Creating Visibility: Understanding the Design Space ...

Creating Visibility: Understanding the Design Space for Food Waste

ABSTRACT Support for ecological sustainability is of growing interest and the over-consumption, production and disposal of foods are a major concern for sustainability, ethics and the economy. However, there is a deficit in current understandings of how technologies could be used within this area. In this paper we focus on food waste and report on a qualitative study to understand daily food practices around shopping planning, gardening, storing, cooking and throwing away food, and their relations to waste. The findings point to design-relevant factors such as losing sight and reordering; spatial, temporal and social constraints; trust and valuing food source; and busyness, unpredictability and effort. The main contribution of this paper is to understand food practices and in turn to present seven dimensions of visibility to draw out implications for designing mobile and ubiquitous technologies for this new arena for design. We also present a prototype evolving from our qualitative results, the mobile food waste diary.

Author Keywords Sustainability, human food interaction, food waste, qualitative study, in-home tour

ACM Classification Keywords H1.5 User design (e.g., HCI): Miscellaneous.

General Terms Design, Theory

1. INTRODUCTION Issues of ecological sustainability are becoming of increasing concern worldwide and this is paralleled by a growing interest in HCI to support more sustainable behaviours. To date this has largely played out in relation to energy consumption [15] or transportation choices [18]. However food is another area of growing concern for ecological sustainability, especially considering an increasing population and its demand in both food consumption and production [9, 12, 22]. What is produced, what we eat and how much of the food is thrown away in production and consumption greatly affect green house gas emissions, which Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Conference’10, Month 1–2, 2010, City, State, Country. Copyright 2010 ACM 1-58113-000-0/00/0010 …$15.00.

in turn will have almost unpredictable impacts on our climate, fauna and flora [24]. Sustainability in relation to food can be considered around three main issues. First an animal-based diet causes more green house gas emissions compared to a more plant-based diet [13]. Second organic farming, and associated organic food consumption, has very positive effects on the environment and public health [35]. Organic food consumption is often coupled to a regional and seasonal emphasis. A local and seasonal diet not only decreases carbon gas emissions but also supports local business, regional food cultures and food security [25]. Third, and the key motivation for our paper here, is the environmental impact of food waste [23]. According to a study in the U.S.A approximately 27 percent of edible food is wasted, which is equivalent to 2 percent of the annual energy consumption [12]. Another study from the United Nations, investigating food waste more globally, presents similar results, and indicates that one third of the total worldwide food production and consumption is thrown away [22]. According to a study in Europe, food in residual waste amounts up to 13 percent [37]. Hence food waste unnecessarily contributes to greenhouse gas emissions, which could easily be avoided if we just produced and consumed the food that is needed. A study in the UK further revealed that most edible food is wasted by consumers at the home rather than in agriculture or retail [1]. Therefore we are particularly concerned with understanding everyday behaviours in the home and the daily practices that can lead to food waste. Mobile devices and applications could be particularly suitable for supporting sustainable food practices since these practices touch upon a number of activities in different locations from shops to the home. To this end we report on a qualitative study with 11 participants that involved a combination of in-home interviews and tours. Findings point to the impact of issues such as over-buying, visibility, order and re-order, spatial, temporal and social constraints, intention-behaviour gaps, time and effort. The main contribution of the paper then is to map out a space of concerns arising from these daily practices around food, drawing implications for designing technology. We also present a first prototype, the food waste diary that explores a mobile application to encourage people to reflect on their food practices.

2. BACKGROUND AND RELATED WORK Food waste is tied up with the larger picture around food practices more generally. Food and sustainability have both received attention in diverse literatures. Here we draw on two main areas: psychology and sociology and draw out some of the main issues they identify around sustainable food practices. We also consider how HCI research has approached support for sustainability and food more generally.

2.1 From food and the individual to society and psychology Food is a cultural and social concept, what constitutes food is determined by the social and cultural milieu of the potential consumer [1, p. 1]. The literature in (social) psychology and sociology points to issues around food and sustainability being complex and multi-factorial. These practices are influenced by the contextual background and external factors such as the food itself, as well as by internal factors specific to the individual, [2] e.g., through their senses, psychology and physiology [10]. Food practices are also influenced by the socio-demographic background through which we develop the orientation of our norms, values, attitudes and expertise, and also our life history [6]. Sustainable food practice is socially highly selective. A large qualitative study in Europe has shown that several factors positively influence sustainable behaviour in the context of foods, namely higher education, availability, price, female gender, gardening, and growing up in a family that is already practicing sustainably [6]. However while these studies point out the factors and influences at a macro level it isn’t clear how they practically translate into the routine everyday practices and choices people make around food. Practices around food are also embedded in every day lifestyles. Even if intentions and attitudes are positive towards sustainable food consumption it does not imply that this is reflected in practice and concrete actions. Vermeir and Vebeke [40] refer to this as the intention-behaviour gap. Based on a laboratory study of purchase of sustainable food products, they suggest a number of factors that can foster consumption decisions towards organic products and help to overcome the intention-behaviour gap. These include: involvement with sustainability, perceived availability, and perceived consumer effectiveness [40]. However, as the study was carried out in the lab and not in the field, it doesn’t capture the whole experience or process people undergo when buying at a food retailer and other situations where this gap plays out. Food also has a very social component. Food in general is often experienced in a community and the social element of food is essential. Cooking and eating is a highly social process, something that connects family members or lets friends having a great time together [21] and therefore offering interesting opportunities for interactive technologies. Food is also orchestrating matters of selfpresentation and there are differences if we eat in the presence of others or alone. Social norms can also affect sustainable behaviour positively or negatively [10].

2.2 Sustainability, food and HCI Food practices and ecological sustainability are starting to gain some attention in HCI and are often described in terms of supporting local and alternative movements and communities. These could be for example interactive technologies for smallscale food producers [32], farmers markets [28], food co-ops, urban gardens, locavorism1, permaculture or slow food communities. Blevis [3] suggests a number of ways that they could be supported by technologies to promote local food

1

Term introduced for 2005 World Environment Day to describe the practice of eating food harvested within an area mostly bound by a 100mile radius.

production, more sustainable food consumption and sustainable land use. Existing practical applications in the area of ecological sustainable food culture often aim to achieve sustainable food purchasing habits in a supportive way, such as providing communities with information about how to buy locally [27], enhancing the transparency of the supply chain [5, 28] or providing seasonal recipes for cooking [4]. For designing such interactive systems, Choi and Blevis [9, p. 116] state more generally to constantly ensure user participation and “anticipation for the technology’s socio-cultural, health, and environmental impact”. However while food and sustainability are topics of concern in all this work, the focus is more on where the food comes from and none are specifically concerned with where the food goes to and practices around food waste. Other food-related work in HCI is concerned with promoting healthy eating [20, 29, 30] often with an emphasis on choice of foods and on social support. While there are many parallels between an ecological sustainable and healthy diet, nevertheless, the problem space around sustainable food consumption may be very different from health-related food issues. One difference is that the aim is not health for the single person but health for the environment, which means that the results are not easy to see. Losing weight for example can be directly observed, but the results of sustainable food practices are serving the greater good and the environment and are less directly and personally observable. Most of the research in HCI targeting issues of ecological sustainability and health for the environment [38, 41] aims to support behaviour change, often drawing from motivational theories [11]. This has been mainly explored for energy consumption [15, 17]. While the issue of food waste shares the ‘greater good’ aspects of such energy related research, it is different in that direct monetary savings can be achieved by reducing consumption. With unplanned food wastage, the monetary investment is already made in advance at initial purchase at the food retailer hence the motivation-reward structures around food waste can be quite different. The value of mobile phones as a tool to support sustainability in transportation [18] or food and health [20] has been shown. Here we are also interested in food waste at the home, so recent technology advances in the home are of interest. These include interactive fridges [7], kitchen appliances for energy feedback [26] or fully equipped smart kitchen approaches [33] e.g. to enable nutrition aware cooking [8]. BinCam is one ubiquitous and social media project where pictures from food waste are taken from the inside of the Bin and uploaded to a Facebook page. Visitors of the page can reflect on the pictures taken [39]. These pervasive approaches enable new ways of supporting practices around food and suggest that there might also be possibilities for applying technology to help reduce waste. However, to realise any potential of technology, we need to understand more about the everyday domestic practices associated with food waste. Other domestic research has looked at ‘waste’ in the home, but in the form of reusing and reacquiring objects in the home [34]. In summary, while food and sustainability have been of concern to HCI more generally [9], the specific issue of food waste has yet to be directly addressed. Given its environmental impact and contribution to green house gas emissions, the potential of new technologies to make a difference here is significant. Since most

of the food for private consumption is wasted at home [1], we wanted to understand some of the details involved in domestic daily practices around food. We then go on to identify opportunities for designing technologies to support more ecological aware food practices and reduce waste, and prototype one mobile application as a food waste diary.

3. PARTICIPANTS METHOD

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FIELD

STUDY

Inspired by ethnographic approaches in the home within HCI [34, 38, 41] we conducted in-depth interviews with 11 participants in 10 households from different socio-demographic backgrounds (2 of the participants were in the one household). 5 interviews took place in [city]2 and 6 interviews in a small country town. 8 of the participants were female and 3 were male. Participants were recruited through an extended social network against the criteria that they were mainly responsible for organising and carrying out the shopping and cooking. The participants varied regarding education, family status, household income, age, gender, ecological attitude, urban or rural living environments and cultural backgrounds. Participants lived in an apartment, in residential houses or a one family dwelling; one participant, Janine, also had a farm. Occupations varied from controller to housewife, and occupational therapist to farmer and are referred to here by pseudonyms. Because we wanted to examine the practices around food consumption and production where it mostly occurs, which is at the home, the interviews took place at the participants’ homes. Each interview lasted between 40 minutes and 1 hour and was carried out between February and July 2011. The interviews were semi-structured covering themes including: • Aspects that motivate shopping choices e.g. price, regional, seasonal, proximity of food retailer, etc. • The process of planning, shopping, buying, producing, storing, cooking, eating and throwing away of foods in daily practice, with a particular emphasis on ways of storing and organising food. • Reasons why foods spoil, why they are wasted and identifying the strategies participants use to avoid that. In each household, we also asked participants to take us on a home tour and show us where and how they store their food, during which we also took photos. Nine out of the 10 households agreed to this. Data was collected via audio recording of the interviews, and via photos taken during the tour. The interview data was transcribed and we carried out an inductive thematic analysis of our collected material. The coding itself was done by the researchers and TAMS Analyzer3 was used to capture the codes,. These codes emerged from the material and were not defined a-priori (apart from the over-arching processes of planning, shopping, storing etc). In presenting this data, we have translated the direct participant quotes from sometimes very colloquial original language into English to make it understandable for an international audience. Pseudonyms are used to name participants.

2

We will reveal the name of the city for camera ready version.

3

http://tamsys.sourceforge.net/

4. FINDINGS In this section we first discuss the findings from the perspective of every day food practices at the home in the context of sustainability. We organise this discussion around the broad themes of planning and shopping, gardening, storing, and specific practices around food waste. The data highlights that, while almost all of our participants wanted to engage in sustainable food behaviours in some way, people often experience and report a gap between what they want to and what they actually do. The reasons and factors around this intention-behaviour gap are complex and intertwined. We go on to draw out the factors contributing to this gap, from which we start to identify some common values important for the design space around daily food practices and can explore design implications and ideas for where technology could come in.

4.1 Domestic shopping planning Shopping is a critical activity for food getting into the home and while shopping happens mainly at the food retailer, often the planning already starts at the home. Our participants reported a variety of strategies around shopping planning: some positive strategies that support the planning and therefore to some extent avoid food waste, but also constraints that may hinder or negatively influence shopping planning.

4.1.1 Lists – preparing for shopping Around half of our participants used shopping lists to think about what they needed to buy and as a reminder or even a guide to only buy what was needed at the retailer. These participants reported that they have a look at the fridge and other places where they store foods at their homes and create their lists before going shopping. Having enough time to do this planning was a critical factor in creating lists. Being able to shop at leisure without feeling pressure was mentioned as another important factor in the shopping planning because they have the time to do it: “At the weekend I go shopping more consciously, and then with a shopping list, though I often buy more than what is on the list.” (Johanna). The motivations for creating lists varied, from wanting to be organised with a plan for shopping, to needing to buy a large number of groceries where a memory aid is useful.

4.1.2 Temporal constraints However despite the recognition by many participants that lists were helpful, not everyone used lists. We observed that if lifestyles were very busy with work and/or leisure time, it could happen that there was no time to have a look at the fridge in advance and they just went shopping after work when they could, without remembering details of what was at home. This was the case in Jana’s family. Jana works full time like her husband and they share their shopping activities “well you never know what there is exactly in the fridge. So shopping is nothing that is a planned act. If there is time after work one grabs something.” Janet, for whom shopping was something she does almost daily as mother, housewife and part time occupational therapist, mentioned “It sometimes happens that, because I don’t have a list, that I forget the one thing or the other. Or that I buy something that was already in the fridge and I was thinking is not there.” Participants also had difficulties being able to go shopping in a time frame where work-life and grocery shopping activities fitted in. This was made more challenging for the participants who worked full time because the opening hours for supermarkets in this particular part of Europe are very restricted, with almost no shops open on Sundays and most food retailers closing around 7-8

p.m. Concluding, the act of planning to facilitate buying only what is needed requires time and effort and easy access to food retailers, things that people often don’t have in their busy working and family lives.

4.1.3 Domestic storage space constraints Space for storing food at home was another factor for our participants in terms of how often they needed to go shopping, how easy it was for them to remember what they had at home, and the related value of lists. Also how the planning was conducted often depended on how much room participants had in their fridges to store food. Jane mentioned, “our fridge here is very small and therefore we go shopping quite often”, which points to the inter-relationship of storage space and frequency of shopping as a very practical parameter for the planning process.

4.1.4 Access and transportation constraints Space in terms of geographical access and the distance to the next food retailer was another factor. For Jennis, and many of our participants who lived in the city, access was easy: “luckily there are many food retailers around the corner.” However for participants living in rural areas or a small village, this was not the case. They often reported having to go by car for grocery shopping or walking to the food retailer. Related to geographical access, and impacting on the frequency and size of shopping trips, was the means of transportation that people use. The frequency and amount of shopping depended on if it happened by car, bike, public means of transport, or foot. This in turn highly depended on whether participants lived in the city or in rural areas. In the countryside, every participant had a car and most of the participants used the car for grocery shopping. Only one out of 5 of our participants in the city had a car, and all of them went grocery shopping by foot or bike. Johanna, located in the city and often going shopping by bike after coming from work, also discussed the parameters of “heaviness” and “size” of products as being important, as items should fit into a bag. Janet, located in a little village in the countryside stated, “During the week shopping is daily or every second day. If the yoghurt runs out, or we need some fruits I do grocery shopping that fits well into a bag and which I can carry comfortably”.

4.1.5 Constraints of unpredictability Planning however did not always turn out as expected or result in less waste for many participants and a key factor in this was the unpredictability of their lives. This was particularly so for the single participants who often ended up spontaneously going out in response to calls from friends. Hence they were unable to accurately predict or plan when they’ll be at home and so what food they will need. “Maybe it is this single life, that one is much more out and about and not so much at home” (Johanna). For Joseph being busy was also a factor and he described how food spoiled more often in particular weeks when he was very busy and out a lot. Families also reported issues with unpredictability, albeit for different reasons, and not having regular food habits: “with my husband eating dinner is very different, he is eating nothing to eating a lot” (Janet). The factor of unpredictability had an important impact on the shopping planning or the impossibility of it.

4.1.6 Social constraints We also found planning, shopping, cooking and eating were highly influenced by who else was in the home, such as partners, family members or flat mates. This could be in terms of

constraining choices, as with Johanna who adapted to her partner’s diet: “I only cook vegetarian, I don’t really know how to prepare meat because I have been together with a vegetarian for a long time.” (Johanna). It was also in terms of special purchases. For example, Jenny reported “when [my eldest daughter] comes for a visit I always buy this kind of cheese she likes so much”. If not eaten by the daughter though, these would often result in waste. The social environment not only influences practices around shopping or cooking, it also is implicated in how food can be used rather than wasted. Jacob reported having an agreement with his flat mate to use up his foods when he is away for some time. Hence the social environment can have positive as well as more negative impacts on food waste.

4.2 Gardening Shops were not the only source of food for some of our participants. Brunner et al [6] highlight the connectedness of having or growing up with own production or gardening and a tendency towards sustainable food practices. We saw similar things with the participants who had access to gardens, either pots on the balcony of an apartment or in the garden of a family house or farm. We identify dimensions of instantaneous availability and freshness, trust and valuing the food source as being connected to gardening and experiencing the seeding, growing, harvesting or foraging food in the wild.

4.2.1 Instantaneous availability and freshness Jasmin pointed out that the big benefit of having fruits and vegetables readily available in her own garden was that “I can harvest it when I want to”, when it is actually needed at the moment and without a long transportation chain. The benefit of all-day availability is also connected to freshness, as the fruits and vegetables not harvested remain fresh for some time in the garden. Freshness was an important dimension in talking about gardening and also collecting fruits or mushrooms in the wild. Jana pointed out the big benefit of freshness of fruits and vegetables from the own garden and that they tasted much better than products from the food retailer. Jana’s partner, Jack, agreed with Jana about this: “The other day you made some cauliflower [harvested from our garden] which was just amazing, I’ve never eaten cauliflower like that before, it was simply so tasty”.

4.2.2 Trust and valuing food source We also observed that growing their own food was not only a matter of freshness and all-day availability, but also of trust because they knew the origin and way of growing and harvesting. “[…] I never peel my own cucumbers from the garden, but when I shop them at the food retailer I peel them, as you never know how they were treated” (Jasmin). The experience of handling food from source, through cultivation or collection, enhances connectivity to and appreciation of where and how food is grown and sourced. Jack stated “if one harvests on his/her own, for example mushrooms or so, it tastes especially good somehow”. Johanna was going into more detail and explained, “[…] the own harvested vegetables are much less likely to be thrown away because you can see and feel how much work it is to grow and harvest them.” This illustrates a tight connection between experiencing where food is grown and harvesting and therefore attributing more value to it.

4.3 Storing Once into the home, via whatever route, space and storage strategies can influence the durability and freshness of food and

therefore also influence its waste. During home tours our participants showed different ways of storing certain foods, depending on their lifestyles. It was obvious that those participants who had more space were also using it to store more food, e.g. producing jam out of harvested fruits in the summer to eat in winter. Some participants also had ‘systems’ of having special places for particular types of foods. For example, many used particular shelves in the fridge for items such as vegetables, dairy products and meat. Fruits were often kept in a bowl on a table, and foodstuff with longer durability such as cereals or cans grouped together and kept in shelves or drawers.

4.3.1 Creating Visibility Strategies to enhance visibility and aesthetics were also evident across our participants. These were particularly important for being able to gain a quick overview of the cupboards, e.g., when planning lists. “There is a ritual that […] I free them [the products] from their packaging and put them into big glass jars. It also looks more fancy that way. […] I do that deliberately to have a better overview of what I have.” (Johanna). Local visibility and thereby keeping better track of foods was one strategy to avoid waste and encourage the use of available food. Visibility can also be thought of more broadly. Our participants repeatedly reported in experiencing difficulties when being at the food retailer without previous shopping planning to remember which goods were actually needed.

4.3.2 Losing sight and re-ordering Visibility, or rather lack of, was also discussed in terms of losing sight of foods, for example if they are hidden in the back of the fridge or cupboard where they can’t be seen, as noted by Johanna: “The food slips to the back of the fridge and it is not present for me anymore. I have one thing [one kind of food] left and it would be enough to eat and [theoretically] I don’t have to buy something new. That is all annoying.” Participants talked about often needing to re-order items to avoid this. For example, Jasmin showed us her deep freezer and said that “you have to have a look into it from time to time and think of what has to be used and what not, and you ought not forget anything”. The positive strategy of ordering and re-ordering can enable finding “lost food” and knowing what you have, which in turn increase the probability not to waste it.

4.4 Specific practices around food waste Food waste was a very delicate topic for our participants to discuss directly and was often accompanied by a feeling of guilt on behalf of the participants. Almost every participant said that they disliked throwing away food but it happened from time to time. We found several situations and practices described by our participants that led to increased food waste, but also several strategies to avoid it.

4.4.1 Over-buying A crucial trigger of food waste mentioned by many participants, was buying more than they intended and they really needed. A prominent example of this was imagining cooking great meals and buying foods for this, but than having no time or energy to cook. Jana described “It happens frequently with vegetables, e.g. broccoli, because we [Jana and her husband Jack] don’t shop in any coordinated way. And you can feel like you want to cook something healthy and should buy vegetables at the food retailer – well, and then you buy and never cook them.”

Another prominent ‘trap’ discussed by our participants was the role of big packages, namely that big quantities were cheaper than small ones, hence the buying hook, but then this could result in buying too much and then being thrown away. “Well if I can have a big package for a little more money, why should I buy the smaller one? But in the end, if I throw away the rest of it, it doesn’t add up, so this [buying big packages] is nonsense then.” (Johanna). Over-buying can also be caused by a lack of planning, e.g. through temporal constraints, in not knowing which goods are already at home, and then in turn buying more than needed. Janet reported “[…] that I buy something that was already in the fridge and I was thinking is not there”. Over-buying can also happen inadvertently, as in the case of unpredictability of presence at home due to spontaneous and busy lifestyles (discussed previously) that leads to food stuffs that were bought with good intentions of being used and are not being used in the end. E.g. when Janet reported that her husband had quite unpredictable eating habits and therefore the dinner planning was difficult. In this case the ‘problem’ was not over-buying itself, as the planning to use the food was correct, but rather the daily unpredictability in life. A related case is from Joseph who talked about the box of vegetables he received weekly. There was a specific vegetable he didn’t like and always ended up throwing it away. He could have cancelled, but did not because the interface of the online-shopping homepage was very complicated and would have required a phone call to the retailer. Concluding, the practice of over-buying can be an implicit trigger of food waste. Buying more than intended or more than needed (e.g. big packages, double buying, cheaper buying per unit), was experienced as causes of food waste by many of our participants. Our study also revealed strategies to avoid over-buying such as suitable planning processes and visibility.

4.4.2 Processing already available food A positive strategy to avoid wasting food is to process already available foods to eat. Several participants mentioned having a look at the fridge and then deciding what to cook and accordingly eat based on what is already at home. In this regard, Jenny was talking about differences between her life being employed and being retired, and between having children living in the house or not, “In the past it often happened that I bought something where I thought I am going to cook something with that and then I didn’t do it. Now this doesn’t happen any more, because now I have a look [into the fridge] and say to myself: “This is here and I should process it”. And then it is cooked.” Our participants mentioned especially vegetables that need a lot of care as they spoil very easily. Johanna described, “also with cooking, I put the things [cooked dishes] for eating later in to the fridge, but it never works out, never [that I eat them up].” Another strategy that was mentioned by Jacob is cooking old food in a way that it tastes better. “I’m thinking about it [the old apple] more or less a week already, that I have to eat it. I reckon that it [the apple] tastes not bad; I’m eating an apple like that still. I probably would not bite off a piece but cut it and eat it in a muesli or so, you can perfectly eat that.”. Interestingly, 8 out of 11 participants mentioned looking up recipes in the Internet once in a while. As a use case they often described having food in the fridge that they didn’t know what to cook with.

Making choices about using available food also required energy and effort which for some was very difficult: “There is a very tight time frame where I am actually very exhausted coming from work and wanting some rest and then I have to serve food to everybody [my family] and this I find exhausting” (Janet). There is also the matter of simply forgetting, often associated too with being too busy. Johanna, for example, talked about her intention not to throw away food. “What I am really annoyed about is, because I think it is a pity, that I really throw away a lot of food. [This is] because I totally forgot about it.” Johanna is aware of these practices but talked about her very busy lifestyle where she feels she has no time or energy to do anything about this.

4.4.3 Durability and extending food life A strategy to prevent food waste that was mentioned several times was to buy food with longer durability, e.g. zucchini as a vegetable that lasts longer than others. Another strategy was to process food to extend its use. During the home tour at Jasmin’s house, for example, she showed her glass jars filled with jam made from fresh berries she had picked. Processing the berries into jam was a positive strategy to make the berries durable to eat them in winter. Processing food to make it durable is a very old practice in human life and plays an important role in our context of appreciation of food and preventing food waste.

4.5 Moving to Design Reflections In the previous discussions we have identified everyday practices around food for our 11 participants and noted particular patterns which can lead to waste such as buying more food than intended or needed, choosing big packages or quantities of food, and the unpredictability of when there is time and energy to cook and eat. This is particularly important for very flexible and unpredictable lifestyles. The strategies to prevent waste included good planning, being creative in cooking old food so that it tastes good, processing food to extend its durability, buying less or the right amounts and valuing and appreciating food. Visibility as a strategy of storing and therefore trying to avoid the waste of food was described in the previous section. Deeply connected to the strategy of visibility is being aware of what quantities are still left, and practices of ordering and re-ordering. With our qualitative study we see a similar over-arching pattern where our participants report having certain ‘good’ intentions but not always translating these into action – illustrations of Vermeir and Vebeke’s intention-behaviour gap [40]. The findings from this study point to some of the everyday inter-related factors contributing to this gap.

4.5.1 Social contexts One of the main factors is the busyness of working lives and its impact on available time and energy. This constraint for pursuing a sustainable healthy lifestyle was reported by most of our participants. A lack of time and/or energy for activities such as shopping or cooking is a key point where intentions do not translate into behaviour. The composition of households also played out in different ways. Singles often have very spontaneous lifestyles with no fixed schedules so often buy food with the intention of using it but end up not being at home to do so. Families with children want to have healthy diets but at the same time quick solutions to food so they often make pragmatic rather than sustainable choices.

4.5.2 Practical contexts Other factors are more prosaic: whether people lived in the city or the country implicating different means of transport, whether they lived in a house with garden or an apartment, whether they owned a car or not, and how their working hours or lifestyles coincided with shop opening hours, and how much storage space hey had at home. These all impacted on where, how and how often people could go shopping or engage more deeply or not with the sourcing of their own food.

5. IMPLICATIONS FOR DESIGN In summary, the issue of food waste and sustainable practices around food are complex and multi-faceted. Despite the many ways in which food waste happens however, people or at least our participants, do have good intentions as illustrated by many of our participants wanting to commit to local and sustainable practices. There are opportunities to support those good intentions and to help bridge the gap. We propose that the lens of ‘visibility’, defined more broadly than just seeing what is in the cupboard, can help bridge this gap and point to opportunities for technology support. This becomes more feasible too as we consider the advances and maturity of mobile and ubiquitous technologies. We go on here to characterize various dimensions of visibility as candidates for support.

1. Visibility for awareness Our participants were aware that they throw away food, but could often not report on exact amounts, the type of foods and the frequency. This dimension could act to reflect back behaviour or food waste to the users, and in turn draw attention to the topic. Making food waste visible through technology could act as enabler for awareness.

2. Visibility of space Space can be considered within and beyond the home, spatial circumstances at the home can have a great impact on daily practices around food. A spatial entity can be a fridge or shelf space for storing foods which can be supported by knowing how much space is available or what is already on a shelf, how old it is etc. On a more global level space can be about the distance to the next food retailer, and how to get there. These can play out differently in rural vs. sub-urban and urban areas, where the density of food retailers and transportation modalities can greatly differ.

3. Visibility for organisation Organisation plays an important role in daily routines such as shopping (planning), harvesting, storing, cooking, eating and throwing away. Organisation is also the point where intentionbehaviour gaps play out, as reportedly time, effort and energy have a great impact on this dimension. Design for technologies should therefore aim to simplify and support the organisation of those daily practices.

4. Visibility to transcend places Many decisions that can lead to food waste are often made removed from the home. Mobile technologies in particular can act as an enabler to make one space visible while at another when needed. This could be very helpful for organisation and coordination, for example enabling our time-poor participants being able to just look up on their mobile phone what is still left in the fridge when they are at the food retailer, e.g, using a fridge or cupboard cam.

5. Visibility for cooperation In multi-person households cooperation is an essential ingredient to properly organise daily practices around food, e.g. to avoid duplicate buying or to share available food. Busy lifestyles complicate coordination and require even more time and energy. Cooperation can also be viewed more broadly and globally, e.g. several households can coordinate between each other and form a food co-operation or can share the garden resources of one of them. Communication technology is needed to then facilitate the activities between the households.

6. Visibility to increase the value of food Our gardening-related findings can be generalized to the importance of re-connecting consumption to the production and source of food. This can include the processes of seeding, growing or harvesting, and how much effort it involves, or spending time in nature and collecting berries or mushrooms. Gardening and foraging can enhance the appreciation of the harvested food but not everyone has access to gardens or woods. Here technology could communicate between those spaces and enable the valuing of food through mediated production experiences.

7. Visibility for actions Food waste can be the result of numerous decisions e.g., at the time of shopping, cooking, etc. Being able to support decisionmaking in context may help avoid decisions more likely to lead to waste and emphasize positive strategies. An example could be recommending actions to users at the right moment in a nondisruptive way using mobile location-based services. This is in line with motivational theories and persuasive technology approaches [11] and would require a technological intervention that is able to recognize contexts and intervene at the right moment in an appropriate and non-disruptive way. Imagine one partner of our busy couple we reported on, being informed when leaving work that the other partner has already been shopping. These dimensions of visibility are presented more as abstract concepts to leave space for interpretation, and exploration and not to narrow down design ideas. They are inter-related and therefore concrete technological interventions could play out in several dimensions. To illustrate though how they might be practically realized, we present four examples in Table 1 of technological interventions and how dimensions of visibility could act as starting points. We also go on to discuss one particular mobile prototype, the food waste diary, in more detail. Table 1: Dimensions of visibility & technological interventions Visibility

Intervention

• for awareness

Food waste and kitchen diaries could be mobile and digital to take pictures. This could help to raise awareness in households about how much food is actually thrown away and enable them to reflect on certain practices.

• for cooperation

A social web platform connecting people in a local geography (or even in the one apartment building) could enable food sharing between several households, e.g. to share food which is soon to expire. (comparable to freecycle4 or 5 saveyourfood ) .

• of space • to transcend places • for organisation

A wide-angle camera in the fridge could take a picture every time the fridge is opened and upload it to a webpage. Users could assess this webpage on their mobile phone when they are at the food retailer to help them ‘remember’ what is there to help organise and coordinate their shopping.

• to increase the value of food

A social web platform could bring people together who are interested in gardening. Those with less time, energy or lacking physical strength could provide their gardens to people who want to seed, grow and harvest. This could be especially beneficial for older people with gardens they can no longer handle.

6. MOBILE FOOD WASTE DIARY The examples in the related work section and in Table 1 point to some of the potential ways mobile, web and ubiquitous technologies can support. Here we focus on,the mobile food waste diary as a prototype example that addresses visibility in terms of support for awareness and reflection anchored in moments of food waste. There already exists a paper version of such a diary, e.g., WRAP (Waste & Resources Action Program in the UK) provides a PDF to download for this purpose6. Consumers who are aware of the issue of food waste and want to collect information about how much food they actually waste to reflect on it can do so by writing this information down into the food waste diary but it is not interactive. The main aim of our interactive mobile food waste diary is to bridge the gap between the moment of throwing away the food and connecting them to everyday practices, and to make these known not only to the individual involved, but to a broader social network of other food waste diary users to encourage sharing this information for reflection. The food waste diary enables people to collect data and reflect on the practices that can lead to food waste, e.g. through over-buying at the grocery store or poor storage. We intended it to be easy for people to use devices they already own and to think about the sustainability of the solution itself. For this reason we decided: to use the most common platforms, Android and iOS; to offer solutions that can scale [10]; and not introduce new devices or technologies, which would consume even more resources (apart from the expected use of electricity consumption to provide the infrastructure needed to download and use those 4

http://www.freecycle.org/ last assessed August 30 2012

5

http://www.saveyourfood.com/ last assessed August 30 2012, Beta version 6

http://england.lovefoodhatewaste.com/content/so-how-much-food-do-iwaste last assessed August 30 2012

devices). For this paper we will only present screenshots from the iOS version due to reasons of space (see Figure 1). Users of the system have the choice to record the reason why this specific item will be wasted and the type of food, e.g. dairy, bakery, fruits and vegetables, etc. (see Figure 1, left). Optionally they can take a photo of the food thrown away and add a little story about it in their own words, as there is often more behind the course of events leading up to food being wasted. The location of where the entry is created will be automatically detected, if users allow the application to do so. As studies have shown that costs are an incentive for consumers [36], the interaction with the application also provides the possibility to enter the estimated costs of the waste. Figure 1 (right) depicts how users can choose between 5 predefined reasons why they throw away (visibility of food stock is missing, over-buying, no shopping list, change of cooking plans, special offer). The categories are motivated by a study that identified the most common reasons of disposed food in households [19]. We assume that the mentioned reasons are not exhaustive for most users, thus the interface offers the possibility to specify their own explanation to take care of the multifaceted reasons that can lead to waste, as we have seen in our qualitative study (see Figure 1, right). Figure 2: Collected food waste entries can be viewed as list (left), as collected pictures of food waste and as chart graph with most popular reasons (right) People can choose to view the individual or collective data by tapping the individual or collective icon on the top left of the History screens (see screenshots in Figure 2). To consider privacy aspects, the location of submitted entries is not visible in the collective history view. The identity of the person who submitted the entry is not visible, so data is anonymised. The application has now been developed to a stable prototype and is being released on the various app stores. As part of this release, we will be asking permission from people to use their data as part of a study of the use of the food diary. We will also recruit a specific group of people to enable us to conduct more in-depth study about the use and potential impact of such a mobile application.

7. DISCUSSION

Figure 1: First screen when app has started to insert reason, category, optionally picture, story and price (left). Users can also enter the reasons why food was thrown away (right). After a user has submitted an entry s/he will then be forwarded to the history of submitted food waste entries, with the option of seeing just their own entries or the entries of all people also using a version of the food waste diary. This history can be accessed in 3 different views: 1. 2. 3.

as a consecutive list of entries ordered by time (see Figure 2, left). as pictures that have been taken from food being wasted. as chart with most common reasons why food has been wasted (see Figure 2, right).

The findings from the qualitative interviews point to designrelevant factors such as losing sight and re-ordering, which pointed to visibility as an important aspect to design technology. The seven dimensions of visibility are a good starting point where and how we can think about the design of mobile, web and ubiquitous interventions in this new design arena (see also Table 1). We could observe that the practices and moments where food rises the potential to become eventually wasted in future happens at many sites, in various contexts and social situations. Mobile technologies can support these as they are portable and information can be submitted or revealed in various contexts and sites. The dimensions of visibility evolving from the qualitative data also acted as starting points to conceptualize the food waste diary, an intervention that aims to support users as a tool to help make moments of food waste more visible as opportunities for reflection. We do not want to frame the food waste diary to be a persuasive technology [14]; it should rather act as a support for people to reflect on the reasons why they throw away, if they

choose to do so. The aim of the food waste diary is not to persuade users to change but rather address their experiences and leave decisions about what they want to do with this information up to them.

9. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Our qualitative data has shown the richness and multifacetedness of food and its passage into waste in everyday life. We do not assume that all these factors can be radically changed by technologies. Technology is (1) not able to capture every part of the complexities of life and (2) the issue of if and how feedback technology can ‘persuade’ us into different behaviours is controversial and disputable [17, 38]. We see the food waste diary as a first starting point to explore the role of mobile technology in the new design arena of food and waste.

10. REFERENCES

Interactive technologies also cannot solve the problems of spatial, social or temporal constraints or issues of busyness and energy people experience in their daily lives. What we can do is to support people in their daily actions and provide opportunities and resources for reflection. Users of the food waste diary are enabled to revisit the entries with an explanation. One type of reflection as described by Fleck and Fitzpatrick [16] occurs when explanations accompany descriptions to be able to reflect on them. Our findings can act as a first starting point to think about how, where and when technologies could be applied. Ultimately, interactive technologies should act within the constraints of a given human context rather than aiming just towards informing and changing attitudes. The food waste diary and the customisable reasons why food was thrown away are a first attempt to do so. Designing technology in this specific area has to consider the human aspects of our daily lives and that we function and act within an environment with given structural conditions.

8. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK Food waste is an area in designing technologies for sustainability that has yet to receive much attention. To this end we have conducted a qualitative study to understand how our participants carry out daily practices around food waste in a domestic context. Based on our findings we have highlighted a number of opportunities for research and design to support people to prevent food waste. Our findings suggest that choices on food are often determined by or embedded in the environment rather than the attitude or motivation of our participants, an issue also described in [6]. The results from our fieldwork present several underlying principles which negatively affect wasting foods but also positive and conscious actions towards avoiding food waste by our participants. Our fieldwork acted as a starting point for understanding possibilities that also exist in relation to the home such as shopping activities or increased valuing of foods through experiences with food sources. Based on the study findings, we have provided seven dimensions of visibility for design to guide future research and practice towards supporting sustainable food practices leading to reduced food waste. For future work we aim to complement our findings with the food waste diary. We are planning a field study where we want to capture experiences of users using the application and how they think about and reflect on the collected data. Additionally, we are also starting to design other prototypes motivated by our findings to be tested in the field. Ultimately, we hope this contribution inspires future research into how and which technologies can intervene to support sustainable food practices and avoiding food waste.

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