Bentoventure

How might we improve the school lunch experience?

View the final presentation here

Overview

As a part of the Design Methodologies class at UC Berkeley, I worked on a semester-long UX research project to answer the question of “how might we reduce cooking time?”. As a team we conceptualized Bentoventure, a bento box with different compartments and lids that prompt children to create their own lunch, minimizing parent involvement in the lunch packing process. For this project, I conducted 2 one-on-one interviews and collected observation pictures, synthesizing the data into a few main points that guided our design process. I also practiced several team design methodologies from brainstorming to prototyping. We presented our solution in a final design showcase at the end of the semester.

Location: Berkeley, CA
Timeline: January-May 2022
Stakeholders: children aged 5-11, parents of children aged 5-11
Team: Xiaoyu Hu, Jonathan Zvi, Rob Atienza, Maggie Blundi, Shreejal Luital
Role: UX researcher, UX designer
Tools: 1:1 interviews, observation pictures, weighted matrices 3-12-3 concept generation, positioning chart, low fidelity prototyping

The Problem

How Might We Reduce Cooking Time?

Many parents do not have the time or energy to pack their children lunch each day. These children end up waiting in long lunch lines at school that reduce their lunch time with friends, or eating unhealthy pre-packaged foods or school vending-machine snacks. To understand how we could approach this problem, my teammates and I interviewed a total of 8 families with elementary and middle school aged children.

Understanding Users

Narrowing Down Target Users and Uncovering Needs

1:1 Interviews

My team and I first created an interview template to prepare for our interviews. We decided to use semi-structured one-on-one interviews to ensure consistency on the main points between interviewers, while still retaining flexibility to dig deeper into unique insights from each family.

I interviewed two families with children aged 10-15, and synthesized the information into the following main takeaways.

Parents' goal lunch for their children is a fresh, well-balanced, filling meal
Parents mostly pack lunches the night before, so lunch foods should be able to last a night and half a day in children’s lunchboxes
Packing a snack in addition to lunch is required from some schools, and a important part of the lunch packing procedure

Observation Pictures

In addition to my interviews, I also collected several observation pictures of kitchens and food preparation spaces of our target users. From these pictures I found that counters and stoves might be hard to reach for younger children, and some participants use the dining area of their house to prepare food if the kitchen is too small. Based on these observations, I proposed that our solution should be mobile so it can be used on surfaces both inside or outside of the kitchen.

Our product voa chart

Research Findings

Compiling all of our user research findings, and analysis of competitor strengths and weaknesses we produced a VOA chart and the following must-haves for our solution.

The product must be safe for children to use
The product must be or make food presentable or appealing for children to use multiple times
The product must be or promote healthiness in food choices for children
The product must motivate and develop independence in children

We also refined our how might we statement to reflect our target user group of families with elementary aged children more accurately. “How might we make the process of making homemade school lunches an independent activity for young school-aged children?”

Our Process

From Concept Generation to Prototyping

Guided by our must haves and new “how might we statement”, we dove into our concept generation and selection process.

~ 60 generated concepts

1. Concept Generation

After each coming up with ten individual concepts using methods such as biomimicry and forced analogy, we then met as a group to complete a 3-12-3 concept generation activity. This method allowed us to build off each other’s ideas, and quickly iterate through several rounds of concept generation, resulting in a total of around initial 60 concepts.

2. Concept Selection

We began our concept selection process by placing all our ideas on a positioning chart with “level of independence”, and “level of technology” as our axes. This allowed us to determine if our concepts were feasible, and if they met our must have of “child must be able to use product independently”. We were left with 15 concepts after eliminating outliers and combining similar concepts together, which we then reduced to 8 through Borda count voting.

Our product voa chart

Pugh chart with final 7 concepts

After comparing our final 8 concepts on a pugh chart with school lunch as our datum, we discovered that our final concepts were focused on helping elementary school age children create their own lunches independently, rather than reducing cooking time for parents. This led to our final revised “how might we statement” of “How might we promote the independent creation of healthy school lunches by elementary school aged children across all socio-economic spectrums?”

Guided by our final how might we and a group discussion, choose four final concepts to prototype Bento box scavenger hunt, Automatic sandwich maker, bread cutter in fun shapes, and social media lunchtime app for parents and children.

3. Prototyping

I created a mid-fidelity physical prototype of the bento box scavenger hunt with tupperware containers based on my original low-fidelity concept sketch. The mid-fidelity prototype consisted of several small tupperware containers nested in a single large container. I envisioned exchangeable lids with prompts such as “find a blue fruit” engraved on them to form multiple lunch combinations.

After we each pitched our prototypes to the rest of the team, we selected the bento box scavenger hunt as our final concept, renaming it Bentoventure to capture the adventurous scavenger hunt aspect of building your own lunch with a bento box. We designed the key features of Bentoventure to satisfy our main product requirements as shown below.

Low fidelity bento box scavenger hunt prototype

Mid fidelity bento box scavenger hunt prototype

Final Design

A Bentobox that Empowers Children To Create Their Own Lunch

Must haves fulfilled by key features

3D bento box CAD model

Bento box themes I conceptualized

3D bento box CAD model

Reflections

Implementing Existing Skills and Trying New Design Methods

Through this project I worked through the UX design and research process from ideation to prototyping, and learned how to work together as a team in the semester-long process.

I applied many new solo and group design methods from class during the research, concept selection, and generation of Bentoventure that I will be able to use in future projects, and learned that designing a product is not a linear path. We changed our “how might we statement” many times as we gained new insights from our user research, and ended up producing something completely different from what we initially envisioned.

Working as a team was frustrating at times, especially since this was during a remote semester. I learned how to collaborate with my team in an online space remotely through Zoom, Miro, and the Google suite. Though planning when to meet, and sitting through long Zoom meetings was difficult at times, in the end we were able to combine our different talents to create a fun product together.

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