In the Spring of 2020 I was taking one of my last classes in Boston Universityʻs Metropolitan College Gastronomy Program before returning to my thesis work. While I forget the details of our last Food and Gender class before the shut-down, our homework assignment from guest-lecturer Ariana Gunderson was around creating artwork based on the weekʻs readings. That same week, my toilet broke. I spent so much of that week researching toilets, trying to understand all of the terms used in advertising and feeling overwhelmed. I now understand that this overwhelmed feeling had less to do with the toilet and more to do with the uncertainty of how COVID-19 would affect the nation and world. I was also dealing with an older, sick cat, and if we were at the end.
Taking a break from toilet research to feed myself, I found myself examining how many terms were on the various food packages in my kitchen. I had simply accepted that I should understand all of these terms, not realizing that the point of the buzzwords was to make me question my decisions and buy marked-up products to take responsibility for my own health. I did not realize that I was creating a poster for the class around an issue that would be a life theme for the next 18 months
As the pandemic continued I found myself more overwhelmed by the amount of information given to me in a given day. I should mention that I am in a privileged position without children or an immediate change in my income level due to the pandemic. Oddly, I found myself relaxing when I used the Peloton app.
It was only when I started to take a Visual Design class from General Assembly that I understood that the design of the Peloton app requires limited decision-making by the end-user. Similar to the Choose-Your-Own adventure books I enjoyed as a child, you are presented with limited options and a few decisions lead you to a workout. Designing a practice website for an imaginary food establishment, I designed a persona similar to myself as my end-user for the website. In my website design the end user had to chose between “Delivery” and “Takout” or between “Salad” “Flatbread” or “Dessert.” Each option would lead to another series of simple options.
Note: I designed the website in Figma, the images are not mine.
Infuse Website
Looking at my Twitter feed around dinner-time, made me realize how many women have been dealing with decision fatigue around food during the past 18 months, and how simple solutions are needed, especially for care-givers. Sometimes you can only make basic decisions around food and this should be recognized by food marketers. Sometimes less information, but trusting the source of the information is what is needed.
Infuse App View