Week 14
- Monica Leon
- Dec 17, 2020
- 5 min read
Through the lens of transition and speculative design methodologies, my goal is to offer an alternative future and present a scenario in which users are able to think about their impact of their food choices and educate themselves to have a more sustainable future. I am still unsure of what the medium to offer this solution will be, but I want something that makes them think when they interact with it and then are motivated to learn more about it on a website, an informational booklet, or a host social media account.
Some of the feedback after my presentation included:
· After their interact with the artwork, do they participate to learn and make a change afterwards?
· Do we have suggestions for changing behavior?
o I have to research what can make a consumer change their behavior and what tools I can use to provoke that change.
· Commodity goods are valuable because they are useful. But how can we keep eating healthy and delicious food if the resources are scarce?
o Creative Idea: Making fun of wealth like a banana taped to a white canvas seen as artwork.
Target Audience specific interview:
· Interview people and their avocado experiences. Everyone goes through that phase were they like avocados, namely because their health benefits and then learning about the impact it has on the environment and local communities.
What do my target audience know about the avocado?
What are they doing already? Where do they fall in the spectrum?
Are people think about this?
When are they thinking about this?
When are they able to change behavior?
Subset of Millennials who want a behavior change or raise awareness.
You have this knowledge, you have this built in your lifestyle, you probably want to change but are in a spectrum of people who “I thought about changing but I HAVENT changed or I have taken actionable steps to change my behavior”
· Behavior change example: Hate against the plastic straws and plastic bags.
· Learn about the avocado shortage that happened in the summer. See what people’s accommodations and reactions were. Places making guacamole out of squash and tricking people or finding positive alternatives. Understanding what happened in that moment.
· Florida avocados: they look like avocados but in Florida they are looked like garbage because they are “too watery”. A way in which they can be used in a positive way rather than compost.
· Steinhart’s Food study program and have classes around food culture.
· Avocados seen as a pattern and a decoration; we fetishize it.
o Creative Idea: making 3D printed plastic looking avocados for decorations. What is the role of the fetishization of this food in people’s habits? They absorbed in pop culture. Can they use this phenomenon to change behavior? As opposed to push more avocados.
Research Protocol:
My thesis focuses on the central question of: “How has the globalization of the food industry, through the standardization of food corporations and the spread of mass consumerism, impacted today’s unsustainable habits of ‘modern food’ consumption?” I intend to answer this question through the heavily commercialized superfood: the avocado. Avocados were popularly consumed during the Super Bowl or Cinco de Mayo, but now it is a year-round staple dominating brunch menus in dishes like the avocado toast or California Eggs Benedict. The largely acclaimed fruit imports 87% to United States from Michoacán, Mexico. The blurry supply chains systems lack transparency for consumers and retailers to acknowledge the environmental and social costs linked to the avocado. It is a commodity good that illustrates how globalization leads to inequalities between the global north and the global south.
Hebinck’s article, The Globalization of Taste, explains how modern food has led the way to our current eating habits which is based on our individual social connection to food built by reality, values, beliefs and life history. “Our changing relationship to nature makes many consumers redefine what they consider food, and perhaps not in favour of nature” (Heninck, 10). Modern food is defined as the driven processes of globalization, modernization and commoditization which disconnects worlds of production and consumption for many consumers. I want to highlight the concept of modern food in my research because it conceptualizes our current ability to eat without understanding the origin and processes of production, information deemed valuable in a consumer’s decision-making process when purchasing food.
Labeling the avocado as a superfood is the primary factor that led its success. In the book, Food Cults: How Fads, Dogma, and Doctrine Influence Diet, Tina Sikka argues the contemporary superfood cult as the driving force of the neoliberal agenda. Furthermore, how superfoods are linked directly to how gender stereotypes help marketers frame superfoods perceived in a feminine light regarding health and food. Specially in the Western world, women learn about how superfoods help in weight loss and idle celebrities to follow their exact dietary regime. Women magazines, blogs, websites and social media offer the pedagogic role of associating foods like smoothies and salads with labels like low calorie, healthy, and light used to intensify the belief of beautification and dieting.
Avocados are also associated with wealth, as the demand increases so does the price at restaurants spearing extra dollars for a side dish of guac. There is a sociological component and interpretation largely discussed in the book, The Consumer Society: Myths and Structures, were the term conspicuous consumption is used to address why people consume conspicuously even when they cannot afford paying rent or healthcare; for example. “The middle classes tend rather towards conspicuous consumption. They are, in this regard, heirs to the great capitalist dinosaurs of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This is where they are culturally naïve” (Baudrillard, 108).
Through my Research of Art and Design, my goal is to change the perspective that Millennial women in the United States have with their current beliefs of the avocado. I am exploring to present an alternate future through speculative design to raise awareness about the negative impact this superfood is causing in Latin American countries like Mexico and how their consumer behavior is affected by mass media and the superfood cult. Some useful feedback I received from my past presentation included interviewing my target audience to understand their relationship with the avocado and what would make them change their behavior after knowing the negative connotations it has. In addition, the role of fetishization avocados have in people’s habits, which is even used as a pattern and food decoration. My plan moving forward will be to keep researching and conducting interviews to better understand my thesis question. To start sketching and brainstorm future scenarios and products in which users are able to spark a behavior change in avocado consumption and be more mindful of their eating patterns as being part of a bigger picture.
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