Understanding Food: Anthro-Design Research

Understanding Food: Anthro-Design Research in the DCC class at Bangalore
Prof M P Ranjan
Quoted with permission from "Design Concepts & Concerns" blog

Image 1: Presentation by the Tamilnadu group in session at the NID Bangalore Centre. The group chose to build a flow chart of their understanding and the presentation uses a “story-board” that was represented like a film strip from the Tamil cinema story as shown in the illustration below. The storyboard was personified by the image of “Annaswamy” their man from Tamilnadu, from childhood to old age, and the food for all seasons brought into sharp focus by the overlapping threads of their story.

The first assignment at NID Bangalore dealt with mapping ones own knowledge about food and each group had a particular bias from which their knowledge was to be mapped and shared with the rest of the class. As describer earlier this thematic bias plays a strong role on how the subject is addressed and it even shapes the perception of the situation and this was quite evident in the various interpretations that were exhibited by the groups, each working with Climate, Region and Culture, as their given bias for investigation and articulation. While I did not specifically tell the students that they were not expected to do elaborate research on their subject of food with the bias assigned to each group, they did not have the time to do such research and all the teams had to fall back on their well of knowledge that resided in their collective memories and from which they drew quite liberally through a process of brainstorming, categorization and articulation to show their models and constructs on the given subject FOOD – with the bias of Climate, Region and Culture.

Image 2: The ‘story board” shown by the Tamilnadu group who used the persona of a young Tamil software engineer to represent their understanding of the chosen theme of “Food from Tamilnadu” shown here as a life time story, a journey from the cradle to a ripe old age, very interesting indeed.

The Second assignment saw the groups fanning out to various places in Bangalore to carry out direct contact research in the mode of “anthro-design” with each group being assigned to a particular region State of South India. The assigned States were that of Tamilnadu, Andhra and Karnataka, each assigned through a draw of lots, which was done on behalf of the group by their student coordinator. The group members then went into a huddle and made a plan for gathering information and this information strategy played out over the next three days with the groups meeting and exploring Food and eating places in Bangalore, each looking at their respective State issues and trying to make sense of the vast field that could be covered by the omnibus assignment with very low definition and broad interpretation. As designers they were to investigate the subject directly from the field in live contact with ‘experts” and ‘stakeholders’ from whom they could get valuable insights about their assigned subject – FOOD from one of the three chosen States of South India.

Image 3: The Karnataka group looked at the business of Food and explored the various dimensions of Karnataka cuisine as well as the typical resources of the State as they had discovered through their engagement with their contacts and eating-places across Bangalore city.

The Udipi café, MTR – “Mavali Tiffin room” and Café Coffee Day success story played strongly on the minds of this group and shaped the story that they had to share with the class through their wall size model and their mega success stories of food and the potential for a revolution from the State of Karnataka to the world at large. Their presentation was located in the basement workshop space of the NID Bangalore Centre and they impressed with their scale and sense of structure that was achieved in their model.

Image 4: The Andhra group was shocked by the stories of poverty and distress that came from many of their contacts across the migrant labour now in Bangalore. Their installation, which is the appropriate term that can best describe the assembly of objects, sarees and posters that the group assembled to tell their story, was colourful and then filled with coloured light and everything turned red….

Making contact with live sources of informants in the field is so important for design students since it is important for them to learn that what they need is not knowledge of the kind found in books as much as getting a feel of the situation and in picking up specific insights that would give them a sense of direction and a glimpse of the way the trends shaped up in their area of investigation. It is here that anthro design as a subject area gets appreciated and some degree of competence is built up in handling such research where book based knowledge would certainly not fill the need. This kind of experience would be useful for design students and through these experiences they would also learn about research strategies to be used in the field and the whole range of processes of making contact, making observations, meetings and interviews as well as processing the rich data from the field in order to glean insights about latent needs and future possibilities are all critical for design education.

Prof M P Ranjan

Food and AnthroDesign: Approaches and Attitudes for India

Image: The Indian “Thali”, a platter with a mixed set of offerings that are balanced and cooked to suit the occasion and the season, each region has its own varient and the exquisite food can be served on a leaf plate or all the way up the ladder in a silver one. Pictures sourced from Google image search for Indian thali.

This year the theme for the Design Concepts and Concerns course at NID Gandhinagar, Paldi and Bangalore deals with food. With rampant food inflation that has hit the economy over the past nine months and the looming threat of a runaway price of oil which has slowed down the world economy is a context in which we felt it would be prudent to see if a bit of applied imagination could help find new ways out of these pressing dilemmas. Indian food comes in a huge variety across many regional and climatic zones as well as cultural and social categories that has a long tradition behind the form and pattern of consumption by the people of these places. While there are many similarities across zones, the differences are palpable and give a sense of distinction through both form and flavours. These are influenced by a huge variety of factors both local as well as global, and the change in both tastes and habits are rapid as they are deeply protected by the same people across all age barriers. Can we understand these dynamics and apply this understanding to discovering new ways forward that can help the economy, the health of the population and solve many associated problems such as poverty, malnutrition and hunger in our society? We do believe that design and innovation can not just solve some of these problems but also address the larger threats of climate change and political inequity through a better understanding of food surplus economy and access to healthy food to all humans across the planet.

Image: Fruits and vegetables on the streets of Bangalore captured by an avid photo documenter, Rajesh Dangi, who shares his pictures on flickr rajesh-dangi’s photostream and on his blog called Bangalore Daily Photo.

Having said that, we can now look at the micro details of food production, distribution and consumption in our own locations and juxtapose these with global trends and changing aspirations of people. The tools that are used by designers are many and one of the significant new tools is called anthro-design or design-ethnography which helps us understand the finer aspects of human aspirations and behavior which determines to a large extant the choices that will be made by people to satisfy their needs. These can also help us understand the facts and fiction, myths and realities that we have to confront in the process of shaping alternatives that can be then decided through the group processes of politics and social and economic negotiation. The texture of reality is very important in design thinking and action and that is why designers need to go out and look at the reality even if a whole lot of information is available in the form of socio-economic study reports and market statistics. Imagine if someone told you that a street vendor made a living selling a few kilos of guava, mangos, or cucumber by offering a service of slicing the fruit with a knife and a sprinkling of salt and masala, a subsistence living that is. Where does the value come from which he can make a living? A service offered where it is needed and appreciated and that which is informed by the local knowledge of seasonality and local preferences for taste and nutrition and of course the economic reality that fruit is expensive in India and not affordable to most but desired by all. You will not find many market survey reports on these guys but they are all over our streets if we care to look. Rajesh Dangi,s pictures give us an honest view of this reality on the streets of Bangalore.

Image: Series of images from the Time Magazine story about What the World Eats. This is based on the research in the book titled “Hungry Planet: What the World Eats” by Peter Menzel, Faith D'Aluisio

The champions of anthro-design are growing in India and around the world and many new design companies and institutes are offering real research services to help understand the mind of the diverse user of services and products that is the foundation for any design and innovation programme. The discussion list called anthrodesign at yahoogroups.com is an active list that debates and shares insights about the skills and tools of the emerging discipline. Dori – Elizabeth Tunstall teaches the subject called Design Anthropology as an Associate Professor of Design Anthropology at University of Illinois at Chicago . Her blog Dori’s Moblog, is full of insights and very informative podcasts about the subject. Our own graduates have been offering this kind of research as a service to their corporate clients both in India and overseas. Uday Dandavate, an NID alumni, had set up the company called SonicRim along with his teacher, Liz Sanders from Ohio State University. Manoj Kotari, founder of Onio Design, Pune offers trend research to their clients as does Locus Design, Pune handled by three NID graduates, Chandrashekar Badve, Milind Risaildar & Siddharth Kabra and in the South, in Bangalore the IDIOM, which is the biggest design office in India, offers these services with a focus on retail business services. IDIOM is founded by NID graduates Sonia Manchanda, Jacob Mathew and Anand Aurora working in concert with Kishore Biyani, the retail mega star in India, the founder of the Big Baazar and Pantaloon and the Future Group in India.

Image: Nokia Mobile Development Report prepared by Centre for Knowledge Societies in Bangalore. The digital version of the report can be downloaded from this link here as a 15 mb pdf file.

In Bangalore there is another compelling presence in this business which is the Centre for Knowledge Societies which was founded by Dr Aditiya Dev Sood. CKS offers such design research insights into local markets and populations by mapping their aspirations and visually capturing the fine texture of the local along with statistical parameters that can inform innovation and design action in a variety of industries. The CKS report for NOKIA on the Mobile Telephones in India and more recently their “Emerging Economy Report: Societal Intelligence for Business Innovation” that offers insights on populations in Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, South Africa, Egypt and Keneya. This report is however a professional offering that can only be afforded by the multinational corporates however some information is available on the website. CKS has been in partnership with the Doors of Perception in assisting John Thackara in managing the DOORS events in India and this puts them in very good company indeed. John has been a impassioned advocate for design use at the local level and in his path breaking project DOTT07 with the Design Council, London took up Food as one of the thrust areas and his Doors of Perception too continues to promote the idea of local food and sensible consumption. Jogi Panghaal, an NID graduate and member of Doors, was the first design guru who sensitised us to the finer sensibilities of food in human society with his course offering called "Ways of Eating, way back in the early 90's.

Well, we now know that anthro-design both meaningful and also draws big money, and it is a way forward to sense and find attitudes and aspirations that lie below the surface and something that can provide us with design insights that no amount of hard facts and knowledge that science can provide. AnthroDesign is also something that designers do all the time to make sense of the world around them and to get an insight into the minds and emotions of the users that they wish to serve.