Barilla - The largest pasta manufacturer of Italy desires to enter the service industry by providing a direct and easy solution to consumers for maintaining their everyday lifestyles. The service had to specifically target Italian families.
Solution had to be service oriented, while incorporating the convenience of available "product range" and "knowledge capital" that can minimize User's effort of exercising healthy dietary habits in a sustainable way.
BRIEF
CHALLENGE
The brief had to explore design opportunities emerging from different areas of food-related needs of everyday life of contemporary families. The three main clusters of activities were:
Producing / Provisioning
Preparing / Customizing on specific needs
Consuming / Managing leftovers
Barilla wanted to bring value for their new service, which would amalgamate company's mission and also will uphold their reputation in the market. A business model was required that can ideate the feasibility of the proposed service.
STEP 1:
By making a User Observation Study, Italian family's ethnography was explored and a Persona was created to give
a realistic understanding of the family’s lifestyle and their everyday hindrances in maintaining consistent healthy
diet foods.
APPROACH
STEP 2:
Above observation in extension with an on-field research
(from questionnaire) of the target audience and few case studies on the related phenomena, streamlined the path for
concept generation.
The first thought on outcome from the above studies was:
urban city's lifestyle is fast and consumers are unorganized, especially when it comes to eating. ‘Available foods’ was the primary focus of the working class and the ‘intake proportion’ of different food as-per different body requirements was not known to most of the observer.
With some of these obtainable facts, the belief was to plan
an intensive diet program for families who can be guided by
an expert trainer about healthy lifestyle.
STEP 3:
After the concept evolved, it was assessed with few users;
more like a Co-Design session, where users expressed their views about the concept. Through this, it helped to discover two more interesting realties:
-
Availability of ‘real fresh’ ingredients wasn’t easy available in the retail market, which was the concern for the families.
-
Everything besides the fact, consumers couldn’t long last a guided lifestyle on everyday basis.
SOLUTION
A temporary diet program was created for consumers, where they can create the profile of every member of the family and their different preferences. According to each person, the experts from the company would set a customized diet plan with supported fresh supply of ingredients.
The program also allowed user to select their favorite activities, which they would like to do under expert guidance.
Benefit from company’s prospect:
-
The company can commence the new service with the existing user database.
-
For supply of fresh ingredients, company can use their existing supplier and get more benefit from them.
-
A business model was considered in this case, which would help company to know the potentiality of the program.
Benefit from consumer’s prospect:
-
The above program would let consumers identify the actual proportion of undertaking each activity in relation to fitness of their body.
-
The person cooking in the family would have fixed plans for everyday meals, which will make everyday planning of the meal easier.
-
They would get complimented fresh ingredients at lower price than the existing retail market.
-
The temporary program will not interrupt their regular phase of life.