ENVISIONING SUSTAINABLE SOLUTIONS FOR THE GOOD FOOD PURCHASING PROGRAM
PROTOTYPING INFRASTRUCTURES
We prototyped infrastructures that could facilitate a self-organizing marketplace for the equitable and sustainable movement of nutrients in Chicago
THE ASK
How might the emergence of public institutions as consumers with choice drive systemic change?
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Working for the Chicago Food Policy Action Council, this project aimed to bring the Chicago Good Food Purchasing Program (GFPP) to life by illustrating evocative visions of sustainable solutions for food sourcing in Chicago through scenarios and narratives that embody the social, economic, and environmental goals of the GFPP.
Project dates Spring 2020, 14 weeks (M.Des class workshop)
My Role I was a full participant and contributor throughout all phases of the project
Client Chicago Food Policy Action Council
APPROACH
Taking a systems perspective
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Multi-stakeholder systems are not “designed” in the traditional sense. They emerge, evolve, and adapt based on the infrastructures that exist. Knowing this, we took an approach to investigate how new infrastructures could seed new behaviors towards the policy goals set forth by the GFPP.
RESEARCH METHODS
Immersive ethnography
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When possible, we immersed ourselves in our partner organizations’ context though observation and interviews. Our goals here were not to gain insights into the user experience, rather we were curious about the systemic features and affordances, actor relationships, and value chains.
Prototyping to learn
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Our design-to-research approach was speculative in nature. Our focus was on investigating alternatives through discursive prototypes and using frameworks to understand their implications on the greater systems. This approach, differing from traditional HCD, served us while envisioning solutions within multi-stakeholder systems — especially when some stakeholders are not human.
COMPUTATIONAL-BASED SOLUTIONS
Exploring new system-level affordances
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We chose to focus on exploring computation-based solutions to see how new technological capabilities may embed new affordances towards the preferred future. Our view is that technology itself is not a solution, yet technology can allow us to do things differently than before and potentially seed alternative outcomes.
REFRAME
HMW… Infrastructure a self-organizing system (a marketplace) for the equitable and sustainable movement of nutrients throughout Chicago?
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A critical re-frame allowed us shift our thinking from the GFPP—a compliance framework with no mandate for action—to envision a future in which the goals of GFPP are embedded into a structured marketplace where intelligent systems facilitate the flow of relevant information to allow buyers and suppliers to reflect these values in their behaviors.
INSIGHTS
A system of solutions
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Our system of solutions were categorized under three buckets where intelligence is embedded through introducing new technologies and new affordances are uncovered.
Localizing Food Production
Flexible, Traceable Distribution
Smart Consumption
ANATOMY OF INFRASTRUCTURES
Seeding systems change
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We used the framework below to think about how the infrastructures of a system may be leveraged to drive a certain agenda. It may be used in two directions to help uncover different understandings.
Beginning with the stated goals, we can derive potential impacts and features that may help achieve those impacts. We can then connect them though their affordances to understand their specific utilities.
Beginning with features and moving outward in, we can understand how a new product or technology may produce new affordances and impacts which serve certain agendas (intentional or unintentional).
BEYOND OUR WORK
Amplified by a pandemic
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In March, about half way through this project, Chicago sheltered in place due to COVID-19. While the situation altered some of our plans for collaboration with our stakeholders it also laid bare the state of the infrastructures that serve our food systems, especially those that serve children. The stakeholders that we worked with on this project offer many children in Chicago the only meals that eat on a given day.
While the scope of our work was largely discursive—meant to spark dialogue about a preferred future—the scenarios that we investigated remain critical for achieving an equitable food system.
Client
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Chicago Food Policy Action Council
Project sponsored by the New Futures Lab, Fabri-Kal
Design team
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This project was a class workshop with Associate Professor Carlos Teixeira, IIT-ID