Final Project: Research (Day2)

Mohit Choudhary
4 min readDec 2, 2020

Morning

The morning was predominantly about Simona (head of CIID) kicking off the phase 2 of the presentation. Since I forgot to document the phase1, I am still going to regard this as Day2.

Phase2 is about finalizing our design challenge. I am still wondering what that means, I reckon I will figure out in next couple of days.

There were couple of exercises which Simona covered:

I feel a mix of excitement, freedom, confidence after the industry project in my own skill set as a designer. Feel like I have the opportunity to explore what does IxD means for me.

Moved to a new place, set up more frequent check-in with my friends/advisor.

Sharing their progress honestly with each other. Especially taking feedback from people who I don’t feel comfortable with. Also, trying to engage with ones I haven’t done a lot lately. In this year of doing one’s masters almost digitally I have connected with only a few people and don’t put up all in best of the thoughts.

Having very frequent check-ins. Being moral support but yet very critical at the same time.

CIID can support in getting as many alums to share their project story and helping us after the CIID.

The two elements Focus and Constraint go very hand in hand. Focus help you understand your opportunity area and get excited about it and constraints even though a bummer counter-intuitively help you achieve specific actionable solutions rather than being lost in the solution space.

Some really interesting questions to help define the design challenge.

  1. What value do you want to deliver with your design and to whom?

I want small coffee farmer to stay relevant in their game while transitioning/remaining sustainable.

2. Are you designing for the present, for the near future, or for a long-term one?

This project is for near future where climate crisis effects becomes more sinister and government starts enacting stricter laws, small businesses will suffer the most. This project is an effort to help small businesses in that scenario.

3. What technology are you relying on?

Not technology but skill-sets — Service Design and Behavioral Sciences.

4. What are the key stakeholders in your project?

Small coffee farmers & Roasters.

5. What is already done in this domain that inspire/limit your project?

Super interesting question. <Need to add this.>

6. In which direction do you want to push the boundaries of the interaction design practice?

Rapid prototyping and many levels of feedback session.

Is there a way to ‘ethically’ eat meat?

This is why we see 75% of US adults thinking they eat humane meat, despite fewer than 1% of farmed animals actually living on non-factory farms. It’s a divergent inquiry area but applicable.

Afternoon

Interview with Alie

Alie Rose, Co-founder CIID

She is an avid coffee drinker who loved the cafe culture of Copenhagen. She always cared about the origin of the coffee, now being in Costa Rica — she is quite clear that she wants to drink costa rican coffee.

While defining FairTrade she compared it Organic Farming which suffers from the same fuzziness.

Desk Research

But there are some small-scale farmers who are organic by default. They may not be certified because of the expense and the paperwork involved in the process, but because chemical fertilizers and pesticides are also too expensive, they are “passive organic.” This includes the majority of Ethiopian smallholders.

Some useful links:

  1. https://perfectdailygrind.com/2019/08/the-pros-cons-of-growing-organic-coffee/
  2. https://scanews.coffee/2016/12/06/the-power-of-organic-coffee/
  3. https://perfectdailygrind.com/2018/10/rethinking-the-c-price-should-we-change-how-we-price-coffee/

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Mohit Choudhary

I write here about my experiences in studying Interaction Design from CIID and building my coffee roasting company. Personal Website <mohitchoudhary.co>