Food & Healthy Behavior

Communication methods to accelerate synthesis and give tangible form to valuable information

Faculty Lead:
Ruth Schmidt

Teaching Assistant:
Julia Rochlin

Class:
Communication in the Planning Process

Students:
Tommie Collins
Yuan Feng
Kait Silva Forsythe
Jack Gerber
Mrinali Gokani
Yuanyuan Hu
Lavanya Julaniya
Esther Lee
Catalina Prada
Alexandria Rengifo
Luisa Parlow Siliprandi
Yutian Sun
Xiaoqiao Tang
Yun Yang
Nanxi Yu
Siyan Callie Zhou

It’s a cliché, but nonetheless true: The best ideas are worthless unless they are communicated well. This need to communicate compelling information effectively maybe even more important when it comes to a field like design, in which designers are often in the position of having to explain the value of abstract ideas that don't yet exist, simultaneously informing, persuading, and inspiring audiences to risk doing something new.

Communicating about a topic like the value of healthy food behaviors or how food purchasing, preparation, and consumption fits into peoples’ lives is challenging in part because we all have presumptions about what “good” food looks like and means based on our own experiences. This means communication is just as much, if not more, about ‘making the familiar strange’ as it is about making a logical case. If food isn’t just about sustenance, but the role of family, memory, culture, and perceptions, effective communication relies on helping clients think beyond traditional silos and products to see connections that were always there, but may normally be hidden.

In seven short weeks, students moved through the entire arc of design strategy — from raw, unsorted data to final presentation — to conceive of and execute on an effective communication artifact and plan. Along the way, the work built week by week to weave in notions of evidence, rhetorical devices, how to develop a singular point of view, and “retinal variables” to address how our brains and eyes perceived visual content. Through iterative development and weekly group critiques, students built muscles that can be applied to any format and context for design communication.