This blog is connected to my research as a member of the Food and Eating Design Lab at Delft University of Technology. It is not so much a blog about my design and research work, but more a way of articulating relevant ideas and insights that can potentially inform my design and research work.
Why maintain a blog, and why not write my notes down in a notebook? One motivation is that it allows those who are interested in the topics of seasonality, food and design to find me and reach out to me. Another reason for me to use a public blog format, as opposed to a private notebook, is that it invites me to better articulate my thoughts, ideas and lines of reasoning. It is a form of self-coercion, in a way. A final reason to start a blog is that it allows me to explore my research topic in broader and loose way, which academic publishing formats do not allow.
So what is this blog about? A central topic that I’d like to explore is that of ‘seasonality”, which in the most general sense can be defined as “the fact that something changes according to the seasons” (Cambridge Dictionary). I explore this topic in the context of food and design. In particular, I have an intuition that ‘seasonality’ can play a role in promoting healthy and sustainable lifestyles through design. This intuition goes beyond seeing a seasonal diet as an end –i.e., seeing it as a diet that we should promote because of, for example, the low food miles and high nutritional value it may involve. While these are potential qualities of a seasonal diet, I believe there is more to ‘seasonality’.
Rather than an end in itself, I’d like to explore how seasonality can serve more as a means towards various ends, including a healthy and sustainable lifestyle. In my design and research activities, I’d like to focus on conceptualising ‘seasonality’ or ‘going seasonal’ in this direction. Could seasonality serve as a form of guidance in adopting a healthy diet? And how can designers integrate qualities of seasonality in their designs to support and enable people in making these changes?
The aforementioned questions are, at this point in time, guiding my current design and research activities. They bring many other ideas and questions to the table which I will collect and address in future posts. These posts will be based on my reflections on theories, concepts and products that I encounter, but they will also draw from my own experiences of ‘going seasonal’.
