FoodSharing | Design Strategies for Social Innovation

2020

Developing a Strategy to Scale-Out and Deep FoodSharing Delft. Expand and transfer the grassroots initiative in other contexts while raising awareness and activate a change of habits. The results of this design research have been collected in a (visual) paper.

This picture has been taken during one of the Food Sharing dinner organised by the initiative. The food waste has been turned into delicious meals thanks to the community members and offered for free to other students at the TU X Kitchen.

Global food waste is a far-reaching problem with tremendous financial, ethical and environmental costs. Food Sharing Delft is one of the several grassroots initiatives that is trying to tackle the issue through a Community of volunteers that, other than save food from being wasted, aim to create a movement of change toward more sustainable food consumption.

However, as many others, the initiative is still too small to achieve a larger impact. In this paper it will be discussed the role of the designer on developing a scaling strategy to expand the community and disseminate its values throughout a network formation. Firstly, an emotional storytelling and a recognisable brand need to be designed to attract partners and raise awareness. Secondly, to activate change it is important to engage people in valuable experiences. Lastly, spur feeling of belonging and accelerate spread throughout collaborative ‘environments’. Following this three-step strategy, social contagion will be triggered and a change in the mindset can be achieved, in the long run.

The Framework Project. Before to narrow down the focus of the paper into a single Case Analysis a more abstract and multi level analysis have been developed as introduction on how strategic design could trigger a system change in the sector of food waste.

The Value Mapping Tool has been used to analysis the value the initiative generated for each stakeholders as well as values that have been missed, wasted or destroyed; This helped us to better understand which are the main challenges and opportunities for Food Sharing Delft.

Mission and Purposes of the initiative found by diving deeper through interviews and 'why' questions.

Future Vision

A world where people know how to balance their food ratio, where supermarket and the food system in general become more localised and will produce just the enough so that food waste will not be such a problem anymore. Thanks to the Food Sharing Movement of Change the concept and principles of sharing food and reduce overconsumption will become the new norm. The feeling of belonging to the same community will bring people to care more about the others and about the environment. Being part of a community is what will drive change and bring people to act consciously.

Scale Out, by growing the community network and Scale Deep through activities and workshops aimed at educating and changing the mindset of people.

The expert designer will be the mediator and connector in charge of creating ‘environments’ and opportunities where connections between people, ideas, institutions can be easily triggered. In this case a Community Kitchen Lab will be arranged in the space offered by I-Change.

“A network provides a natural environment for experimentation and learning”

(Strasser, 2019)

The Design Strategy developed to scale out and deep follow different steps: Communication, Network Formation and Social Contagion throughout the creation of ‘Community Kitchen Labs’. These labs are only a part of the bigger strategy that should be set up to achieve the impact goals: expanding in Delft and beyond, growing the community, raise awareness and eventually activate change. This is a zoom in of the design strategy.

“Scaling is the implementation of change”

(Bradach, 2003).

A Roadmap of actions and steps to scale out and deep through Communication Strategies and Network Formation.

The Role of (Strategic) Designers

We jump from content to process. For this reasons, I believe designers have a chameleonic nature, who can adapt his way of working and his mindset to every situation. We do not only solve problems but we can empower people to drive social change through Design Capabilities (Franzius et al., 2007).

To sum up, if we can define social innovations mainly as collaborative solutions. Then design for social innovation is design to trigger and support those collaborative solutions. Designer help make this initiatives to happen and achieve impact in society (Manzini, 2019). By amplifying and connecting grassroots efforts of local communities with other contexts and/ or with other organizations and institutions, social innovations can be steps within long-term transitions (Penin 2013; Manzini 2007, 2015).

I want to read the paper

Scale Out, by growing the community network and Scale Deep through activities and workshops aimed at educating and changing the mindset of people.

The expert designer will be the mediator and connector in charge of creating ‘environments’ and opportunities where connections between people, ideas, institutions can be easily triggered. In this case a Community Kitchen Lab will be arranged in the space offered by I-Change.

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