Portfolio #2 - information ecology

Today we entered the form-giving arena and we started to think about and give form to a prototype. We reconsidered our product idea and ended with working on a product, which consists of a series of groceries with a barcode that you can scan with a smartphone. We decided to take point of departure in a already existing series of groceries called “Levevis”. The main ideas is, that when you scan the barcode you enter an app which gives you an idea to a recipe where the scanned grocery is included as an ingredient. We quickly realized that the there are many sides to this product: we have to consider the concrete label of the concrete grocery which the barcode is a part of, we have to consider how to give form to the app and we have to consider how to bring the consumer the message.

We started focussing on the design of the barcode and we talked about how to make it more eye-catching. Here we got to talk about how to make it more intuitively by giving it a certain smell, feeling or sound. We ended up making a prototype of the label where the barcode was shaped as the “Levevis” butterfly logo. The butterfly has a rubber surface that is supposed to have the effect, that the customer takes down the grocery from the shelf to touch the rubber butterfly.  

Today I found it particularly interesting how one little part of a product such as the barcode can be shaped in so various ways. And furthermore how we in the group can come up with so various ideas about a small thing like that. I also got much more conscious about how important it is as a designer to also think about how the product can reach the costumer; You can make the most brilliant design, but if the customer don’t know it exists it is just a waste of money, and time spend. I think the promotion of a product is a huge part of labelling it.

Next lecture we are going into the solution arena and we have to make a presentation of our design that we can present to a requestor.