Wrestling with Mystery

Coursera Design

Assignments for Coursera's "Design: Creation of Artifacts in Society" and a selection of assignments for General Assembly's "User Experience Design"

copyright © Alicia Fowler 2016

 

 

UXD: First assignment

This fall I am enrolled in User Experience Design at General Assembly. As part of the course I have to create a project. I'm still not quite sure what I will do, but I'm thinking of creating a service to help me remember what I have in my kitchen/pantry as I'm always buying too much or too little. I've seen some apps or connected fridges to help with this problem, but nothing as of yet has really caught on. Here's hoping I can come up with something easy and better than what's out there.

My first class assignment is to create four lists with as many words, stories, anecdotes or phrases for each list under the following categories: Pleasure; Pain; Behaviors (verbs!); and contexts (times/places). These are my four lists.

Pleasure 

  1. Vegging out with delicious snacks and drinks
  2. Having a fully stocked snack pantry
  3. Finding that rare uneaten bar of chocolate when I think I’m all out
  4. Having the right ingredients for a great meal
  5. Trying out new recipes
  6. Easily finding and cooking favorite recipes 
  7. Taste-testing exotic foods 
  8. Great alcohol and meal pairings
  9. Fantastic homemade cocktails or sodas 
  10. Making homemade healthy and tasty food

 

Pain

  1. Grocery shopping without knowing what I have at home
  2. Thinking I have an ingredient/food item at home when I don’t 
  3. Buying an extra item of something that I had at home
  4. Not knowing when ingredients expired
  5. Having to keep items in ugly packaging just to remember keep product details
  6. Not knowing which pan/tool to use  
  7. Trying to share my grocery list with others
  8. Wasting food
  9. Buying the wrong kind of fresh ingredient (i.e., russet instead of idaho potato)
  10. Wrongly estimating the time it takes to make something 

 

Actions/Behaviors 

  1. Make a snack
  2. Cook a meal
  3. Eat a meal
  4. Discover a recipe
  5. Throw out expired food
  6. Label food/leftovers
  7. Create a shopping list
  8. Save my own recipe
  9. Call home to ask what we have
  10. Coordinate meals/recipes with others

 

Context

  1. At Trader Joes on a busy Sunday afternoon
  2. At Whole Foods on a whim during lunch on a work day 
  3. Having an impromptu BBQ
  4. Casually hanging out with friends at home
  5. Throwing a party at our apartment
  6. Passing by a speciality store (ie., Eataly, Bedford Cheese, wine, etc.)
  7. Opening the refridgerator and realizing everything is old
  8. Staring at the bottom of last empty chip bag  
  9. Trying to tell someone else exactly the right thing to pick up at the store
  10. Looking at the fridge and telling Siri to remind me to get certain ingredients