In light of COVID and keeping you guys up to date on recent innovations. I thought I would write a post about my latest project that I had just wrapped up for my masters programme. But first of all, a little bit of context.
I have always had a particular interest in the relationship between objects and people. Growing up as ‘generation z’, I believe myself and my friends have a deep borderline addiction to objects, phones being a huge example. I love observing peoples’ behaviours and how they react to their surroundings, and to objects in the environment, this led me to finding a key design methodology, designing for behaviour change.
Having come from a multicultural background, another relationship had always been close to my heart. Food. Growing up in Malaysia, my parents had always loved hosting dinner parties, and trying different cuisines. This has been ingrained in my way of socialising, meeting people with food at hand. Food I believe, is not only part of our sustenance, but also our identity, our culture, and our future. It is something that everyone has a personal connection to, and relationship with. And something I have experienced a great change in since moving from Malaysia to the UK, which sparked another comparison and area of interest. Food waste. The dealing with food waste, especially in student dorms, opened my eyes to how uneducated the younger generation, myself included, to our interactions with food, from buying, cooking and throwing away.
This was what fueled me to work on this project. And I ended up developing a student campaign, to increase peer awareness of food waste behaviour in university canteens. The video below would explain in detail as to how the campaign would work and how you can sign up to become a Food Waste Watcher.
This project had come in an obviously difficult time, with the limitations of having constructed this at home instead of in canteens testing, has been a deep disappointment of mine. I had still conducted a few experiments in the university canteen “H-bar” at Imperial College London as well as held interviews and a survey online with key advisors from Westminster University, Queen Mary and Coventry University. Please refer to the link below should you want to read more about the results and tests in the report I have shared on my portfolio.
I do believe the intention and value still holds as a promising new outlook of how may we collectively incite change in a bigger corporation like universities and how a little can really go a long way. Here is a link to the website, and please comment below or get in touch should you have any further questions regarding the project. It is also available to view on our ‘graduation show’ online this coming July, so stay tuned for more food related projects!
Honest Foods 