If you didn’t care for red kidney beans, which plate would you pick?
This question relates to a product design challenge that the European fruit and vegetable company, HAK, had for a team of researchers, marketing consultants and designers. HAK wanted to nudge kids to eat more of their vegetables. The resulting solution was a new plate that incorporated various findings from several scientific research fields.
Would you be surprised to know that the food servings are exactly the same on the two plates? Context is everything. One of the visual ‘tricks’ leveraged in the design was the Delboeuf illusion and research published on its effects on eating. Other research incorporated into the design involved ‘bottomless bowls’ which attempts to hide the actual volume of food with an indentation, favorable background contrast and placement to draw attention to the target food, and a child’s bias to mirror what their caretakers do.
All of this serves to demonstrate the importance of planning research time and efforts to discover potential solutions to the underlying problems that a design is hoping to solve.