Gwendolyn Yixin Zhang
Integrative Seminar 2: Systems and Strategies
May 12, 2016
Final Project Reflection
Through back to the entire project and research I have completed for both Integrative Studio and Seminar 2: Systems and Strategies, I learned from my classmates I worked with, people I interviewed, researches I did, articles I read and even just myself. The entire project contained a whole shifted thoughts from a very rough stage toward a relatively completed stage. Before staring analyzing the process of the research and the project, I have to say that I am very glad I made my interest as research topic which gave me the passion to keep working on it and seeking the different methods, ideas.
At the very beginning of my search, I was highly interested in the culinary art industry of New York City and being curious how these high restaurants sustain in the city with their non-stop business. How would these consumption be made and how social circle/economic status interacted with social media that effects those consumption. However, after the first series of research, I found out that New York City, with its five boroughs, it contains more that 25,000 restaurant establishments that offer millions of people meals in every single day and people in the city are always having conversations on food/restaurants and posting food pictures/dish on social media. Eating/exploring restaurants and communication seems tight up on social media. I questioned, why and how? moreover, how would this trend effecting restaurant business in New York City. Finally, I decided to make it as my final topic of my research paper — evaluating the position of social media on restaurant business of the city. In my continuous research, I looked up to the communication research, digital marketing studies, analysis of human behavior and phycology on internet and media.
The research I have done for seminar intentionally provides me a more actual idea on my studio project. Since I have more been more aware of my topic, social media VS the restaurant business of New York City, I started questioning, what is the problem with it, how would people deal with it and what kind of solution would make things easier, lighter? I then looked back at myself, how I interact with social media and restaurants. I am in love with food, meanwhile, struggling with dieting, weight control…I always try to eat light and clean, restricting myself in the most of the time. However, once I get a chance to eat out, my control, awareness would just disappear. In my research from the data that is given by the Health Department, 25% of American men and 45% of American women are on a diet on any given day, about 4.2% of women have suffered Anorexia in their lifetime…All this data drives me to think about, how to make a better control under the circumstance of eating out but under a diet regulation. No judgements, every one has his/her own living ways and since he/she already decided to continue in this way, the thing as a designer/developer can do is to help these groups to make it better, healthier, happier. So, finally, I decided to create an app based tool — Intake, be aware of what you eat. The restaurant research tool with a strong nutrition and health support. In this app, the user can search up to the restaurants around the city, or either a particular restaurant that the Intake user is looking for. The result will be receiving tons of pictures that different users’ posts of their dish pictures. By tapping the image, it will flip to the other side of the image – intake analysis. Intake analysis will basically analyze the nutrition of the dish by providing the total calorie, total fat, protein, carb and other elements. Also we would make several suggestions such as if this dish/restaurant fits people on diet/ daily based/ or even date, cheat meal etc. In the further concern, the restaurant owners/restaurant can open up their own accounts on INTAKE and summit their nutrition info. This app would neither be a simple search tool or a health supported tool. It would be a combination of the interactive, enjoyable food based social media with the heathy eating notion that provides the information on the food services around the city. I feel truly appreciated that Integrative Studio and Seminar just provides me a chance to be a designer who is trying to come up with solutions to improve others’ life even the project can still go much further.