Week 3 - 5: Inspiration Phase

Compared to my last blog, I have chosen to use a different model of reflection as I was entering the inspiration phase of my human-centred design methodology, so it would be beneficial to take a different perspective. I have chosen the 5R framework, which includes Reporting, Responding, Relating, Reasoning, and Reconstructing (The University of Edinburgh, 2024). This model stood out to me because it had many phases, which implies that it was more structured and specific, which will help guide me more successfully. The relating phase was also unique to this model, as it encouraged reflecting on past experiences and applying those learnings by making an action plan based on them. It also promotes critical thinking, specifically in the reasoning phase, by asking to provide relevant theory to back up your situation - this skill I need to work on. 

Reporting

It's been three weeks since my last blog post, and a lot has happened. In week 3, we had an assignment that revolved around proposal refinement and planning. Therefore, I had to evaluate the direction of my project and refine my scope. I wasn't sure where to start, so the first thing I did was talk to my tutor and lecturer about the status of my project.

My tutor told me that developing a device that tests for allergens in food wouldn't be feasible and that my outcome should ideally be functional at the end-of-year exhibition.

When I talked to my stream lecturer, she told me there was a missing link between my project and the brief. Our brief requires addressing one or more of the DEI cards that articulate the dimensions of a diverse, equitable, and inclusive workplace. I chose the physical and mental ability card (González and Diversity Works NZ, 2022). She mentioned that I needed to take a more systemic approach by addressing multiple issues rather than using a singular product to address a singular problem. My lecturer brought up that allergies are perceived as a preference by many people and that she didn't view it as a disability. She also suggested that I research disability policies as a starting point.

The Diversity + Inclusion Awareness card: Physical and Mental Ability

I was hoping that they would both validate my project and that I'd ideally be going in the right direction, but it was quite the opposite, and that's when I started to spiral. 

Based on my talk with my tutor, my first idea was to do an online training course for food allergy safety, only to realise it already exists. Despite this, there needs to be more education and proper management regarding food allergies at food providers.

After talking to my lecturer, I researched whether food allergies were considered a disability. I found that it is considered a (hidden) disability when it affects major bodily functions and more than one major life activity (FARE, 2024).

While researching, I came up with a new idea that better addresses the individual needs of people with allergies while implementing systemic changes in the workplace. The two main ideas are implementing food safety rating certificates dedicated explicitly to allergies and offering food providers an allergy certification, similar to Blue Butterfly, a program that assists individuals with allergies or asthma to identify safe products and services for them to use (Sensitive Choice, 2024). My new key objectives are to build awareness, improve management, and promote best practices. These will ultimately aid in reassuring those affected and provide more clarity through transparent procedures in the workplace.

Now that I've started the Inspiration Phase, I've completed and started using a few tools: Frame Your Design Challenge, Define Your Audience, Secondary Research, and Interview/Questionnaire.

The Frame Your Design Challenge aims to create a question that contextualises your challenge and serves as a starting point. This exercise requires you to cycle through it multiple times and continuously seek the impact you intend to have, the potential solutions, and the constraints you face (IDEO.org, 2015). My HMW question changed from: How might we design a product that can test food for specific allergens for customers of hospitality businesses to foster a safer and more secure experience and increase inclusivity and equity for consumers with allergies? How might we encourage a cultural shift within food providers prioritising allergy management and transparency, ensuring safe, supportive environments that empower individuals with allergies to navigate their eating experiences confidently?

The following exercise I did was Define Your Audience, which involved categorising the people affected by food allergies both directly and indirectly. It also required me to further categorise all those people into who benefits the most, who might resist my solution, and who would help amplify the impact I aim to have (IDEO.org, 2015).

For the Secondary Research exercise, it breaks into technological, behavioural, and cultural (IDEO.org, 2015). For this exercise, I chose not to focus on the technological aspect as my research question has changed, and my solution is more based on awareness and behaviour. 

When evaluating the toolkit, I planned on using the Conversation Starters and Card Sort tool in this phase, but they seem more suitable for use in the Ideation Phase as they require more involvement and action from users. They'd be more beneficial after I have gained insights and evaluated the information from the interviews/questionnaires. 

Regarding my Interviews, I've separated my questions into three categories: those with food allergies, those with hospitality experience, and those without experience in either. One of my main goals with these interviews is to discover any misconceptions or preconceptions about disabilities and food allergies while also seeing how the experiences of people with food allergies differ. 

Responding

Considering it was the week of our presentation, their feedback was the last thing I wanted to hear. I was initially trying to justify my thoughts and find ways that I could keep my original idea, but I'm grateful that I received their input sooner rather than later as I have more confidence in my new direction.

However, it changed my perspective on the problem as I realised that my original research question was too focused and that I was only addressing the issues that individuals with food allergies face at a surface level.

I discovered that I was using a semi-backward approach. By giving the customers a testing device, they would receive primary benefits. In contrast, the workplaces (food providers) would receive secondary benefits. Additionally, instead of customers using a tool that will detect an allergen as a temporary solution, food providers should be taking cautionary procedures to mitigate the need for it in the first place and tackle this issue at the root cause.

Prior to our conversation, the physical and mental ability card seemed like the only card that would fit my topic, so I went with it and didn't think twice about it. Only after my discussion with my lecturer did I realise that it might not be seen as a disability by other people. I concluded that people don't see it as a disability because it's invisible. This means that you wouldn't be able to notice their disability just by looking at them; you would only realise when the individual is exposed to their allergen and suffers from an allergic reaction.

The fact that I didn't think twice about whether food allergies were a disability is due to me having lived with it my entire life. Therefore, I possess an inherent bias, which has empowered me to advocate for this so that people don't dismiss it.

When doing the Frame Your Design Challenge, I struggled to complete it as each time I redid this challenge; I had to ask myself what impact I wanted to have. I found it difficult because I wanted to achieve so much with my final solution since I have a personal connection with it. Additionally, I wanted to propose another idea to my lecturer when I had to redirect my project, so I noticed I was trying to align my new how might we question to the solution I had in mind. I eventually arrived at my final question, which I was satisfied with because it is specific but still has a broad scope that would allow me to change my solution if necessary. 

I enjoyed the Define Your Audience exercise and how it was framed because it fleshed out all the possible stakeholders, serving as a point of reference for me. However, I only have access to some of the people affected since I'm limited to people in design. Furthermore, breaking the people affected into three categories will help me ensure I'm addressing everyone's needs. I'll also be able to ideate ways to incorporate amplifiers so that my solution will have a bigger impact and outreach. In our lecture, they told us that an elevator pitch isn't suitable for every listener, so this activity will help me identify what benefits and values need to be conveyed to the different potential resistors and the broad audience of people who will view our final capstone project at the exhibition. 

In the beginning, I didn't think it was necessary to have research on the cultural aspects of my topic, but then I realised that culture significantly affects the way that food allergies are perceived. Especially in NZ, as we're such a diverse country with multicultural restaurants, food is essential in bringing people together. Therefore, my potential solution may not appeal to many food providers, specifically Asian restaurants, where allergies are seen as a preference and dismissed (from my personal experience). For my research, although I haven't finished it, I noticed that I still have my old habit of going down a rabbit hole. This is because I always need to cover all the bases, which ends up wasting time, and it gets to the point where any new information becomes irrelevant or too far from the original research topic. 

Initially, I planned to research an overwhelming amount of questions, so I have now put many of them towards my interviews/questionnaires based on those I want deeper insights on or personal experiences. So far, I've noticed that people know more about allergies than I expected, but a few people couldn't differentiate between a food allergy and food intolerance. People need to be aware of how else food allergies might affect an individual besides eating or engaging in social activities. I conducted my interviews relatively conversational, so my participants were willing to share their personal experiences comfortably. I've enjoyed this exercise a lot because it's encouraging me to be more open-minded and accepting of people's opinions, which is something that I knew I would struggle with since my relationship with food allergies is severe, so my views are skewed. 

Relating

My lecturer's feedback reminds me of when I was taking DES200, and we had to constantly iterate and evaluate our solution to ensure we were taking a systemic approach and that each element of the system successfully worked together. Similarly, in my DES200 project, we had to address various stakeholders in our system, so we created a systems map to deal with this effectively. 

This project reminds me of when I was in DES231 (The Future of Work and Play) regarding the change of direction and research. For DES231, my topic was the future of sleeping and dreaming. My final idea was to create an artefact that tracked which sleep stage you're in and then emitted light, sounds, and smells to influence your sleeping and dreaming. However, my lecturer and tutor gave me feedback, which made me pivot my project to incorporate a health aspect (dementia/Alzheimers) and only emit smells from my artefact. This led me to conduct even more research, which I went overboard. Both dementia/Alzheimers and the background behind scents were unfamiliar topics to me, so I wanted to make sure that I had a well-rounded understanding of them before I continued. This time, much of my research is to validate and support my opinions about food allergies since I can't base all my information on my knowledge and experiences. Furthermore, one of the exercises we had to do frequently was to provide a rationale for our decisions. I think this would be valuable for every aspect of my project, including the research phase, to ensure that the information I'm seeking is relevant and will contribute to my project. 

Reasoning

I think that the most important aspect of my current situation is the perception of disabilities and food allergies. Disability is defined as long-term physical or mental impairments that hinder the individual's ability to participate in and interact with the world around them during daily activities (Office for Disability Issues, 2024). Based on this definition, I believe most people would agree that having food allergies is a disability purely from the word' impairments' but due to the social construct surrounding the word, people's perception of a disability only focuses on visible disabilities. This is creating barriers that stop us from fully acknowledging that issues in this area need to be solved. If I don't convey the seriousness of food allergies, then it will continuously be seen as a food preference. Food providers won't want to adopt my solution in their workplace as they won't see any value in it. I came across the Health Belief Model to understand what might influence people to take action. It aims to explain and predict how people might behave regarding their health based on their perceptions. It focuses on four dimensions: susceptibility and severity of the health condition and the benefits or barriers of acting on their health (Etheridge et al., 2023). Although this is not directly relevant to my project, I hope to utilise this model during my research process to understand how my different audiences perceive food allergies and determine what would encourage or prevent them from taking action.

The Health Belief Model

Reconstructing

Looking back through the reflection stages, I need to change my research approach and gain a better understanding of the target audiences I can't access so that the impact of my final solution addresses the necessary people. One option is to create personas, which I have had experience using in DES220 (Design and Innovation). As I have broken down my audience in detail, many of them share similar characteristics, so this tool would help me target larger groups at a time, including those who might benefit from my solution and those who resist it. It will also help refine what I plan on researching, as the specific structure includes identifying pain points, goals, needs and behaviours. This can also be completed by utilising secondary research. Another option is to choose target audiences that are accessible and similar to the ones I actually need, meaning I'd be able to gain more perspectives and opinions from both extremes. I need to limit the sources I go through for each question/topic so that I don't do more than necessary. Using the Belief Model and providing a rationale for each question will further break down what I need to learn in multiple ways. Once I conduct research, my next step is to create a systems map to see how all my stakeholders work together as a whole ecosystem. The last option is to find third-party interviews, which is the closest way to emulate me getting results from interviewing someone myself. 

References

Etheridge, J. C. (2023) The Health Belief Model. Science Direct.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/medicine-and-dentistry/health-belief-model#:~:text=The%20Health%20Belief%20Model%20predicts,barriers%20to%20that%20behavior%20(Fig.

FARE. (2024). Section 504 and Written Management Plans. https://www.foodallergy.org/resources/section-504-and-written-management-plans

González, D. A. & Diversity Works NZ. (2022). The Diversity + Inclusion Awareness cards.

https://canvas.auckland.ac.nz/courses/104309/files/13394771?module_item_id=2298436

IDEO.org. (2015). The Field Guide to Human-Centred Design. Design Kit. https://www.designkit.org/resources/1.html

Office for Disability Issues. (2024). Things you should know: Definitions, concepts and approaches. https://www.odi.govt.nz/disability-toolkit/things-you-should-know-definitions-concepts-and-approaches/#:~:text=The%20United%20Nations%20Convention%20on,on%20an%20equal%20basis%20with

Sensitive Choice. (2024). What is the Sensitive Choice blue butterfly?

https://www.sensitivechoice.com/what-is-the-blue-butterfly/

The University of Edinburgh. (2024).The 5R framework for reflection. https://www.ed.ac.uk/reflection/reflectors-toolkit/reflecting-on-experience/5r-framework