Action Research & Design Sprint

More Is Always Better Feedback Loop

After team orientation, we started the project with a Kick-off session to meet the business participants and use a few systemic design tools to generate ideas and collect their reflections. One of my colleagues and I facilitated a small section of this workshop session using Iceberg and Feedback loops tools, created by the City of Vancouver Solutions Lab our project supervisor.

Iceberg Tool

You can find this template along with complete instructions of the tool here at Solutions Lab webpage.

Feedback Loop Tool

You can find this template along with complete instructions of the tool here at Solutions Lab webpage.

Action Research

During the action research phase, we needed to get our hands dirty and immerse ourselves in the day-to-day realities of the food system so that we could truly understand the challenges facing Vancouver's food system. Thus, we visited restaurants, grocery stores, and other food organizations and businesses across Vancouver. We had the opportunity to meet with a range of stakeholders and hear their stories. We learned about the struggles of frontline staff, managers, and other professionals across the food system. But our learning didn't stop there. We also had the chance to participate in workshops and design thinking sessions with our partners and stakeholders. Through these collaborative experiences, we were able to build the foundation we needed, grounded in real-world insights, to move forward and develop innovative circular solutions that can create lasting change in the food system.

Overall, the action research phase was a critical part of the Circular Food Innovation Lab's journey. It allowed us to develop a deep understanding of Vancouver's food system's challenges and engage with stakeholders in meaningful ways through tools and prompting questions to help with reflection. I co-created the following workbook with my colleagues to access the tools and collect appropriate information during our site visits.

Here you can find some pages of our workbook with prompting question for site visits learnings

Design sprint

After synthesizing our action research learnings, we started our concept development journey. We generated ideas in response to eight dysfunctional feedback loops we identified in multiple food businesses through generating how might we questions, storyboarding, and other ideation techniques. The outcome was 8 concept packages; then, the businesses signed up for as many as they wanted to test in their location during the rapid prototyping phase.

Find out about our prototypes here!

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