Foodiverse
Building trust and empathy for refugees through stories and food.
PROJECT OVERVIEW
Why food?
Today's social climate is deeply moulded by polarization through echo chambers and filter bubbles. Building trust and empathy for others and their cultures is more challenging than ever before. This prevailing sense of mistrust has far-reaching effects on individual and community relationships.
Culture as an institution is not as intimidating when stomachs are full and satisfied. Food can be a unique vehicle for communicating ideas and forming perspectives in a way that is more approachable.
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This inspired our team to create Foodiverse — a food-truck service that educates people about the Syrian refugee crisis. Our experience was designed to immerse patrons in stories of resettled refugees through a food truck experience, from ordering to their last bite of food.
Methodology
During our capstone design project, our team wanted to holistically evaluate how to build trust and empathy through food experiences. I co-led UX research and content strategy.
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- Begin with in-depth secondary research to develop context
- Conduct user interviews and site visits to understand refugee stories and opportunities for cultural education
- Build functional, testable prototypes to test flows in order to hone customer experiences and measure learning
- Assess financial viability and other supply side considerations associated with building a service
- Consistently review work and progress to ensure cultural sensitivity and manage team biases
Goals & Objectives
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Build a service experience that fosters empathy and trust between individuals
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Ensure cultural sensitivity to the communities and stories being shared
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Identify key moments that matter in the food truck purchase journey
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Leverage existing touchpoints in the journey to enhance consumer learning
Created a floor-to-ceiling food truck simulation experience, complete with real food, storytelling and branding.
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Our project was sponsored by and conducted in collaboration with Facebook and Matter Ventures, a San Francisco based accelerator.
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The Segal Design institute chose to feature our capstone project on its website as an exemplar.
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Final presentation inspired conversations with Sodexo management to reevaluate their dining hall food experiences.
Redefining our perceptions of refugees
We began by conducting desk and field research to better understand the context of Syrian refugees resettled in the U.S.
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To remedy gaps in our knowledge and build a service that was representative of lived experiences, our team:
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Attended protests in San Francisco
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Interviewed refugees
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Visited a resettlement organization
Refugee Transitions - a resettlement organization based in San Francisco.
Developing personas to crystallize stakeholders
As an interim deliverable, we developed rough personas to underscore key stakeholders to a food-driven experience — refugees whose stories would be shared and regular consumers.
Validating 'learning through food'
Before committing to building a cohesive food truck experience, our team needed to validate whether, at a base level, a food-centric service could prove to be educational to consumers.
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We built low-fidelity lunchbox prototypes to highlight different types of Syrian food and showcased where stories and educational content might feature. To test these concepts we conducted intercept interviews near the San Francisco Ferry Building.
Interviewing San Francisco Farmer's Market attendees about our prototype.
Low fidelity lunchbox prototype to test with interviewees.
Building out the service experience
Given the success of our early prototype testing and concept validation, we proceeded to build a more holistic educational food experience — with a food truck as our medium.
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We began by determining how much information was appropriate for learning during a typical customer flow. To test this, we created three variations of storyboards with different levels of educational content.
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Findings from the storyboard testing also supported our team in concept iteration. We were able to identify which touchpoints in specific user flows had most impact and were most important to build out in the overall service experience.
Creating a three-part experience
Leveraging key moments that matter and feedback from our user testing, we build a multi-part, educational food truck experience. Patrons are immersed in the history of a dish and a refugee's story while ordering, while waiting for food and while eating.
Part 1:
Explaining the dish
Part 2:
Sharing a story
Part 3:
Continuing the story while eating
We communicated continuity across the different parts of the experience through our visual style.
Part 1 and Part 2 are on opposite sides of the same artifact, while Part 3 is attached to the meal.
Each part is designed to let customers tune in and continue reading if they are interested.
The menu
The food truck in action
