Edible Food Package

A research to determine what the ideal experience of edible food packaging is.

Overview
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In order to determine what the ideal experience of edible food packaging is, our team conducted a ten-week research process that included interviews, cultural probes, and sensory cue workshops. We compiled all of the insights from the research and began affinitization, to reveal patterns in the participant responses. To visualize the results, we created a framework that synthesizes the key takeaways and conveys the ideal edible food packaging experience.


check our Client book

Role
UX Research
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Team
Jevin Chen
Jake Barraclough
Ruitao Wan Renkai Sun
Xu Yao
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Date
1/2022 - 3/2022

We start secondary research to understand the current edible food packaging market
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We did a lot of secondary research and created our research plan based on our research.We also contacted the current edible food packaging manufacturers and scheduled interviews with them.

We made 3 interviews guides for consumers, manufacturers, and environmental Organizations
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In order to conduct effective interviews, we designed different questions for different groups, which followed McKinsey Company's powerful questions.
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Consumer
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1. What do you think about edible food packaging after seeing these pictures?
2. Which picture do you think would appeal to the general public the most?
3. If your food came in edible packaging, how would you feel about it?
4. (If yes) What would your reasons be for trying it? (If no) Why wouldn't you?
5。 What are your concerns with edible food packaging?
6. Would you consider eating edible food packaging unacceptable behavior?
7. What are your thoughts on food packaging waste?
8. How do you feel about the impacts of food packaging on the environment?
9. How do you think edible food packaging could influence waste management going forward?

Manufactor
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1. How do you feel about using new edible packaging materials?
2. Would your company produce edible food packaging and if so, why?
3. How does the manufacturing process for edible food packing compare to regular packaging?
4. How difficult do you think it would be to promote edible food packaging?
5. How's the revenue&cost of edible food packaging comparing with other bio degradable packaging(and plastic)?
6. Where the source material for making edible packaging comes from nowadays?
7. What is the reason why edible packaging is not widely promoted?
8. To what extent do you believe edible food packaging could replace standard packaging in the future?
9. What might be the ideal ratio of production between edible food packaging and standard packaging?
10. How do you envision the future market of food packaging?
11. Do you have any ideas to improve the edible food packaging?

Environmental Organization
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1. Could you just start by giving a brief overview of what your company does and some of the work you're involved in?
2. How does your company influence government decision making?
3. I see you've worked on the Sustainable Development Goals, did any data on plastic waste go into those goals?
4. Number 14 is about sustainability of the oceans, what are your thoughts on plastic waste impacting those environments?
5. Do you know of any current methods that governments and other organizations are using to combat the issue of plastic waste?
6. Are there any surprising or most shocking pieces of data that you can think off related to waste?
7. Tell me what you know about edible food packaging and have you ever tried it?

We conducted 25 interviews to understand people’s opinions towards edible food packaging
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We invited 25 participants and designed 30-45 minutes interviews and got more than 1500 data points.

We designed and conducted cultural probe research to observe and record people’s reactions when trying edible food package
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We designed 3 posters to introduce edible food packaging and attract people. We conducted the workshop in a farmer's market and got more than 70 people to participate.

We designed and conducted 15 online sensory cues to identify people’s ideal edible food packaging experience
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We use the affinity diagram to analyze all the data we had and got 29 insights
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We ordered the 29 insights by the number of data points behind them, then we identified 8 high-frequency insights and transferred them to actionable design ideas.

Based on all the research we had, we made a framework and a client book for the ideal edible food packaging experience

We brainstormed more than 100 ideas and identified our target space‍

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We presented our research to the edible edible cup company β€œAmai”
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We contacted the edible cup company "Amai" at the early stage of our research and they provided us a lot of help. At the end of our research, we presented our works to them, they like them and kept the connection with us after our bio-design challenge.

Here’s our amazing team!

Reflections
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I really enjoyed this journey. On the one hand, we learned a lot of solid research methods and a lot of principles when conducting research. On the other hand, we created real value through our research, we contacted with many manufacturers and built the real connection with them, and our work definitely provides a lot of insights for them.

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