposing solutions. However we also need some direction before we immerse ourselves so that our documentation of our experiences is focused and with purpose.
Initially we planned to immerse ourselves in the industry, learn all that we could in an allocated 3 months or so and then use that knowledge to form a new service which filled all of the gaps. This was a great first proposal but in watching the opening video for the global service design jam only last night I really took away the advice ‘never fall in love’ which is the idea that as designers we are constantly researching trying making doing learning and as such our ideas are ever changing. Never fall in love with an idea – always be prepared to throw it away for whatever bigger better idea comes along.
We spoke last night about our initial game plan and then had the realisation that what we were really doing was trying to reinvent an already working model with little to no funding or industry relevant resources or experience – perhaps too big a feet for small time service designers just starting out? Or not – I mean I’m all about shooting high! But the important thing that was discussed was that we could probably be using our skills in a more useful and refined way. What are we? What do we have to offer?
We are a small passionate group of excitable and idealistic service designers who want to offer help for free… what we intend to do with that now is immerse ourselves in the food rescue industry, learn the ropes, document, research, talk to people and ask what they want and need from a service like this, spreading ourselves out over a multitude of different types of food rescue services and then offer to make a proposal which suggests ways to improve the already existing service with a focus on sharing, community, food wastage and the user experience.
From that we envisage starting a series of workshops which teach businesses in the food industry and community’s about service design, user centric design, service experience and the experience economy. It also has the potential to act as a co-creative session where we pull in stakeholders from many different businesses and levels of the food chain (mind my pun) to work together in these sessions building further empathy toward food wastage and emphasising the benefits of working together and looking at the service holistically.
