OPEN FOOD. Launch event

Transcription

1 OPEN FOOD Launch event

2 PROJECT OVERVIEW Two of the key challenges that the food manufacturing industry faces include the ability to identify market segments that have different sensory needs, and the ability to respond quickly to these segments. There is a great deal of uncertainty and risk surrounding the level of success of new product development due to limited access to customers that current market research techniques afford. Moreover, the ability to re-configure manufacturing lines and supply chains to quickly respond to emerging market segments is largely dependent on how information is managed. At the same time we are in an age of participation, where consumers no longer need to be on the periphery of development, but can play an active role. The Open Food project is about building a new ICT platform that will enable the food industry to crowdsource sensory and experiential perceptions and attributes of food products and to translate those into customer requirements for new products, integral packaging and manufacture. Through doing this we aim to address the key innovation challenges, which are to scale up and streamline consumer-informed innovation and to reduce R&D waste. open food 1

3 open food launch event The Open Food lunch event took place on 18th September, 10.00am pm at The Old Vinyl Factory in Hayes. The focus of the event was the launch of Brunel and Nottingham University s 2.4 Million research project into open innovation in the food and packaging sectors, funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Councils Future ICTenabled manufacturing crossdisciplinary research clusters initiative. Over the next five years research teams from Brunel and Nottingham will be working with industry partners, including Camden BRI, Design Bridge, AutoDesk, Giraffe Innovation, EnginSoft and others, on this exciting project in the food, packaging and related manufacturing and supply chain sectors. Focused on principles of open innovation, where people who are external to a company can contribute to the innovation of products, the project team will prototype cloud-based software platforms to dynamically involve customers in the creation of new products that enable conversations between consumers and brands and manufacturers. During the morning of this interactive event, Sharon Baurley, Harris Makatsoris, Tom Rodden, Richard Coles, Chris Thorpe, Andy Kerridge and Orion Kelly presented the background to the challenges and opportunities related to open innovation and consumer engagement faced by the food and packaging industries, together with an outline of the research programme, and the key crowd sourcing technologies that are emerging. Ian Ferris introduced Co-Innovate, a joint Brunel ERDF funded programme to support innovation amongst SMEs through links with Brunel University. The afternoon sessions provided practical opportunities to explore the potential of crowd sourcing platforms for open food and packaging innovation, as well as their benefits. More than 40 attendants had the chance to take part to seven analogue crowdsourcing activities. The outcomes of those activities are being presented here. The reseacrh probes can be found in the appendix. An event hosted by open food 2

4 main course satisfying simple standard mild natural soft hot Mexican spicy healthy delicious heavy warm tasty toilet oily free red normal USA individual mariachi presentable Main Course was a warm up activity that was designed to be playful but insightful. Participants were asked to stain their table mats not only with food, but also with ink. Participants were asked to associate their food with words, fictional characters, songs and films. By this way people s perceptions were brought to life. The first very interesting insight came from the Chef s questions: What are you eating today? Chef got 20 different answers, from beef curry to rice and beans, even though there were only two types of food: Chilli con carne with rice and vegetarian chilli with rice. This underlines an issue with food labelling and communication, which came up also during the Taste Map activity. When it came to words, participants answers were mostly descriptive (spicy, hot), even though there were some users that gave more imaginative replies (Robert Rodriguez!). If this food was a person would probably be a Mexican around 40. At the box office, Marilyn Monroe (Some like it hot) came first, followed by several spaghetti westerns. On the contrary, would be really hard to choose a soundtrack for the Main Course. Songs and genres were very diverse, from dance (Mambo no 5) to rock (Red Hot Chilli Peppers). open food 3

5 seek & destroy/ overload/ abundance This activity used imaginary devices to engage participant s imagination and stimulate discussion. It was consisted of three parts: Seek & Destroy, Overload and Abundance. Each one was starting with a provoking question. Really, which device would you like to have? From the data analysis and the conversations during the activity interesting findings came up: >> Consumers believe that manufacturers make ingredients lists opaque. >> Consumers would like to know the nutritional composition of their shopping basket. >> It is important to make ingredients and portions of ingredients meaningful. >> Consumers need to know the long-term impact on their health of certain foods; be warned about. They can see the immediate impact of drinking too much alcohol, but in other cases (fat, sugar, etc) the effects manifest themselves later on. open food 4

6 seek & destroy overload abundance other (vitamin A, cheese, digestives) none, learn balance! sugar fat salt other gelatine E numbers gluten sugar, sweeteners fat, margarine crisps salt calories alcohol meat, fish chocolate other (sushi, herbs) ice cream vegetables, fruits mushrooms allergens Imagine you could scan supermarket shelves with a food detector. Which ingredient would you like to be warned about? The majority of the answers were: fat (18%), sugar (18%) & salt (13%). Fat and sugar are good to be avoided for reasons that have to do mostly with allergy and weight. Some participants avoid fat for cultural reasons too. A relatively high proportion of people don t like the taste and/ or texture of salt. Imagine you had a device that warns you every time you consumed too much of a certain food or ingredient. Which food of would you like to be warned about? 36% of the participants answered sugar and/or artificial sweeteners, because of weight, health and addiction. 33% of the people replied fat/margarine and 21% salt, mostly for health reasons. One participant said would just prefer to learn balance. Sounds like a goal for Open Food. Imagine you could 3D print a food ingredient and have it instantly and in large amounts. What would you 3D print? Most people (42%) answered meat or fish because they believe this would (theoretically) be more sustainable, healthy and fast. For similar reasons people would to 3D print fruits and vegetables. 33% of participants would 3D print chocolate just because they like it. A high number of answers was given based on the instant gratification and sustainability this (not so) fictional scenario could offer and this will be definitely taken into consideration. open food 5

7 looper milk bottle tin can egg box >> Kitchen container >> Scoop >> Plant pot with water level indicator >> Musical instrument (fill it with rise or seeds and use it as maraca) >> Container >> Throwing game >> Plant pot >> Diffuser in a lamp >> Can walker toy (put strings on the cans and walk with the cans under your feet) >> Seeds tray: it can be covered with a clear plastic lid to allow the plant to grow. When the plant grows the tray can be cut in 6 pieces and each of them buried to biodegrade in the soil >> Fragrance sticks holder Looper was an imaginative scenario, about a world where you can t throw anything away and every package should be repurposed or upcycled. The provocative storyline varied from the real-world narratives grounded in everyday behaviour to more speculative ones, that opened up very interesting discussions and gave insights into future use of packaging. Answers were original and creative: From egg boxes that are made of paper layers and can be used as toilet paper to drainage pipes made of yogurt. Toys for kids and containers were generally the most popular ones. Participants generally tried to satisfy needs related to storage, instant gratification and entertainment. These findings will be further researched and analysed. cereal box >> Card game >> Kids game (cut & fold game with instructions printed inside the box) >> Insulating material >> Pet homes >> Furniture apple crumble pie >> Plant pot >> Toy for kids >> Camping cutlery >> Egg cups >> Find the pea game >> Cups >> Kitchen containers >> Music drum yoghurt >> Ice lolly maker >> Seeds tray open food 6

8 TASTE MAP Irish bread potatoes comfort food sweeter ketchup transport issues less sweet ketchup Belfast home of balti Edinburgh Baxters soup Birmingham London garlic production no curry no fresh food Manchester economic Liverpool challenges no food production in London Cloudy with a chance of meatballs. This activity was about making a taste map of the UK. Participants had to choose from ten popular foods (pizza, curry, kebab etc) and ten adjectives (fast, home-made, fresh etc). The exercise had value in exposing factors which might be considered as part of a more in-depth process to develop a crowd sourced taste-map. The limited numbers of participants, and the nature of the exercise does not lead to any authoritative geographical taste map data! Quantitative analysis of the results yields little at this stage. For example n people placed Egg & Bacon stickers in the Midlands. However many useful insights were generated by the parallel conversations, for example relating to ethnographic, cultural and geographical differences. Basic findings are summarised below: >> UK is not a place for food tourism. >> There is a general upscale in quality. >> Terminology varies. >> Products and marketing are mostly generic across the UK. >> City versus country side differences. >>There are food and eating habit stereotypes but there is also lack of proper knowledge. >> National rather than regional differences are relevant for big producers. >> Link shopping basket data with cooking and eating information. >> Premium food in wealthy areas. >> Home made food is associated with isolated areas. >> Kebab = night out - associations with a certain type of night-out behaviour Summary opinions and initial analysis can be identified as follows: Value of a Taste Map? The participants mainly represented packaging and food manufacturing interests. They did not represent the whole field-toplate cycle, on the basis of their current business models they did not immediately appear to be interested in rich granular geographic data. However this doesn t take into account market trends or the views of other stakeholders. Terminological variations The realisation that simple one or two word food descriptions or reduction of food types to icons (Pizza, Salad etc) cannot adequately capture the rich regional variations in product, taste and consumption available could be the basis for exploring UX/ UI which can support the actual richness in regional, cultural and economic variations. Field-to-Plate opportunities Titled Taste Map the crowd sourcing opportunity suggests a focus on questions of food taste sweet/sour, hot/cold etc. However additional significant factors and opportunities might be usefully incorporated by considering the whole field-to-plate cycle. For example food producers have different primary interests to food retailers to consumers, food traceability and food miles and many other current challenges for the sector have strong links with geography. Food trends and food tourism Are just two of many potential themes resulting from this initial work from which the development of a Taste map might have value to a range of stakeholders. open food 7

9 a taste of life intensity very high high medium low none time 07:00 10:00 13:00 16:00 19:00 22:00 01:00 activity sweetness saltiness bitterness How do activities and taste interact and vary throughout the day? Participants had to use different colour pens to plot the activity levels they had the day before the workshop and the amounts of flavour they consumed at these times. The average diagram is presented here. The dominant taste is sweetness, which has a peak on 10:00. On the contrary, bitterness appears only at the same time and in low levels. Even though the general picture is very interesting, this activity was more of a demo of a potential digital interactive platform. With the spread of smart mobile phones and tables there is a great opportunity of real time, dynamic feedback, not to mention the Internet of Things (IoT), where physical products will be connected to the internet. Today, capturing the human-product interaction is easier than ever and this potential will also be explored during this project. open food 8

10 personal taste In this activity participants had to answer a number of questions choosing from the following foods: sushi, kebab, savoury pie, soup, pizza, salad, salad, eggs & bacon, steak frites, curry, fish & chips. According to the findings, consumers: >> Love the taste and shape of pizza, would eat more often if it was healthier. >> Rarely eat sushi, mainly because it is hard to make it at home and is expensive when you eat it out. >> Eat salads a lot, mainly as a sider. It is considered the healthiest food. Despite that, nobody said that an ideal food would taste like salad. People would eat even more if it was cheaper. Which food do you have more often? pizza kebab soup sushi curry salad Which food do you rarely have? sushi kebab fish & chips soup savoury pie steak frites >> Would eat steak frites more often if it was cheaper, they do love the taste. >> Like savoury pie, would like to make it more often at home, but find it hard. >> Eat soup quite often as they find it easy to make, cheap and healthy. Nobody said that likes the way it looks though. >> The ideal food would taste like steak frites, would cost like soup, would be nutritious like salad, would be easy to make like soup, would look like pizza, and would be healthy like salad. Which food would you eat more often if it was cheaper? sushi steak frites salad curry Which food would you eat more often if it was easier to make? curry steak frites eggs & bacon soup kebab savoury pie sushi Which food would you eat more often if it was healthier? curry savoury pie kebab eggs & bacon fish & chips steak frites pizza open food 9

11 Taste the Shape the Importance of Implicit associations Whether we like it or not, we, consumers, make implicit associations with everything we encounter through our senses. Brands, packs, products, services and experiences of all sorts create associations we implicitly use to drive our decisions. In the future, Open Innovation will take into account not only the rational input from consumers - feedback, preferences, ideas - but also harvest implicit associations - what the brand, pack, product, experience mean and if they are coherent within and with the consumers expectations. This little exercise showed that even a simple flavour in a transparent liquid can say a lot! We can only imagine the wealth of information implicit research can bring into the development process of tomorrow s successful food manufactured products. open food 10

12 caramel-vanilla Caramel-Vanilla flavours are quite common in everyday food product. Their creamy and sweet taste creates an easy association with brownish tones, dark and light. It s soft texture make it naturally rounded, but not perfect, probably influenced by the raw sugar notes of the caramel, also demonstrated in the complexity level associated. This flavour was spontaneously associated to a sense of comfort and parties/enjoyment. Caramel-Vanilla is perceived as more feminine and complex, as well as relaxing and friendly. shapes sparkling berry Red flavours are harder to spot without colour, which explains the presence of blue in the mostly red choice. The sparkling water clearly influenced the choice of a spiky shape, without it participants would ve probably opted for a more hexagonal shape inspired by the fruit s acidity - berry s are not as round as we think! Again, the bubbles have a great influence on most of the descriptors and themes, but still the bright fruitiness evokes freshness, excitement and complexity. Interestingly, the blend seems to be perceived as a tad more masculine as well. shapes words words colours words colours words Warm, Friendly Cold, unfriendly Warm, Friendly Cold, unfriendly Active, fast Slow, Calm Active, fast Slow, Calm Relaxing Exciting Relaxing Exciting Masculine Feminine Masculine Feminine Simple Complex Simple Complex open food 11

13 cream Cream was a tricky flavour, the taste is well-known by our subconscious brain, but without colour and most importantly mouthfeel it was very hard for our tasters to get a grip of it. Shape and colour come out very clearly despite being a transparent flavoured water. Inspired only by its taste, respondents have associated concepts like warmth, friendliness, relaxation and simplicity with the cream flavour - a soft feminine touch to every dessert. shapes mint - green apple skin This green flavour had been specifically tailored to fool the taste buds and our subconscious. The spearmint typically inspired the spontaneous warmth, rounder shapes and slow pace, whereas the acid note of the green apple skin it s freshness, excitement and more sharp edges. What s interesting is that this blend is both exciting and calm, not surprising considering the healthy invigorating and relaxing virtues of mint. shapes words words colours words colours words Warm, Friendly Cold, unfriendly Warm, Friendly Cold, unfriendly Active, fast Slow, Calm Active, fast Slow, Calm Relaxing Exciting Relaxing Exciting Masculine Feminine Masculine Feminine Simple Complex Simple Complex open food 12

14 NEXT steps The Open Food project is open to new collaborations. We are seeking to work together with food and packaging industries to conduct crowdsourcing experiments. For more information and other inquires please contact Sharon Baurley: acknowledgments We would really like to thank all the participants, the speakers and our sponsors. Thank you! Hope to see you soon. We would also to thank Jerome Linder and Paris Selinas for designing the afternoon activities. Follow us on open food 13

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18 Appendix A THE MEANING OF TASTE Taste half the sample in front of you and tell us what shape and colour you associate with this flavour. Which three words do you spontaneously associate with this flavour? Taste the second half of the sample and tell us which term you would associate the flavour the most with by putting an X in the appropriate place on the scale. warm, friendly active, fast relaxing masculine simple cold, unfriendly slow, calm exciting feminine complex open food 17