District Spice

Please enjoy my final design project for the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design! You can find a more detailed account of the process in my blog above. It's the result of a two month design sprint, where I conducted various methods of user research (check out the research video!) like exploratory interviews, contextual inquiry and observation, and prototyping methods including experience prototyping, cultural probes, wire framing / GUI and augmented reality. 

Concept Description

District Spice is a monthly flavor kit delivery service that brings the diverse flavors of a city into your kitchen. Each kit is representative of one ethnic minority group living in the city, and includes a recipe, a story of the recipe author, and the “hard-to-find” portioned non-perishable ingredients, all curated by local immigrant-owned businesses.  When you’re ready to branch out on your own, take the District Spice app with you, where augmented reality is your guide through these ethnic minority food stores, explaining ingredients and recipes. Subscribe to a 3, 6 or 12 month plan where you receive a new kit each month, and compliment the kit with cookware from our e-commerce site.

CONCEPT SKETCH

A collective of immigrant business owners curates the recipes and ingredients together with District Spice. Local fulfillment centers portion and pack ingredients. Third party courier services delivers the boxes to home chefs (who can then purchase cookware on our eCommerce site or fresh ingredients through affiliate partnerships). The District Spice app is a companion to the home chef when she's ready to go to these specialty shops on her own, driving footfall back into brick and mortar shops. 

App Click Through

The app provides additional value to the home chef by highlighting the "search" function. Search by ingredient and find them geotagged nearby you, or use augmented reality to explain unfamiliar ingredients and recipes when you're in-store. 

Research Process

Originally, I was planning on designing a care package service that connects owners of ethnic minority food shops to immigrants living in remote parts of Denmark. After speaking with multiple shop owners, many of the owners were struggling to reach customers outside of the ethnicity of the ingredients. A Chinese store was mostly attracting Chinese immigrants, and the bigger opportunity we identified together was to find a way to encourage more home cooking of the cuisine to ultimately bring new customers into the shop.