Palette Concept with Hakuhodo (I+H) for Tokyo Design Week

Email this case study to a friend

Friend's email

Your Name

Your Email

Subject

Message Palette Concept with Hakuhodo (I+H) Everyone has the ability to think like a designer and effect change in the world. IDEO and Hakuhodo (I+H) put this belief to the test as part of their “Small Steps Toward a Better Future” exhibit at the 2009 Tokyo Design Show. During a free four-day workshop, more than 100 people collaborated on a human-centered design project that demonstrated how design thinking could help solve an abstract problem — in this case, society’s less-than-ideal eating habits — through creativity and collaboration. Three Tokyo families and members of the general public participated, providing inspiration, feedback, and ideas for promoting well-balanced diets through large-scale behavioral change. Their contributions gave rise to the Palette concept. Palette is a holistic, color-based guide that makes healthful eating simple. Each of its seven colors corresponds to a different category of food, based on their natural pigments (light green for apples and celery, dark green for kale and broccoli, etc.). The familiar hues replace the hard-to-understand nutritional information on product boxes with an more intuitive approach to finding balance. Individuals can follow the system on their own or by shopping for pre-packaged foods with color-coded labels at the grocery store. A retail café concept — with an on-site nutritionist/adviser — follows the same palette. A cell-phone application helps guide better food choices by tracking and making recommendations for what to eat, whether it’s Palette-branded meals or other edibles. The concept responds to a common conundrum. The design team’s talks with workshop participants had revealed that, even when people put a lot of effort into eating right, they frequently find “good nutrition” to be a complex, confusing concept. Many people rely on color as a shortcut to maintaining a varied diet or to make food look more attractive, appetizing, or fun. One mom explained that she uses colors to entice her kids to eat, while a few adults said that they craved brightly colored meals after feasting on blander dishes like ramen. Generally, workshop participants identified color as a key ingredient to mood, motivation, and energy. It turns out that these attitudes and behaviors are grounded in science: Nutrition experts recommend eating as many colors as possible to achieve a balanced diet. These findings and other user insights inspired the design of Palette. The various elements of the system help people gain awareness and takes small, gradual steps toward healthy eating. IDEO and Hakuhodo (I+H) presented Palette to 500 people at the closing celebration of the 2009 Tokyo Design Show. The concept won the Best of Category award from I.D. Magazine in the concepts category. http://www.ideo.com/work/palette-concept-for-the-future-present-exhibit

Everyone has the ability to think like a designer and effect change in the world. IDEO and Hakuhodo (I+H) put this belief to the test as part of their “Small Steps Toward a Better Future” exhibit at the 2009 Tokyo Design Show. During a free four-day workshop, more than 100 people collaborated on a human-centered design project that demonstrated how design thinking could help solve an abstract problem — in this case, society’s less-than-ideal eating habits — through creativity and collaboration. Three Tokyo families and members of the general public participated, providing inspiration, feedback, and ideas for promoting well-balanced diets through large-scale behavioral change. Their contributions gave rise to the Palette concept.

Palette is a holistic, color-based guide that makes healthful eating simple. Each of its seven colors corresponds to a different category of food, based on their natural pigments (light green for apples and celery, dark green for kale and broccoli, etc.). The familiar hues replace the hard-to-understand nutritional information on product boxes with an more intuitive approach to finding balance. Individuals can follow the system on their own or by shopping for pre-packaged foods with color-coded labels at the grocery store. A retail café concept — with an on-site nutritionist/adviser — follows the same palette. A cell-phone application helps guide better food choices by tracking and making recommendations for what to eat, whether it’s Palette-branded meals or other edibles.

The concept responds to a common conundrum. The design team’s talks with workshop participants had revealed that, even when people put a lot of effort into eating right, they frequently find “good nutrition” to be a complex, confusing concept. Many people rely on color as a shortcut to maintaining a varied diet or to make food look more attractive, appetizing, or fun. One mom explained that she uses colors to entice her kids to eat, while a few adults said that they craved brightly colored meals after feasting on blander dishes like ramen.

Generally, workshop participants identified color as a key ingredient to mood, motivation, and energy. It turns out that these attitudes and behaviors are grounded in science: Nutrition experts recommend eating as many colors as possible to achieve a balanced diet. These findings and other user insights inspired the design of Palette. The various elements of the system help people gain awareness and takes small, gradual steps toward healthy eating.

IDEO and Hakuhodo (I+H) presented Palette to 500 people at the closing celebration of the 2009 Tokyo Design Show. The concept won the Best of Category award from I.D. Magazine in the concepts category.