Pantry in the Process

 The three essential elements of design process are:

• empathy
• ideate/prototype
• testing

Empathy:

Empathy is essential in the design process because it allows you to connect with the user. Through observations, conversation, surveys and engaging with your user, you gain an understanding of who they are. This is important because this will effect the designs and ideas you have for them. Everyone is different which is why getting to know a person makes a huge difference in having a successful design. 

Ideate/Prototype:

Being able to generate ideas and develop multiple solutions will give you a better chance at having a successful design process. In this element, you test and refine your solutions. 

Testing:

Testing is necessary because you need to see how your ideas are working out. During this time, you can gather feedback and tweak your ideas to better suit your users. 

Honestly, I found this assignment to be out of my comfort and I found myself not really knowing where to begin. So, I took a dive into my pantry to look at some of the items and see if I could begin to make some connections to my three essential elements of the design process. 

Empathy: Annie's mac and cheese

The reason I connected empathy and Annie's mac and cheese is because of the connection I think the advertiser/media design was trying to create with moms/dads. Mac and cheese is a pretty iconic staple and highly loved by most kids. It's been made super easy and quick to make with the introduction of the boxed brands and more recently the microwavable brands like easy mac. Annie's brand flashes the words "homegrown", "organic" and "real cheese" along with stating that there are no artificial colors or flavors. So, as a parent hoping to feed your kids a healthy meal, you would most likely pick Annie's brand over the regular Kraft brand. The marketing team knew that moms and dads would compare this with the other brands on the shelves and pick this one because it is labeled healthy. Is it actually that much healthier than the other brands? Probably not, but I bought it anyways, so their plan is working.

Ideate/prototype:

I came across clif bars and was drawn in by their picture and message as well. They have obviously geared this towards active people who hike, bike, etc. However, most of the people I see eating these are not doing any of those activities. So I started thinking about what it may have been like in their prototype stage and what they MIGHT have been thinking as they developed multiple concepts and ended on this one. It seems pretty genius to me. By eating the clif bar, you kind of feel like you're part of the adventuring community by eating what they eat. By placing the mountain climber on the package, they send the message that this is part of maintaining a healthy lifestyle. 

Test:

When thinking about the test phase, I thought about quaker oats. The picture below is a pretty basic form of oatmeal you can buy from them. At some point though, they continued to refine their solutions, gather feedback and put out the microwaveable, pre-flavored oatmeal. The transformation and the different flavors you can get really show that they haven't stopped their design process after putting out the regular oats. Their team is continuously seeing what they can do to appeal to the user.