Dunne & Raby

(Image: Is This Your Future, 2004 – Dunne & Raby)

Dunne & Raby is a London based design studio founded in 1994. Mostly they use design to start discussions between the public, industry and designers or as a medium to make a comment on a modern issue. The tone of their work is usually quite critical and i think this is something which I would like to try and incorporate into my project as i feel it would be an appropriate tone for the subject.

I have also taken inspiration from their design process, particularly in their ‘placebo’ project ( which you can find out about here (http://www.dunneandraby.co.uk/content/projects). For this project, rather than going straight and asking people their thoughts and opinions to gain insights, they created their objects and observed how people reacted to them. This led to much deeper insights and a better overall outcome for the users and designers. I’m also a fan of this particular project as it has quite a critical tone but at the same time it doesn’t take itself too seriously.

http://www.dunneandraby.co.uk/content/projects -a link to Dunne & Raby’s projects

Gurus Day

Gurus Day is an event that is run each year by the joint 4th year of the Product Design and Digital Interaction Design courses in the university. It’s a chance for us (the students) to get advice and insights from some leading figures in design industry. The format is this: each student is allocated a space in which they present their research and work so far and where they think the project is heading and the industry experts walk around and chat with the students giving advice on areas to look into and what the next steps might be. Its a really good opportunity to gain feedback from people who have a wealth of experience in design practice.

As the ‘gurus’ or experts walk around they are each given a ‘menu’ that lists all the students and gives them a brief (50 word) summary of their projects so far, so if they feel they have particular expertise in an area that a student is looking into then they can go directly to them for a chat.

Each student gets 1/3rd of a desk to present their work in whatever format they think is appropriate (physical objects, pictures, videos, presentation boards etc.) – we have been advised not to make the boards too text-heavy as the gurus only have a short time with each student.

So far I’ve come up with my 50 word summary: My project will focus on the issue of food waste in the home. I want to create a product, with a critical design tone, that will increase people’s awareness of the problem and encourage them to be more conscious of how much food they throw away.

I’m going to try and get advice on what the next steps might be and what research techniques would be most appropriate.

Scottish Government – Food Waste Prevention

I was quite surprised to see that the Scottish Government has recently launched a food waste awareness campaign as part of their ‘Greener Scotland’ initiative. Definitely a step in the right direction, getting people’s attention. It’s a short TV and online ad which uses a slightly comedic angle to get the point across.

Waste – Uncovering The Global Food Waste Scandal

As part of my research, and to give me a broader sense of the problem, I’ve been reading Tristram Stuart’s book ‘Waste – Uncovering The Global Food Waste Scandal’. There a lot of very interesting and shocking points made in the book along with even more shocking statistics to back them up. I’ve been thinking about the best way to encourage people to waste less food and it seems simply making people more aware of the problem would be a massive step in the right direction. Stuart makes this point in his book and also states that the more aware people are the more pressure they will start putting on food suppliers to waste less. There is massive unnecessary waste all the way up the food chain and a lot of this could be changed by supermarkets changing their views on things like cosmetic standards, ordering more than they can sell and multibuy deals which encourage waste. People’s perceptions would also need to change, how would you feel if you walked into the supermarket at the end of the day and the shelves were almost empty? Most people would feel the food is somehow inferior, not as good or fresh as if the shelves were fully stocked and this encourages supermarkets to order way more than they will sell. As if food is somehow a ‘commodity’ that we have an infinite supply of.

I feel that at the core of the issue is that fact that we don’t respect food enough, we don’t give a second thought to the work, effort and limited resources that have gone into producing it. Simply put, we don’t appreciate our food.

Tristram Stuart (the author I talked about above) has also given a really interesting TedTalk on the subject of food waste, its a really good starting point if you’d like to know a little more.

Introduction

For the final, year long, project of my product design course I’ve decided to look into the issue of food waste and sustainability. With an ever increasing world population, the amount of food we use and the amount of land we use to produce this food is rapidly increasing to the point where we will have to either sacrifice our diets or our planet. But is this really necessary? I’m interested in finding out exactly how much we all waste on a daily basis and the impact that our carelessness or fussiness has on our environment.

My initial thoughts are centred around raising awareness of the issue of food sustainability and waste. By educating people about the subject I think this would encourage people to value and respect their food and the effort gone to producing it more. And therefore make them think twice before chucking out perfectly edible food or buying extra food knowing that there is no way they will finish it all.

Welcome.

This blog will document my progress with my final year Product Design project at the University of Dundee.