Project Genesis
"What does 'being human' mean?" was the question at the forefront of my visit to the Wellcome Collection in London. Aiming to explore themes of health, identity, and trust, I explored the exhibition seeking sources of inspiration.
Below Right: ICARDA seed packets - seeds from Syria, 2019
Initial Forays
The pieces I resonated with at the exhibition prompted me to begin exploring themes around food and its effect on our mental wellbeing - specifically looking at the relationship between people with ADHD (myself included) and ultra-processed foods.
Below: I logged the food I ate for 7 days, and how it made me feel, to better understand my own relationship with food
KEY INSIGHTS
1//
I tend to eat impulsively and repeat the same recipe often
2//
I feel guilty when eating food I perceive to be ‘bad’ - usually processed or greasy foods
3//
I tend to want to eat something adjacent to a specific cuisine or ingredient - for example 28/4, I wanted Spanish food, and later in the week I ate a lot of aubergine.
Above: I created a journey map to help understand my pain points at meal times
Is It Just Me?
I researched across the web to see if there was anyone else out there who suffered from the same problems. There was!
meal planning with ADHD?
u/stephocrates in r/ADHDWomen
one of the biggest struggles in my life due to my ADHD is my inability to plan meals. When I lived alone I lost a ton of weight because I was so incapable of buying groceries and cooking food for myself. Now I live with my boyfriend and as a team we’re way better about having groceries in the house, but I’m still so bad at planning meals. He works late most nights so it’s up to me to come up with something to eat by the time he gets home (he does all the cleaning afterwards so it’s a fair trade don’t worry). Cooking is just an ADHD nightmare for me. It’s time consuming, somehow it’s boring and overstimulating at the same time, you have to plan ahead to thaw things or have ingredients ready, and it requires deciding what to cook and i have extreme choice paralysis lol.
Okay seriously, how do you grocery shop and meal prep?
u/bellybuttonthraway in r/ADHD
I'm trying to eat cleaner but grocery shopping and meal prepping is so overwhelming. I feel like I can't even start making a list sometimes and just wander the store and go "ooo looks yummy". But then I have a bunch of food I don't eat in the fridge and some goes bad.
Or, I'll be like "I'm going to eat x and y" and I buy and it then I lose the cravings for it and avoid it like crazy and then it either expires or I forget about it until I want to eat it again and buy more.
Meal Planning with ADHD Sucks
u/jenleighhh in r/ADHDWomen
I’m a mom and wife and am finding myself so stuck and exhausted by meal planning/prepping/shopping ALL OF IT. For someone with adhd, it seems impossible with so many steps that are involved with feeding a family. The budgeting, the ingredients, hyper fixating on recipe planning but then not able to execute, the dishes overwhelm after cooking, etc. I make the list and try to order online so I don’t get distracted in the store but it’s come to the point where I’m just throwing stuff together and straying away from my own nutritional goals because of overwhelm and being paralyzed.
Nutritional Optimiser
Core Needs:
Cares about caloric intake and “macros” of their meals, and is willing to compromise on taste somewhat for the sake of a meal which meets their personal goals
Wants to be able to track what they have eaten over the course of a day
Wants to eat a varied, balanced diet
Behaviours:
Cooks simple, but macro-efficient meals, but struggles for variety
Gets bored of eating the same meals too frequently
May feel guilty if they eat something which strays too far from their nutritional goals
Struggles to choose what to eat sometimes, as a result of this “food boredom”
Home Sous Chef
Core Needs:
Wants to eat tasty, yet easy to cook meals
Wants to eat a variety of different meals throughout a week
Wants to explore new flavours and cuisines
Behaviours:
Enjoys cooking, and has a lot of recipes in their repertoire - and even freestyles occasionally
Doesn’t like to eat the same meal too many times in proximity
Sometimes can’t cook what they want to cook due to lack of ingredients, which can cause friction and decision paralysis at mealtimes
Comfort Craver
Core Needs:
Wants to familiar, easy meals
Doesn’t want to be hassled with complex cooking techniques
Behaviours:
Tends to cook more simple meals, when they do cook
Tries to eat well but ends up eating ready meals and takeaways more than they might want to, as they don’t know many recipes
The Problem
With these archetypes, I was able to create problem statements and How Might We questions to further scope in what my design should solve:
The Nutritional Optimiser (NO) wants to eat, and keep track of a varied, balanced diet to look after their physical health, but struggles to find variety and enjoyment in the meals that they are eating
HMW help the NO to keep track of the meals they are eating?
HMW help the NO to encourage variety in their meals?
The Home Sous Chef (HSC) wants to cook a variety of flavourful meals, but struggles with decision paralysis when faced with the ingredients they already have
HMW help the HSC to decide on a recipe?
HMW help the HSC to keep better stock of their ingredients?
The Comfort Craver wants to eat nice food which doesn’t require much effort to cook, but struggles due to a lack of recipe knowledge:
HMW help the CC to find recipes appropriate to their skill level?
Getting the Show on the Road
Problem statements and HMW questions in hand, I was armed to start working on prototypes. Crazy 8's, a journey flow, and some lo-fi scribblings were the first port of call:
Above: Crazy 8s were a great way to churn out a lot of basic ideas in a short time frame, due to the time constraints for each drawing being so short
Below: I drafted a possible user flow for my solution
Below: I sketched some low-fidelity mockups for my user flow
Levelling Up
Mid-fi wireframes were created to experiment with layouts and piece together a clickable flow:
Creating a Visual Identity
A style guide would inform the creation of a high fidelity final prototype
