Towards Food Waste Interventions: An Exploratory Approach

Abstract Sustainability is a significant topic in HCI and often framed in terms of energy consumption or sustainable food consumption. However, the sustainable issue of wasted food by consumers is a design arena yet to receive more attention. To understand how the passage from food into waste occurs in everyday life, and if, how and where technology can intervene, fieldwork in 17 households has been carried out. The fieldwork and its implications afford inspirations and reveal stimuli where and how technology could potentially intervene. Selected stimuli are explored with two technology probes and a community platform to inform design.

Keywords Sustainability; food waste; social practice, pr

ACM Classification Keywords H5.m. Information interfaces and presentation (e.g., HCI): Miscellaneous.

General Terms Sustainability, Food waste, Design, Practice Theory;

Expected Contribution My research will deepen a critical understanding of practices being intertwined with the context of food waste to gain knowledge if, where and how ubiquitous

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UbiComp 13, September 08-12 2013, Zurich, Switzerland.

ACM 978-1-4503-2215-7/13/09.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2494091.2501086

Eva Ganglbauer Vienna University of Technology, HCI group Argentinierstrasse 8/187 Vienna, 1040, Austria eva@igw.tuwien.ac.at

Figure 1: Taking pictures at participant’s homes to understand everyday practices.

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technologies can intervene. Food being wasted can be considered to be a wicked problem with no single approach and solution, so my approach embraces this as a design space with many opportunities with no right or wrong solution but better or worse ones [8]. The design space of food waste is approached with open-ended semi-structured in-home interviews with photos (see Figure 1 and 2) and contextual inquiry in 17 households with a diverse set of participants. My contribution aims to gain a deep understanding of everyday interactions between and within people, food, food waste, practices and institutions to inform design. Additionally a technology probe [7] (see Figure 3 and 4) was set up in 5 of the 17 households. The findings inspire how technological interventions might be made sensitive to the distinctive qualities and social practices [15] around food and wasted food, which is being referred to as design sensitivities in this paper. My thesis will deepen the understanding of this design space with another two interventions, a food waste diary mobile application and a platform to offer and receive food for free. The main contribution of my thesis research are design sensitivities that consider the dependency of everyday life with social, cultural and economical surroundings that make designing interventions a controversial and non-trivial endeavor.

Thesis statement The main contribution of my thesis are design sensitivities resulting from analysing practices around food, wasted food and at points also technology probes.

Problem Domain Issues of ecological sustainability are of increasing concern worldwide. This is paralleled by a growing interest in HCI using technology to support more sustainable practices, e.g. in energy consumption, transportation or sustainable food consumption [5]. Considering an increasing population and its demand for both food consumption and production, the waste of food is another design arena HCI can engage with. When the food we produce gets wasted in agriculture, retail and by consumers, the energy and the materials that have to be invested to grow, harvest, produce, pack and transport the food are then wasted along with the food itself. According to a study in the U.S.A. approximately one third of edible food is wasted, which is equivalent to 2 percent of the annual energy consumption [6]. Studies in the UK reveal that consumers are responsible for up to 30 percent of total food waste besides agriculture, production and retail [1]. Given that food waste indirectly causes profound environmental as well as ethical problems, the potential of interventions to make a difference here is significant. On the account of ecological as well as ethical impacts of food waste, and other motivations such as food price inflation and consumers wanting or economically having to spend less money on food purchases [14], opportunities arise for interventions. To understand and address this design space my thesis work focuses on specific problems resulting in design sensitivities:

Problem 1: Which stimuli in everyday interactions between and within people, food, food waste, practices and institutions can be determined to use or not use for technological interventions?

Figure 2: Strategy by participant to enhance visibility of available food items.

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Problem 2.1: If and which interventions can be conceptualised and designed to address these stimuli?

Problem 2.2: What do we learn from individuals and groups interacting with these interventions and how can this knowledge contribute to design sensitivities?

Related Work Food and sustainability have started to gain some attention in HCI [5] and are often described in terms of local and alternative food movements and communities [3]. Existing practical applications in the area of ecological sustainable food culture often aim to achieve sustainable food purchasing through more sustainable consumption such as regional and organic products [3] or supporting urban gardening communities with or without technologies [13].

Food waste starts to gain some attention within HCI and Ubicomp. To investigate the usefulness of fridge interventions a study used a low-tech approach of colour codes in the fridge aiming to support the awareness of available foods [9]. The study suggeststs that participants wasted less during the study period of a month. BinCam [16] focuses on food and waste at the home at the moment the food is thrown away. Images of domestic food waste are uploaded to a social site to explore social norms on how these are perceived and discussed. However BinCam concentrates on the moment where the food gets wasted rather than the practices and people’s complex negotiations around food that transform food into food waste. The passage from food into waste is a phenomenon deeply rooted in practices of everyday life.

To understand what technologies might be useful and to realize any potential of technology, we need to understand more about the everyday practices and circumstances associated with food waste. Therefore a theoretical lens of everyday practice [15] is useful to unpack and understand the nexus of shopping, gardening, sourcing, consuming and disposing food resources and their relation to broader contextual factors of social, cultural and economical nature [11].

Methodological approach The methods used during my thesis work include qualitative work with interviews and contextual inquiry at participant’s homes and thematic analysis [4] to analyse the collected material. I then also use design workshops to generate concepts as well as design and prototyping of technologies to support a deeper understanding of the role of technology. Field studies with participants aim to contextually study interventions and enrich the understanding of design sensitivities. To support the understanding which methods are used, they are coupled with the goals I want to achieve for my PhD thesis.

Goal 1: Identify stimuli where technology can or should not intervene.

Open-ended and semi-structured interviews and contextual inquiry at participant’s homes are used as methods to understand if, where and how technology interventions could play a role. The analysis is carried out using the perspective of social practice theory [15] to unpack everyday practices using thematic analysis [4]. The emerging design sensitivities consider practices itself as well as wider systemic circumstances

Figure 4: Picture taken by FridgeCam and uploaded to a dedicated webpage.

Figure 3: Technology Probe FridgeCam attached to the fridge door.

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that influence these, such as social, cultural and economical contexts.

Goal 2.1: Concepts and Designs for interventions

Concepts and designs for technological interventions are created during design workshops with users and designers interested in food and food waste.

Goal 2.2: How do interventions influence everyday food practices

To understand the potential of intervening technologies, it is crucial to study them in the field and the interactions between people, the intervention and related practices. These field studies support a deeper understanding and add to creating design sensitivities.

Research carried out and results so far Data collection with the aim to identify potential inspirations and stimuli for technology interventions has been conducted through open-ended interviews and contextual inquiry in 17 households in Austria and UK. The interviews were carried out with a diverse set of participants and households from urban and sub-urban areas to countryside, different occupations, age and gender. The collected material has been analyzed, written up and published as a TOCHI journal paper [11]. Reportedly over-buying was the predominant activity where food often transformed into waste as a result of not being cooked or eaten. Shopping routines without planning and overview of what already is at the home were also mentioned as everyday practices being connected with issues of wasted food. The analysis then highlights that food waste is the unintended result of multiple moments of consumption or non-consumption, which are themselves embedded in broader contextual

factors and values. Technology has to respect the importance of complex negotiations that people make within given structural conditions and competing values and practices [11].

The design sensitivities so far provide stimuli for technology interventions [11] to • Connect the moments of consumption with later

implications of food waste, • Making the full pathway of food more visible, as well

as the sustainable and ethical costs, • Create mediated opportunities to engage with food

sourcing and connect with food values, • Support reflection (Food waste diary, Figure 5), • Support planning and shopping by making

information accessible (FridgeCam, Figure 3 and 4) • Support storing and managing inventory by making

it easier to see what is available and what foods have to be used (e.g. with a “smart fridge” approach)

• Promote specific practices in which “food is done” to promote more sustainable in- the-moment choices,

• Coordinate the organization of food consumption within and between households (Foodsharing.de)

• Promote actual gardening practices, • Connect together people who can share strategies,

stories, food, resources, and values. (Foodsharing Facebook community)

Interventions itself can support a deeper understanding of the design space around food and wasted food as well. FridgeCam is a technology probe [7] to reveal more about the everyday practices of the household’s fridge, but also how users might react to such technology. It uses a mounted smart phone to take a wide-angle picture from the inside of the fridge when

Figure 5: Screenshot of mobile Food Waste Diary.

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the door is opened. The picture is uploaded to a dedicated webpage users can access, e.g. when they are shopping to check estimate food status (see Figure 3 and 4). FridgeCam was already deployed in 5 households for a period of a month and its use analysed, written up and published in TOCHI [11].

For individual reflection the food waste diary1 was developed (see a Screenshot in Figure 5), it enables users to collect data and reflect on the practices that can lead to food waste. It can be used for a period of time to find out the amount of food thrown away, the reasons, optionally pictures, stories and costs. Food waste diary was a part of the publication at MUM where the potential of technology enhancing visibility for food waste practices was presented[12].

To see how alternative free food sharing communities that coordinate the organization of food between households are supported by technology, an analysis of Foodsharing.de and its according Facebook community page2 was carried out, written up and submitted to CSCW [10] where the paper was invited to revise and resubmit. This work again will inspire the content of design sensitivities.

A critical perspective Wasted food is mainly a result from a society where over-production of food is predominant and the practice of over-buying by consumers and individuals is intended by the industry and the market (big packages, offers, etc.), hence interventions alone act within a given set of constraints. The success of bottom-up

1 http://igw.tuwien.ac.at/foodwastediary/info/English.html 2 https://de-de.facebook.com/foodsharing.de

interventions such as the free food sharing community Foodsharing.de with more than 20.000 members points to potentials of technology as a tool to support civic engagement and connect people and retailers to provide and collect food for free. This intervention was embedded in a marketing campaign by a German NGO and as many communities relies on very active and engaged members.

Outline of future work So far I have a literature review in my thesis work and a draft how the chapters will be roughly organized. However the key data chapters of my thesis will come out of the focus to provide design sensitivities for the HCI community. For my thesis work I will carry out an extended analysis of the existing material.

Future work remains to be done for the food waste diary, the app is available at the appstore and the google play store and used worldwide but an analysis of the online data still remains to be done. An analysis will also involve a field study and interview participants who used the app over a certain period of time. I also plan to carry out design workshops to enrich my analysis with other perspectives and add to the design sensitivities if, where and how technology might intervene towards less wasted food.

Acknowledgements Thanks to my supervisor Geraldine Fitzpatrick for continuing guidance and support. I also thank study participants for their time and inspiring conversations.

References [1] Ambler-Edwards, S., Bailey, K., Kiff, A., Lang, T., Lee, R., Marsden, T., Simons, D., and Tibbs, H. 2009.

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Food futures: Rethinking UK strategy. Technical Report, Chatham House.

[2] Baumer, E. and Silberman, M. 2011. When the implication is not to design (technology). In Proc. of CHI '11. ACM, New York, NY, USA

[3] Blevis, E., and Morse, S. C. 2009. SUSTAINABLY OURS: Food, dude. interactions 16, 2 (March 2009), 58-62.

[4] Braun, V. and Clarke, V., 2006. Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Res. Psychol. 3, 2, 77–101.

[5] Comber, R., Ganglbauer, E., Choi, J. H-j, Hoonhout, H., Rogers, Y., O'Hara, K., and Maitland. Food and interaction design: designing for food in everyday life. In Ext. Abstr. CHI EA '12. ACM Press (2012), 2767-2770.

[6] Cuellar, A. D., and Webber, M. E. 2010. Wasted food, wasted energy: The embedded energy in food waste in the United States. Environmental Science and Technology 44, 16, 6464–6469

[7] Hutchinson, H., Mackay, W., Westerlund, B., Bederson, B. B., Druin, A., Plaisant, C., Beaudouin-Lafon, M., Conversy, S., Evans, H., Hansen, H., Roussel, N. and Eiderbäck, B. 2003. Technology probes: Inspiring design for and with families. In Proc. of CHI’03. ACM Press, New York, 17–24.

[8] Kolko, J. ,Wicked Problems worth solving, 2012. https://www.wickedproblems.com/

[9] Farr-Wharton, G., Foth, M. and Choi, J. 2012. Colour coding the fridge to reduce food waste. In Proc. of OzCHI '12, Vivienne Farrell, Graham Farrell, Caslon Chua, Weidong Huang, Raj Vasa, and Clinton Woodward (Eds.). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 119-122.

[10] Ganglbauer, E., Fitzpatrick, G. and Subasi, Ö. 2013. Empowering Online-Offline Interactions in a Free Food Sharing Community, submitted to CSCW 2014.

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to inform design Food Waste. ACM Transactions Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI). 20, 2, Article 11 (May 2013), 25 pages.

[12] Ganglbauer, E., Fitzpatrick, G., and Molzer, G. 2012. Creating visibility: understanding the design space for food waste. In Proc. of MUM '12. ACM, New York, NY, USA, , Article 1, 10 pages.

[13] Odom, W. 2010. "Mate, we don't need a chip to tell us the soil's dry": opportunities for designing interactive systems to support urban food production. In Proc. of DIS '10. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 232-235.

[14] Quested, T., Parry, A. 2011. New estimates for household food and drink waste in the UK. Final Report. WRAP. http://www.wrap.org.uk/ content/new-estimates-household-food-and-drink-waste-uk

[15] Reckwitz, A. 2002. Toward a Theory of Social Practices: A Development in Culturalist Theorizing, European Journal of Social Theory, 5, 243–263.

[16] Thieme, A., Comber, R., Miebach, J., Weeden, J., Kraemer, N. Lawson, S., and Olivier, P. "We've bin watching you": designing for reflection and social persuasion to promote sustainable lifestyles. In Proc. of CHI '12. ACM Press (2012.), 2337-2347

Brief biographical Sketch I am a PhD student at the HCI group at the Vienna University of Technology with Geraldine Fitzpatrick as my main supervisor. My PhD program lasts for 4 ¼ years with May 2010 as the starting date and August 2014 as the expected date of completion, so I have 1 ¼ years ahead of my PhD. My PhD scholarship also includes participation in teaching classes with senior researchers at my group. My background is in media informatics and interaction design, where I graduated in 2006 with an MSc with honors. Before starting my PhD, I worked in industry for 1½ years as interaction designer and HCI researcher, working in industrial research projects in collaboration with national and international partners.

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