Latitude

Click here to download a 2-page PDF summary of study findings.

This post was authored by Jeremy Adam Smith, editor of Shareable.net (where this entry was originally posted). Latitude is proud to have partnered with Shareable.net on “The Interactive Future of Food” study.

Food is more than just a way to stay alive. It’s also a force that ties the human community together, through universal need, border-crossing commerce, kitchen gossip and dinner table conversation, potlucks and picnics, restaurants and cafes, all the places and times when we come together as friends, families, communities.

Human relationships—and our relationships with our food—have always been shaped by technology. And today, the Internet and mobile technologies are revolutionizing our communities and food consumption to degrees we are only just starting to understand. Technology has created many problems in the way food is grown, distributed, and consumed. But could technology offer solutions as well?

To help answer that question, Shareable.net teamed up with the research consultancy Latitude to study how digital connectivity shapes food choices. On Tuesday, we described how mobile technologies are now helping people interface with food; on Wednesday, we revealed participant ideas for how connectivity might help us make better food choices.

Today, we explore what our study suggests about new opportunities for local sharing and community building. “No matter what information we’re after, community (and therefore trust!) seems to be an important part of it,” wrote study leader Marina Miloslavsky in a comment on Tuesday’s installment of this series. She continued:

“Personally, I buy my fruits and vegetables at a local farmer’s market, and I trust what my grocer is telling me about that produce. And I trust him to tell me when he doesn’t know certain information, too. Examining all of our entries for this study, people certainly mentioned shopping at farmer’s markets, co-ops, and other places where building that community is easier than at a traditional supermarket.”

Thus our participants simultaneously recognized the limits as well as the promises of technology. An iPhone app might help us to navigate a world of consumer choices in a way that’s more environmentally and nutritionally responsible, but we’re also seeking real community. The closer the information source, the more it is trusted. For example, only 14 percent of participants mentioned that they’d like to receive background/product information from suppliers, but 51 percent said they’d like to receive this type of information from stores where they shop (response options were not mutually exclusive).

In addition to real contact with stores and co-ops that seem to share and reflect the values of shoppers, and provide a sense of neighborliness, some participants suggested that “objective” information is increasingly established through aggregating many, often diverse, perspectives. That’s where technology can prove helpful. As one participant put it:

“Blogs, blogs, blogs. Ranking systems, rating systems, investigative journalism, I get it all through the Internet. I have apps for my iPhone like ‘don’t eat that’ and ‘good guide’ that help me at the store too. I learn as much as I can at home, and then carry reference systems in the form of seafood guides and price checkers for my phone.”

Participant submission, “The Interactive Future of Food”

Another participant emphasized that the information should best come through diverse sources, and that each point of access should touch the others and form a kind of dialog:

“Some sort of a kiosk with internet access, store-provided information, and a local shopper’s community would have been possibly quite helpful. As what I needed were product reviews for subjective qualities, it would have been important for me to know that people were free to speak their minds (within the limits of respectful language), so the equivalent of moderated message boards with a commitment to free expression could have worked. Also, some sort of prompting for customers who left reviews to describe their experience as a user, not just rave or complain, would help; as would some rateable items, such as ‘flavor’ and ‘mixing’, depending on the items in question. This could also be nice if it could be accessed from home, and perhaps encouraged participation with coupons or special deals of some sort.”

Participant submission, “The Interactive Future of Food”

These perspectives suggest that stores—both chains and independents—can improve shopping experiences by helping to aggregate information and provide more nutritional and environmental information for customers.

These combined notions lead to a superficially paradoxical conception of the grocery store as both a node in a wider network and a focal point for local community, where members can congregate, share information, and aggregate their information with other communities. “The store of the next generation will look like a combination of the local farmer’s market and the food cooperative owned locally by the community,” wrote one study participant, who continued:

“It will not only be a place to buy food, but a place to connect with your local community in real ways. There’ll be some layers for Internet information sharing, many of these are already in place. Food co-op and many farmer’s markets utilize the internet to keep customers and members up to date and even giving them the opportunity to pre-order a farmer’s market delivery…giving the farmer more specific information for how much needs to be picked (less waste). In the end, local food and sustainability will be best served by appropriate use of technology and information, not information and technology overload (people may already be experiencing that with digitized self-checkout scanning carts and neon lights all a glow).”

Participant submission, “The Interactive Future of Food”

Shareable.net is a non-profit online magazine which explores how to design our streets, cities, workplaces, institutions, government, and technology so that people can share lives and resources. They tell this story because they believe that a shareable world might be just want we need to enjoy life to the fullest—and restore the planet in the process.

Header image courtesy of yourdon’s flickr, (cc) some rights reserved; body image courtesy of rachelpasch’s flickr, (cc) some rights reserved.

Download a PDF summary of “The Interactive Future of Food” study findings here.

This week, Latitude and Shareable.net have been exploring topics related to food–community-building around food, local, more sustainable systems for food production and distribution, ways to improve our experiences in food shopping environments, and technology solutions for making desired information more accessible to us at critical decision-making moments (such as while shopping for groceries).

Shareable and Latitude jointly conducted an idea generation study, using the power of collectivity creativity (“the wisdom of many”) to envision solutions for the future of food. Ultimately, each participant told us a story about a time they desired more information while food shopping, and then suggested a technology solution which might have solved this dilemma. Our three installments to date identified the main themes that emerged from the study–but not all responses fit tightly into those themes. In some cases, participants stretched them into new territory, truly thinking outside the box.

Below is a selection of “outliers” straight from participants mouths’ (or keyboards): potential solutions offered to address the various information gaps which people currently experience while making real-time decisions about food in store environments. They are non-representative good ideas that we thought were worth recognizing as ahead-of-the-curve–not to mention, potential food-for-thought for forward-thinking retailers.

Local community

Food co-ops and many farmer’s markets already utilize the internet to give farmers more specific information about customer demand (less waste). The store of the next generation will look like a combination of the local farmer’s market and the food cooperative owned locally by the community. It will not only be a place to buy food, but a place to connect with your local community in real ways. –Male, Age 36, (no city provided)

Physical navigation

A simple map with all the items the store carries–as a touch screen on the carts and baskets and at the entrance would be great, or a PDA wifi in-store map or mobile Web site. And an online service of the same nature for pre-shopping planning. –Male, Age 53, Gloucester, MA

Inventory and lists

Have a digital display with the restock date–then tie it to a discount coupon (either hard copy or via SMS short code). –Female, Age 40, San Francisco, CA

Install RFID/barcode scanners, weight sensors in cupboards and the fridge; wire them all up to a Web server running some sort of inventory software that can serve XML feeds of my current home inventory to my phone. –Male, Age 33, Milford, CT

Comparison and personalized convenience

Give me an augmented reality device which I can hold up in front of an item on a shelf and it will overlay apples-to-apples comparisons of that item against those offered at my default stores as well as any in the area offering same item. And, ideally, it would use natural language. “No, don’t get that here. It’s cheaper at XYZ and you’re going there next anyways to also buy ABC and DEF.” –Male, Age 46, Cleveland, OH

Recommendation services

An ingredient “anagrammer”–an app that would tell me various recipes I could make using the ingredients I currently own (with the addition of a few store purchases). It could dynamically suggest recipes and ingredients I might like based on my current ingredients, past ratings and personal preferences. –Female, Age 25, Cambridge, MA

This entry has been cross-posted to Shareable.net.

Lead analyst on “The Interactive Future of Food”: Marina Miloslavsky.

Latitude is an international research consultancy exploring how Web technologies can enhance human experiences; our people-driven research approach unites generative, media-based methods with robust quantitative analysis to identify future opportunities for Web-based innovation. Latitude 42s are a series of open innovation studies covering diverse topics, unified by a common digital thread, which address everyday problems of great personal and societal relevance. Visit life-connected.com for other 42s, or email Neela Sakaria (nsakaria@latd.com) to learn more about working with Latitude.

Header image courtesy of scobleizer’s flickr, (cc) some rights reserved.

This week, we began publishing results for our open innovation study (in conjunction with Shareable.net), “The Interactive Future of Food.” We’re posting one topic per day, revealing study results, to the homepage of Shareable.net. We encourage you to jump into the discussion there!

You can also download a PDF summary of “The Interactive Future of Food” study findings here.

We want to thank all of our participants who contributed such rich, thoughtful narratives about their own food and food-purchasing experiences. (“The Interactive Future of Food” is a narrative analysis study.) Their participation pushed us over our goal, and we’re happy to say that Latitude recently donated $500 to The Hunger Project (a global non-profit committed to the sustainable end of world hunger), as a result of their time and creativity. Sincere thanks for all the valuable contributions!

Below is an interactive data visualization containing some demographic and basic technology profiling information (general location, age, gender, smartphone usage, tech adoption, and referral source) about our US study participants. (See further down the page for a world map visualization.)

To view the visualization at full size, click here.

To view a world map visualization of all participants across the globe who participated in “The Interactive Future of Food,” click here.

Lead analyst on “The Interactive Future of Food”: Marina Miloslavsky.

Latitude is an international research consultancy exploring how Web technologies can enhance human experiences; our people-driven research approach unites generative, media-based methods with robust quantitative analysis to identify future opportunities for Web-based innovation. Latitude’s 42s are a series of open innovation studies covering diverse topics, unified by a common digital thread, which address everyday problems of great personal and societal relevance. Explore life-connected.com for other 42s, or email Neela Sakaria (nsakaria@latd.com) to learn more about working with Latitude.

Header image courtesy of vintage85′s flickr, (cc) some rights reserved.

Click here to download a 2-page PDF summary of study findings.

Yesterday, we unveiled the first results from our food innovation study (co-launched by Latitude Research and Shareable.net) which explores the impact of information accessibility on real-time decision-making through a quantitative analysis of participants’ personal narratives; specifically, it examines ways in which in-the-moment answers can help us to make food choices that are healthier and more sustainable for the environment. It also considers ways in which offline retail environments (like groceries stores), integral to our daily lives, can work with us–not against us–to get the information we need. Today we’ll focus on the technology solutions that our participants generated to solve their own information dilemmas.

We’re more motivated than ever to make informed decisions, understanding that the information we desire is out there, lurking somewhere in the vast expanse of virtual space–but just out of reach in many offline contexts when having that information would have the greatest effect on our actual behaviors. We have busy lives with limited time and patience to pre-research and rummage for the brand that has transparent labeling and happens to match our preferences. The study found that time spent shopping offline is rarely for discovering new food products or recipes–it’s time to grab what we need (with as much attention to food origins, health, etc. as possible) and get on with the rest of life.

I’m cruising through our local grocery store with 2 kids–ages 3 and 5. No time to waste because the attention span of the tots accompanying me is at an all-time low. It’s a last-minute after school, after-work mad-dash to grab the “staple” items quickly. Well, I’ve been trying to buy more items locally–everything from meat and cheese and milk to orange juice. Okay, this is where I hit my wall. There is no easy way to figure out which items are actually local… none of the foods are clearly marked. I don’t have time to read labels and sift through stacks of cheese.”

Excerpt from participant submission, “The Interactive Future of Food”

According to users, solutions for the near-future of food might include:

1. Mobile applications–especially ones which provide information that is richly, contextually relevant to our offline environments (and objects in them). Regardless of the type of information sought, 3 in 10 participants (which was 6X the number who actually used smartphones while shopping!) suggested a mobile phone solution to their information problems, with 43% of these participants specifying the use of a mobile application. Whether they needed to know official standards for “organic” eggs, or simply needed to locate organic eggs in some nearby aisle, participants were equally likely to suggest a mobile phone solution to satisfy their varied information requests.

   One current offering, an iPhone application called RedLaser, better connects users with comparison cost information by providing online price listings via barcode scanning of an in-store item.

   RedLaser from Jeffrey Powers on Vimeo.

   It’s a solid start but, in the context of food shopping, some users feel that it only gets part of the way there, largely because it lacks a local focus. “Grocery items that are on sale are not [called out] in Redlaser’s listings; local grocers are also not listed,” explained one participant who currently uses the app. “The result is that I miss out on sale items which can have a big effect on the bottom line. A more ideal solution would be a RedLaser app that cross-compares brand and sale prices for local grocery stores.”

2. Seamlessly integrating information into our physical surroundings, such as via mobile QR codes/barcodes and RFID scanning–technologies which 16% of participants suggested to fill their own information gaps. (Topically, Stickybits recently hit the market, bringing barcode scanning for mobile users further into the mainstream as a way for individuals to “tag their worlds”; Stickybits are adhesive barcodes readable by iPhone and Android applications which allow users to attach digital content–from YouTube videos to Wikipedia pages–to real-world objects and places. They are then accessible to other users via the Stickybits app.)

   Barcodes for shopper use, attached to products and shelves in food stores, could offer information (and visual media), making official labeling standards, farming practices, food origins, and user reviews and recommendations easily accessible in real-time. “QR codes or something similar, standardized across the food industry, would help all of us smartphone users a lot with getting information about the food item we’re currently looking at,” remarked one study participant.

   

   Stickybits barcodes, unveiled at SxSW Interactive 2010.

   Augmented reality, which overlays environmentally relevant Web information onto a smartphone’s camera view, also came through as an emergent trend for better “embedding” information into physical spaces.



Smartphone screenshot of a location-aware augmented reality application.

The information being accessed by users might relate either to “background” facts and food standards which would help to recognize more healthy or environmentally-friendly products, or to more “logistical” information for comparing prices or navigating a store (efficiently and with minimal frustration!) to find the items we need. But one thing is certain–information must be highly relevant in context and access must be truly hassle-free. Even those shoppers motivated enough to whip out a smartphone mid-aisle currently sense the disconnect between physical and virtual information spaces:

… but then you find yourself looking at a list of low-relevancy search results that are almost never applicable to the specific item you’re holding.

–Excerpt from participant submission, “The Interactive Future of Food”

So who is ultimately responsible for making material improvements in information accessibility–for realizing these solutions? Participants were more likely to suggest solutions which positioned their local stores (over product suppliers) as information sources, creating a natural opening for retailers to step up and supply the kinds of digital tools which facilitate informed purchases. Nearly half of participants (45%) suggested portable solutions, which might take the form of mobile applications–or store-provided barcode scanners, among a number of other possibilities. Stationary solutions in stores, however, were also popular, with 31% of participants suggesting them.



Friday’s post will offer a selection of “outliers”–non-representative solution ideas that we felt were worth acknowledging–directly from participants’ narratives. Tomorrow’s post will focus on local, sustainability, and community-oriented implications for food and food-purchasing environments.

Lead analyst on “The Interactive Future of Food”: Marina Miloslavsky.

This entry has been cross-posted to Shareable.

Latitude is an international research consultancy exploring how Web technologies can enhance human experiences; our people-driven research approach unites generative, media-based methods with robust quantitative analysis to identify future opportunities for Web-based innovation. Latitude’s 42s are a series of open innovation studies covering diverse topics, unified by a common digital thread, which address everyday problems of great personal and societal relevance. Explore life-connected.com for other 42s, or email Neela Sakaria (nsakaria@latd.com) to learn more about working with Latitude.

Header image courtesy of Customers Rock!

Summary of findings for “The Interactive Future of Food” study available as a PDF download here.

A few weeks ago, Latitude and Shareable co-launched an innovation study around information access and decision-making in context—as related to food and food-purchasing in store environments.

If we could easily get the information we need while wandering the aisles of Stop ‘n Shop or while weaving between produce piles at our local farmer’s market, we might ultimately eat healthier meals, distinguish between brands with a sustainability bent and those without (making quite a difference to the environment, en masse), and have more positive experiences in the retail spaces that are integral to our everyday lives.

The study asked each participant to relay a personal narrative about a specific time they desired more information while food-shopping and to suggest a technology solution which might’ve improved their experience. Latitude then developed a reliable coding scheme to pick out and quantify specific trends (such as information need categories, information-seeking behaviors, and proposed solution attributes) in participants’ free-form, personal narratives.

Recently, Latitude donated $500 to The Hunger Project, a global non-profit committed to the sustainable end of world hunger, on behalf of those who contributed such rich, thoughtful narratives to “The Interactive Future of Food” study. Thanks to all who participated!

To learn more about “The Interactive Future of Food,” please download our 2-page PDF here which summarizes the study findings.

Marina Miloslavsky is a senior analyst at Latitude, and the lead on “The Interactive Future of Food” study. You can email her here and follow her author feed here.

Header image courtesy of Customers Rock!

Click here to download a 2-page PDF summary of study findings.

Harnessing the rich detail, creativity, and individual relevance of personal narratives, Shareable and Latitude Research recently co-launched an innovation study to explore food information needs, information accessibility in decision-making contexts (e.g. while food shopping), and technology solutions for the future of food and offline purchasing in general. The study (led by senior analyst Marina Miloslavsky) asked participants to tell a story about a time when they needed more information while food-shopping, and to suggest a technology solution which might have addressed their needs.

Currently, we live in a world where we understand that any bit of information we require most likely already exists somewhere. Today’s information woes relate to access, not the existence of information. More specifically, access to information at particular times and in certain contexts becomes increasingly important because we know it’s already possible through mobile and real-time technologies; it’s just not being applied to some everyday scenarios. However, there are instances when having more information would easily change our decisions and behaviors. If we could use new technologies to access all of the food information we desired while shopping for groceries, we’d likely be healthier, happier in our environments, and more sustainable as a society.

Set the scene. We want to feel like we’re really there with you.

“I’m usually not a thorough person. I’m an impulse buyer at heart. But lately I’ve been approaching my food shopping with the background research and patience of a 50-year old man looking for a car for his youngest daughter.

I pick up each brand and study the packaging. Where the heck is this chicken raised? I search labels, sometimes for 15 seconds until I hit on a locality. One says Pennsylvania. That’s pretty close. But then I read closer and see that the distributor is located in Pennsylvania. Does that mean it’s being distributed from Pennsylvania, or just that their computer systems running the complex process of shipping chicken all over the country are located in Pennsylvania? I take note of each location and then set in on my next information criteria. What are it’s almost-organic or all-organic qualifications? …”

Excerpt from participant submission, “The Interactive Future of Food”

“The Interactive Future of Food” (Introduction for Participants) from latddotcom on Vimeo.

Current Information Demand: Background Facts + Food in Physical Space

In the context of food-shopping, more than half of participants (56%) expressed a primary information need relating to “background” product information (such as health, food origins, organic, farming practices, food safety or ingredients), while 31% required information more “logistical” in nature (location in store, price, or inventory).

With new awareness of sustainability issues at the level of personal decision-making and Web resources to make these processes more transparent to the public, it’s not surprising that food origins emerges as the single most commonly expressed information need. (Check out Sourcemap, a tool for researching and optimizing the supply chains behind everyday products, and LocalHarvest and SharedHarvest to find sustainably grown food in your area).

Participants’ expressed information needs by category. In cases where participants expressed more than one type of information need, a “primary need” was coded to reflect prioritization by the participant. (n=93)

The second most “in-demand” category of information related to navigating one’s immediate physical environment–rooted in the universally relatable (and frustrating) experience of not being able to locate something you need in a store. When we stop to think about it, connected culture dictates that, just as we should be able to wiki clear-cut “cage-free” standards suddenly from our smartphones, shouldn’t we be able to “Google Map” our way around grocery store aisles? Mobile technologies have empowered decision-making processes and blurred the line between physical and virtual information needs–by responding in real-time, anywhere we require answers.

Information Scarcity: Credibility and Context

As it happens, people often aren’t getting the answers they need. Among the participants who didn’t have their information needs resolved at all, a majority (59%) ultimately made purchases regardless–and 1 in 5 people explicitly mentioned that this was a recurring experience. In addition to an accessibility issue (simply getting the information we need where we are, when we need it–we’ll explore the technology solutions that participants generated in tomorrow’s post), one possibility is that people simply don’t know where to locate trustworthy information.

“What is a transfat? Why don’t I want it in my crackers? How do I recognize products that are bad for me? Most people want to eat healthily, they just don’t necessarily know how, and supermarkets don’t actively help.”

Excerpt from participant submission, “The Interactive Future of Food”

For example, only 14% of participants said they would have liked to receive background product information from the product’s supplier; conversely, 51% said they’d like to hear this type of information from stores (response options were not mutually exclusive)–indicating a possible opportunity for stores to alleviate information-frustration by building out user tools and extending this root sense of trust. After all, purchasers are increasingly information-autonomous, and “Web 2.0″ philosophy rewards businesses which facilitate information transparency and accessibility. The integration of social information streams presents another avenue for connecting individuals to trusted information, as today’s benchmark for unbiased information–especially consumer-related information–becomes the consensus of the social aggregate.

Why Isn’t There an App for That?

What’s clear is that no matter what type of information people required in trying to make informed purchases, the solution was often perceived to be a mobile one. In fact, 3 in 10 participants (6 times the number of people who actually used smartphones while shopping!) suggested mobile solutions to their own information dilemmas.

It didn’t matter whether I wanted to know if the store’s tomatoes were locally grown, if I wanted a price comparison with other stores in a 5-mile radius, if I wanted credible standards for “organic,” or if I just needed to track down this store’s tabouli: mobile was just as likely to be perceived as the answer to one information need as another–and by people who aren’t currently smartphone users in this context. Mobile has become an integrated solution for informed, real-time decision-making–an expected offering–rather than simply a platform for accessing superfluous, “nice-to-know” information.

In tomorrow’s post, we’ll take an in-depth look at the common solution attributes that participants generated in solving their varied information challenges.

Latitude recently donated $500 to The Hunger Project, a global non-profit committed to the sustainable end of world hunger, on behalf of the individuals who contributed their time and thoughtful narratives to “The Interactive Future of Food.”

An alternate version of this entry has been cross-posted to Shareable.

Latitude is an international research consultancy exploring how Web technologies can enhance human experiences; our people-driven research approach unites generative, media-based methods with robust quantitative analysis to identify future opportunities for Web-based innovation. Latitude’s 42s are a series of open innovation studies covering diverse topics, unified by a common digital thread, which address everyday problems of great personal and societal relevance. Visit life-connected.com for other 42s, or email Neela Sakaria (nsakaria@latd.com) to learn more about working with Latitude.

Header image courtesy of wolf_359′s flickr, (cc) some rights reserved.

Latitude is excited to announce that it teamed up with Shareable last week to co-launch an innovation study around food and digital connectivity: “The Interactive Future of Food”

Shareable, headed up by Jeremy Adam Smith and Neal Gorenflo, is a non-profit online magazine that reports on people, places, and projects working to enact a more shareable world—these include social innovations, communities, and services like Zipcar, Wikipedia, Kiva, open source software, Burning Man, Freecycle, and Creative Commons. The site discusses the broader trends and implications vaulting all things shareable, in addition to offering tools and actionable tips for readers to take part in the design of a more shareable world.

The Interactive Future of Food: The Study

Food 42 Intro from latddotcom on Vimeo.

Read more about The Interactive Future of Food on Shareable, or click here to be linked directly to the survey.

Study results will be posted to both Shareable and life-connected.com in the coming weeks.

Header image courtesy of wolf_359′s flickr.

Food is integral to the way we live, with far-reaching effects on the environment, personal health and enjoyment. Latitude is conducting a 42 study to understand how new connectivity—improved accessibility, transparency, and organization of information—alters our desires and decisions around food and food-purchasing.

To participate in the study, click here.

Note: Please make sure you are ready to begin the survey before clicking on the link above.

When the study reaches 50 participants, Latitude will donate $500 to The Hunger Project:

Connect with us on Twitter or Facebook to hear when we’ve reached our goal and to receive informational study updates.

The Hunger Project (THP) is a global, non-profit, strategic organization committed to the sustainable end of world hunger.

They work in 13 countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America to develop effective bottom-up strategies to end hunger and poverty—by empowering people to lead lives of self-reliance, to meet their own basic needs, and to build better futures for their children.

Some of THP’s initiatives include the creation of economically and environmentally sustainable community centers for meeting basic needs in rural villages—and micro-financing loans to women food farmers in Africa, whilst providing these women with training, support, and economic education to help them increase their incomes and better provide for their families.

Read more about THP’s key initiatives here.

Latitude 42: The Interactive Future of Food

Tell us about a specific instance during a grocery-shopping trip where you wished you had more information of some sort. This can be any type of information – food origin, health, price, location in the store, or anything else that was frustrating during your experience.

Learn more about Latitude’s The Interactive Future of Food study, or watch the introduction video below.

To participate in the study, click here.

Note: Please make sure you are ready to begin the survey before clicking on the link above.

Header image courtesy of transaid’s flickr, (cc) some rights reserved.

Contributing editor: Marina Miloslavsky.

“The Interactive Future of Food” study is closed to participants. Download a PDF summary of findings here, or explore study results:

1. “Real-Time Information Accessibility Drives Decision-Making”
2. “Mobile & Barcode Technology for Informed ‘Offline’ Shopping”
3. “Can Technology Help Groceries Build Community?”
4. “A Few Very Forward Ideas: Participant Solutions for Food Innovation”

Latitude is pleased to announce that it has partnered with Shareable for its The Interactive Future of Food study! Results will be posted to both life-connected.com and Shareable.net.

Food & the Rise of Information

Fast Company recently selected “The 8 Biggest Kitchen Innovations of the Last Decade.” While a number were—predictably—devices, 2 of the 8 selections were Web-based (the epicurious iPhone app and freshdirect.com).

Food is integral to the way we live, with far-reaching effects on the environment, personal health and enjoyment. Latitude is conducting a 42 study to understand how new connectivity—improved accessibility, transparency, organization, and socialization of information—alters our desires and decisions around food and food-purchasing, with implications for retail experiences in general.

Using computers, including hand-helds and smartphones, we can make our preferences better known to the people who bring us the food we buy and eat: farmers, processors, distributors and retailers. We can demand and eventually get precisely the kind of food we want.

Essentially, the power to change the way we shop for food, the way it gets delivered to us and ultimately the way it gets produced.

New York Times, “The Way We Live Now: Faster Slow Food”

These recent technological innovations are empowering people with information; they’re filling gaps in the food shopping experience that we may not have even acknowledged previously, but which have a significant impact on the way we live.

Latitude 42: The Interactive Future of Food from latddotcom on Vimeo.

To participate in the study, click here.
Note: Please make sure you are ready to begin the survey before clicking on the link above.

Latitude’s 42 aims to explore these gaps more fully, to understand how existing solutions can be repurposed to fill these gaps, and to discover novel opportunities rooted in real needs and desires.

A Taste of the Future

In an earlier post on the projected future of food shopping, we speculated what the opportunity space for “information innovations” might look like—search-filtering by personal preferences like health, price, and food origins, and digital grocery lists with “smart memory,” recommendation capabilities, and compatibility with online grocery stores.

(Food for thought: up-and-coming blippy.com socializes real-time purchasing, asking “What are people buying right now?” and Ikan is a home bar-code scanner that digitizes your store list as you throw items away, then provides home delivery for items on the list—”the Netflix of groceries.”)

Narrative Analysis: the Power of Personal Storytelling

Personal narratives are the chosen “input” for this 42 study (textual, audio, or video formats). Implicitly or explicitly, structured storytelling can indicate “problems” (needs/desires), and suggest the latent or future solutions that could fill these gaps to better improve an individual’s experience.

More than traditional surveys, narrative analysis can reduce the gap which results from what individuals say versus what they actually do.  (A study called “Reality Bites,” which profiled the behavior of 1000 UK grocery shoppers against their stated attitudes on health, environmentally responsible purchasing, etc. found significant discrepancies here.)

Latitude 42: The Interactive Future of Food

Tell us about a specific instance during a grocery-shopping trip where you wished you had more information of some sort.  This can be any type of information – food origin, health, price, location in the store, or anything else that was frustrating during your experience.

To participate in the study, click here.

Note: Please make sure you are ready to begin the survey before clicking on the link above.

Email innovation@latd.com if you have any questions, or to request more information.

Follow Latitude 42: The Interactive Future of Food study updates here.

Header image courtesy of yourdon’s flickr, (cc) some rights reserved.