You Are What You Eat: Speculative Design for Future Food Inequity

Duration: Dec 2022 - Feb 2023

Issue: Food Justice and the Industrialization of the food industry

Focus: Coastal Residents, Local Democracy, Bottom-up Mechanism

Role: Architecture Designer and Experience Designer

Design Outcomes: Speculative Design, Architecture Design, Service Systems Design, Experience Design, Installation Design

---

Project Introduction

This Super food factory in 2050s will show the future of food consumption. Food that has been pre-processed by food manufacturing companies is referred to as ready-to-eat food. Food companies determine The right of citizens to enjoy healthy food. Is it still possible to have fresh food in the future?

This project speculated a future food consumption worldview by superfood enterprises, with food-class segmentation based on the status and thought combined with a sociological philosophy. The primary components of these projects include food provision from upper-class people to lower-class people, food provisioning services, and system design. I wish to raise public awareness of the potential issues of 'food justice', which are at the root of the food industrialized phenomenon.

---

• From Research to the Speculative Future

Based on the research report on the Chinese food industry and the study of food consumption culture, I used tools such as future rounds to conduct two rounds of future inference. I speculated on four dimensions: food system, food industrialization, food consumption, and food culture, and visualized the future development of the Chinese food industry.

In the future, food will be provided by large food companies, forming a monopoly; food companies will allocate based on people's consumption levels; under the rapid development of food industrialization, fresh food has become a luxury item. People's social relationships undergo significant changes due to differences in dietary culture and the types of food they can consume, leading to an increase in social stratification.

• Company's Spacial Service System: The Integration of Service Design and Spacial Design:

Whether it is a real design or a fictional design, my service design, experience design, and space design all serve the business strategy and goals of enterprises.

I have designed a business model and target consumer profile for a future superfood company. In the future, superfood companies will provide different catering services and food for upper-class, working-class, and low-income people. In superfood companies, the upper class enjoys fresh food, the middle class enjoys fast food, and low-income people can only consume low-nutrient-satiety foods such as canned food. I have designed a spatial plan based on the services and products of the enterprise, planning the size of the space, spatial services, and spatial experience according to the service needs of the enterprise.

future business plan for the food enterprise

food service and related service space

• Experience Design for the Service

In service design, we will design touch points, which are the concrete manifestation of enterprise services and also the medium for enterprise and customer service.

After completing the spatial service design, I need to translate the service into a spatial experience. In this space, in addition to using spatial planning to express service concepts from a macro perspective, I also design the micro parts of the space, including the devices people use in the space, which are the carriers of services. Different types of people enjoy different services and products on different floors, shaping different user experiences through specific designs.

installation and experience design

service and experience of different classes' customer

service and experience of the middle and low classes' customer

service and experience of the first classes' customers

---

Reflection

Although this is a virtual commercial space design project, it not only showcases my thinking on the relationship between service design and space design but also demonstrates how I can achieve a step-by-step approach from abstract social issue research, business model establishment, single-store service design, to micro-level spatial experience design. I believe that service design and spatial design play complementary roles.

In my opinion, service design guides the generation of space and experience design, while communication and interaction between space and experience design and target users help us achieve the goals of the service system.

Thanks for reading :) I am willing to share more information about the project with you. If you would like to read the entire project content, please send an email to bessiepak@gmail.com

Next Project >