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Collecting & Archiving Foods that Create Belonging

DATA VIZ | UI/UX

'Eating A Long Ways Away' is a digital archive collecting food items that invoke ‘home’ or a sense of belonging by crowdsourcing data & stories
Explore the live project here
(Please View on Desktop)

Project Context

Jan-May 2024 

Individual Thesis Project
at Parsons DT

Role & Responsibilities 

Research
Collecting and sorting data
Usability Testing

UX Design: Information Architecture, Iterative Prototyping, Visual Design
Development

Tools Used 

Javascript, React JS
Google Forms
Mapbox
SQL
Figma & Figjam

Concept Statement

“Eating A Long Ways Away” is a web-based project that crowdsources and visualizes data to explore food beyond mere consumption. It emphasizes food’s sensory and evocative qualities, examining its connection to belonging and uncovering the intricate web of relationships involved in eating and making food.

How might we use the transportive power of food to document and visualise a sense of belonging?

 How might documenting this act create community?

Solution

A web archive where you can: 
 

  • Add your food memories and locations
     

  • Go through entries others have added
     

  • Listen to curated conversations around food and displacement

Approach

FORM

Exploring digital space as a conduit to realizing a foodscape that: 
 

  •  facilitates interaction and participation across unfamiliar kitchens, cultures and geographies
     

  • collects & makes collective knowledge visible

INTENT

  • To participate and/or contribute
     

  • To play & learn
     

  • To create something that grows
     

  • To create visibility & community

AUDIENCE

  • People who have lived through any kind of displacement
     

  • People who have a relationship with food that goes beyond consumption
     

  • People interested in food/ food as a medium
     

  • People who are comfortable being online

The 'Why' & 'Who'

RESEARCH

  • Secondary Research & Identifying Precedents
     

  • Primary Research:  Data collection, conversations, interviews

IDEATION

  • Exploration of initial ideas of possible forms
     

  • Prototyping with technology

DESIGN

  • Proof of Concept UX & Wireframes
     

  • Scoping
     

  • Testing and Impact on Design
     

  • Visual Design

DEVELOPMENT

  • Testing feasibility 
     

  • Technical Diagram 
     

  • MVP implementation & execution

The 'How' 

Research 

The project was developed through extensive research, including papers, journals, cookbooks, memoirs, artist projects, digital archives, and data visualizations. This research informed and contextualized the project, making it a meaningful conversation with these sources.
Some notable precedents for this project were Feral Atlas, Codex Atlanticus and Queering the Map .

A. RESEARCH ECOSYSTEM

B. COLLECTING DATA & BUILDING A DATASET 

The final visualization's data was collected throughout the project, starting with broad research questions to identify an area of intervention, followed by a final survey with more specific questions and data points.

These were a few of the methods adopted throughout: ​

  • Conversations & interviews

  • Zine entries 

  • Survey collection

  • Editing and evolving the survey

Design

The ideation process began with the intersection of place, belonging, food, and data. Various explorations, including recipe datasets, d3js visualizations, dumpling collages, p5js sketches, and Touch Designer experiments, helped shape the project's form, intent, interactivity, and technology.

Ideation

Proof of Concept 

By integrating research insights with conceptual and technical explorations, I developed the idea of a web platform that functions as both a data visualization and an archive.
 

I chose to develop this idea further as it seemed to fit the intent of this project the best in the following ways : 

  • visualisation would create curiosity and intrigue 

  • interactive & participatory: users would be able to contribute & be able to explore content  

Testing & Iterations

Many prototypes, Figma clickthroughs as well as web sketches included, were user tested throughout the process of this project. These contributed to evolving certain features in the earlier stages to fine-tuning the experience towards the end.

Left to Right: Images indicating the different stages of evolution and prototypes that were user tested and iterated upon.

Solution & Features

‘Eating a Long Ways Away’ is a method of collecting, documenting, and visualizing the human act of accessing a sense of belonging through food. This project aims to study and archive notions of home and belonging through crowd-sourced data while exploring the form of a web platform and digital space as a conduit to realizing a foodscape that facilitates interaction across unfamiliar kitchens, cultures and geographies.


Explore the live project here

(Please View on Desktop)

FEATURES OF THE PLATFORM

Reflection

This project explored the complexities of web creation, balancing design and development. Challenges and rewards of combining these roles included constant and fast iteration. Positive user feedback validated the concept and highlighted the complexity of representing themes like home and belonging digitally. The project evolved to include physical materials like stickers and zines, bridging the gap between digital and physical experiences.

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