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How to quickly prepare healthy meals

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Wendy Lee | Lo, Hsin-Yu | Laura Lin | Tien, Pei-Ying ��IDEO.org

+Acumen online course

Oct. - Nov. 2019

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Background

Design Challenge

Nowadays, most of office workers are eating out. They grab breakfast in a rush, and there is few time to prepare for lunch and dinner after work, even for dual-earner family with babies.

For these office workers, how to quickly prepare healthy meals? Where to purchase healthy and reliable ingredients for them and their children?

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Introduction to Human-Centered Design

Through IDEO Human-Centered Design processes, we want to explore related contexts, and try to help office workers to buy healthy ingredients and get easy & quick cooking skills.

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Inspiration Phase:�four types of research

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Learn from People

Professional Breakfast Shop Cook�👩‍🍳 Mrs. Lin, Age 59

• Buy ingredients :From local traditional market and familiar distributors who provide fresh vegetables and ingredients of Taiwan Breakfast.
• Prepare foods for everyone : Passion for cooking healthy foods for own business and public welfare over 30 years
• Create healthy recipes : Cooking foods in a fast and creative way. Adjust flavors and recipes for local customers.

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• Be Anxious & Worry about food safety
• Prepare foods for family :After I get home, most of time have to take care of child. Therefore, only after nine o'clock, I have time to prepare the next day's packed lunch.
• Easy Cooking :Using hot water to boil vegetables and then add some salt or soy sauce. Finally, put the cooked vegetables and the meat of the refrigerator into the plastic lunch box. Also prepare husband’s packed lunch same time.
• Easy Preserve : Cook a week's meal at once. Bring the rice to company and put it in freezer there for reducing the weight of the bag.

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• Actions for provide healthy foods :�Emphasize the balance between meat and vegetables, so always add additional cabbage for Chinese omelet.�Use “Five elements(五行)” in chinese philosophy to convince customers to eat healthy foods.

Office Workers with a 7-years -old child�👩‍💼 Mrs. Lo, Age 30

• Full-time job & 1.5hr commute time
• Buy ingredients :Vegetables at lunch breaks. To keep meat fresh, I always remember the meat I like and buy it after get off work.

Learn from Experts

Wendy Lee, Master degree in Anthropology.

Area of ​​expertise: Japanese religon and Nature fariming

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• MOA Natural farming is promoted by Mokichi Okada and MOA International.
• The definition of MOA nature farming is that - no pesticide, no chemical fertilizer and no animal composting. But for provide more healthy ingredients, farmers can manage it in a flexible way.
• MOA Natural Food Dietary
• Purchasing Lcoal food in season
• Eat foods by natural farming or under MOA certification
• Eat various categories of foods in each meal
• Eat traditional Japanese foods, like rice and miso
• Cook simplely to get the original flavor of food
• How to get healthy foods? Recommended to plant vegetables at home or try to made foods by yourself as possible. And go to local market and buy foods from reliable providers.

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Immerse Yourself in Context

Taipei vegetarian buffet in lunch time

Observation

• Most of diner people is female or Elderly.
• Soup: Sweet soup (mung bean soup) and Salty soup (weizeng soup, seaweed soup, hot and sour soup, changed everyday).
• Staple food :Congee, Stir-Fried Noodles, Fried rice noodles, Rice, Mixed-grain rice.
• In addition to the boiled vegetables, there are also provide salads, sushi, fried mushrooms, and jelly desserts.
• Many people like eating lunch here or bring packed ones.

Quick Interview: A Retired old woman who is eating lunch here

• Sometimes I will go to this restaurant when I am nearby.
• Recommended restaurant by friends.
• Think the dishes here are nice and fresh.
• Most of vegetarian buffets always mostly provide eggs, beans, and processed products. But here are a lot of leafy vegetables.
• The price is slightly more expensive than others.

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Seek Analogous Inspiration

IKEA Shopping Experience

• Preserve foods in small packages : IKEA sold a lot of containers in different size. By dealing with ingredients, put them in the containers and in refrigerator the night before , we can quickly cooking them in the morning.
• Design your quick cooking space & flow: IKEA design the shopping experince by split and combine many area of diffierent function. We can design our own food preserve and cooking area in a smaller section for smoother cooking experience.
• Cook with Kids :There are many children corners in IKEA to encourage parents shopping with kids. We can try to train kids cooking with us to reduce the interruption. After that, maybe we can cook with our helpful little cook!

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Ideation Phase I:

Synthesis�three Insights + "How Might We" statements

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Step1: Hang notes on the wall

Step3: Cluster Into 5 Themes

Step2: Find the “Gems”

Theme1: Emotion

• People will share their healthy lunches with friends.�How might we help people to create a sense of connection through daily healthy diet with friends?�
• People will share information that they thought good with their friends.�How might we consolidate good information for people to share?�
• The knowledge of healthy eating that recommended by friends has a certain influence on people.�How might we encourage people to influence their friends to eat healthy food together?

Insights & How Might We

Theme2: Food Safety

• People who need high food intake may not suit for eating in a healthy restaurant because of the high price.�How might we provide healthy dietary for people with high food intake?�
• Many people worried about food source with no-clear indication, and the channel of food safety information is not uniform as well.�How might we find a way to collect food source information in a standard inferface?�
• Some found that food they eat outside or gether from market may not safe, so they would like to produce or make food themselves.�How might we create a home vegetable garden ourselves?

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Insights & How Might We

Theme3: Efficiency

• Office workers don’t have enough time to prepare healthy lunch box.�How might we prepare a healthy lunch box quickly?�
• The number of family members might affect the cooking process and efficiency.�How might we define most efficient cooking process based on different numbers of people?�
• For both efficiency and the variety of dishes, people divide their foods into units and than make different combinations.�How might we improve the efficiency through define the appropriate units and combine them into a variety of dishes?

Insights & How Might We

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Ideation Phase II:

Prototyping

images of our final prototype

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Prototype & Test of EasyCook - Storyboard

Officer worker Linda’s storyboard for using EasyCook

Prototype & Test of EasyCook - Market survey stage

Step1 : Design the DM to present our idea

Step2 : Get feedbacks from 55 online questionnaires & 7 offline interviews

Feedbacks from questionnaires & interviews

User Profile

• 77.7% of the women participated this survey, and 83.3% of them did not have children
• Most of them paid attention to healthy eating
• More than half of them are used to cooking in wok and boiled dishes, and the least is fry

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User Contexts & Scenarios

• Most people who want to use EasyCook don't have time to prepare for cooking but want to cook healthy foods by themself
• People prefer to use EasyCook on weekdays and reach EasyCook kitchen as near as possible
• People usually prefer to use EasyCook for themselves or with their friends

Acceptance & Factors

• After hearing or reading the service intro of EasyCook, people may like it (median=3)
• People would be motivated If we provide healthy ingredients or quick recipes (median=4)
• People showed their strong interest if EasyCook can free them from the cleaning job (median=5)

Suggestions

• The lunch break is too short. Need to brainstorm how to shorten the cooking time more effectively.
• For example, provide choices of ingredients in advance and recommended recipes make it easier for consumers to make decisions when making an appointment
• In the pilot stage, we can ask cooperation with hostels or Airbnb hosts near office buildings

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Implementation Phase:

short pitch

Short Pitch

EasyCook - Your Healthy Kitchen Manager�EasyCook is like your kitchen manager, who rent out kitchens by hours and prepares healthy food ingredients for office workers and tenants without kitchen, empowers them to cook healthy foods in a quick and healthy way.

Who you need to pitch�Airbnb host around office blocks

Pitch formats�- Sent the DM of EasyCook to Airbnb hosts to convey the vision�- A short face-to-face pitch with a video

Short Pitch�For most office workers in Taipei, the rent is too expensive to rent rooms with a kitchen. Even they want to eat healthy foods, they have no choice but to eat outside. According to our 55 survey results, many office workers are willing to go out to use the kitchen at noon or evening to make a healthy lunch for themselves. ��As we know, the least people book airbnbs at noon or night on weekdays. Since your house near office blocks, we want active your bookings by renting out your kitchen at these slots to office workers around here, and help them make healthy lunches in a quick way. Let’s use your lovely kitchen more effectively and bring the health to office workers in Taipei!

Reflections and takeaways (1)

How have your definitions and understanding of "design" and "human-centered design" changed through this course?

• Sophie: It always changed at every stage in this course especially from books knowledge to real task of "design" and "human-centered-design". Things were not like I thought in real situation and we just simulated the shape of answer through the course, now we still trying to find the best solution and we know it never has the only one answer.
• 佳穎：I used to think that it is "solving the problem" and now I feel that it is "ask the right question."

What will you do differently as a result of your experiences in this course?

• 田：想去真的體驗一下市面上已經有營運的共享餐廳。以及AirBnB會想去嘗試看看。�I would like to experience the shared restaurant that the city has already operated on. And the AirBnB I will want to try it out.
• 佳穎：I will try to collect information in different ways (such as interviews) in the early stage of work, and then go through the design work.

What surprised you most in taking this course?

• Wendy: It took three times longer than I thought to finish the course, even we choose the design challenge which we are familiar with. Even though, I thought the result was worth it! Especially with these lovely teammates! ;-)

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Reflections and takeaways (2)

How has your approach to creativity and creative work changed through this course?

• Sophie : I learned how to organize and catalog my creative work to make the integrity on it, so others could see logically description or analyses that we can have them convinced.

What was the most unexpected moment in the process or prototyping or field testing your designs?

• Sophie : On the test stage of design, we found that our testing object seems more care about other point and it make us start to think tune our design direction.
• When we sent out the questionnaire, I found that everyone’s motivation to use healthy kitchens is that they don’t need materials and aftercare. This is not the same as I expected.

How will you take the lessons from this course into your current work?

• 田：便利貼分類法讓我在工作上更容易去找到使用者的脈絡與他們實際的需求。�The Post-it notes classification method makes it easier for me to find the user's context and their actual needs at work.
• 佳穎：The interviews are very interesting and intuitive. If I can work with people with different roles, I will try to understand their usage environment through interviews.

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Appendix

Workshop Notes

Class2

• Interview notes: Wendy & Sophy�https://docs.google.com/document/d/1BWduF9PdrxUtt6RkKrn1_aM02zITGD4mOrscNJ2RVeA/edit
• Interview notes: Wendy & Sophy & Show Show�https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-ec_heDDx8GTp53x83cd9B2n_1-fBiXhaHyUmjJQzyE/edit

Class 3-5

• Workshop Notes:�https://docs.google.com/document/d/1G2mznlBNUgNjf26UD8CUSOAS3fxa5580jRvN9b9AON0/edit?fbclid=IwAR32lALuHaSZWO20IQWC_m-6gjxP8RQuCYYm5RzDKzFvZ61sZ4dZ2UFoRfY
• Online Survey (DM of EasyCook is included):�https://www.surveycake.com/s/GoZGz?fbclid=IwAR1Tws3oTpmiy0EE97eddar-O8GBkbDpyPByxrLbTmUmLSG0_ukVwL8irBI�