Innovation study: food and digital connectivity
Harnessing the rich detail, creativity, and individual relevance of personal narratives, Shareable.net and Latitude Research co-sponsored an innovation study to explore food information needs, information accessibility in decision-making contexts (e.g. while food shopping), and technology solutions for the future of food and offline purchasing in general.
The study (led by senior analyst Marina Miloslavsky) asked participants to tell a story about a time when they needed more information while food-shopping, and to suggest a technology solution which might have addressed their needs.
Unfortunately, as Abraham Maslow said in 1966, “It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail.”
So if you ask for technological solutions, chances are that people will – strangely enough – provide you with technology solutions, and then you come to conclusions like this one:
“If we could use new technologies to access all of the food information we desired while shopping for groceries, suggest our findings, we’d likely be healthier, happier in our environments, and more sustainable as a society.”
