pilot interview

Figure: the fridge area is one of several spaces that make up the kitchen area of Matt's room. Matt estimates that 80% of his meals come out of the fridges.

Here's a summary of the important insights and observations from my interview.

1) the big problem with the fridge is there's no freezer
2) the big problem with the room is lack of workspace
3) many quick mini-meal cycles rather than a few large meal-cycles (cycle: planning, preparing, eating, cleaning and restoring)
4) the major obstacle to cooking and enjoying meals is lack of tools (e.g. workspace, stove and oven, pots, etc.)
5) "food is the most important thing" "it's the most fundamental thing in my life"



Here's a more detailed account of the interesting points of our discussion:

According to Matt, food is the most important thing in his life. He prefers to sacrifice quantity rather than quality of food. Last year, Matt lived in an student apartment inGermany where he used a mini-fridge, but also had access to a community kitchen on the floor of his apartment. He Matt cooked almost all his meals and enjoyed doing so. At IIT Matt lives in the dorms and is only at school for 3-4 days a week and has only a microwave to cook with. However, he does prepare most of his own meals since he doesn't have a meal plan. Here, a typical meals for Matt are leftover takeout, sandwiches, leftovers from home, and deli-meals. He also eats a lot of small snacks, like yogurt, granola bars and bread and butter. Matt tries to eat at least one "real meal" (i.e. a hot meal w/ vegetables and meat) a day. He also tries to make one new meal a week, since this is a good way to learn to cook and to not get bored with your meals. However, this is difficult because Matt doesn't have a kitchen. Whereas in Germany Matt enjoyed cooking, at IIT he doesn't enjoy preparing meals since he can't cook because he doesn't have the tools. His "kitchen area" is "pretty crappy" at IIT.




















Figure: The "cooking" area of Matt's kitchen is in his closet next to his clothes. Matt doesn't like how his kitchen area overlaps with other areas of his room.














Figure: This closet shelf is used to store food and kitchen items as well as personal items.

Matt would rather prepare meals. Matt's situation in Germany where he cooked most of his meals was much closer to his ideal situation than his situation at IIT. He views the main obstacle as a lack of kitchen tools rather than a lack of time. His ideal kitchen would be like the one he had in Germany. The key elements are:

+ a fridge with a freezer and a lock
+ stove and oven
+ lots of countertop space and cabinets
+ variety of pots, dishes and other cooking utensils

One important benefit of this ideal kitchen is it is shared environment. This allows for sharing of food, tools and meals. The shared kitchen can also become a problem when people steal food (and therefore disrupt your meal plan), hence the lock is important.

In Germany, "life seemed to revolve around the [mini] fridge" because every few days he went shopping and every few hours he had to rearrange his fridge contents. Organizing fridge contents was more of an enjoyable challenge to overcome than a constant frustration. Here Matt and his roomate are not "actively using" the fridge, because they don't cook and eat a lot of take-out.

Matt's eating schedule is highly irregular. Whereas in Germany food was something to be enjoyed, at IIT food is often viewed more as simply fuel for the body. In Matt's words "I make a quick meal when hunger distracts me from work".

One issue that kept arising was lack of workspace. According to Matt, "once you take something out, you have to put it back right away to make space". Matt's "countertop" was a coffee table that also functioned as a desk, dining table and tempory space for other objects. For Matt, kitchen tasks are performed in series rather than in parallel. With limited space and tools, Matt tends to make lots of quick mini-meals throughout the day, rather than large meals.














Figure: The coffee table functions as a kitchen countertop, dining table and desk.














Figure: Many "tops" are used for food related items.

Matt's biggest problem with the mini-fridges are that they don't have a freezer. This means he can't keep ice cream, ice and other frozen foods for extended periods of time. The chiller compartment is like a "slap in the face" to Matt, and he would prefer to not have it at all. Some other things he didn't like about the fridge was the "plastic thing" (i.e. crisper drawer). He'd rather not have it and instead have another adjustable shelf.


Not suprisingly, frequently used items are stored at the front and top areas of the fridge. Stackable items (i.e. items with flat and strong tops and bottoms) are stored on the bottom of the shelves. Other than this, food tends to go in any available spot. Matt never volunteered that organization was a major problem with the fridge. Rather, he felt a major problem was that there isn't enough workspace outside the fridge to arrange items and prepare, eat and cleanup meals.


Here's the discussion guide I used:

Intro
+ this will only be shared within the class
+ ill take lots of pictures, and record
+ assume I don’t know anything
+ this is a pilot interview

Warm Up
How's school going this year?
How's the room?
What are some your favorite foods or drinks?

General strategies

1) Why?
2) Show me…
3) What does ____ mean to you?
4) Story or Example
5) Repeat or Rephrase
6) Generalize
7) Summarize and state conclusion

How do you use your fridge on a typical day?

Purchasing

Why’d you buy this fridge? What were you looking for in particular?
Does it meet your expectations?
How important is: Appearance? Price? Size? Features? Availability?

Can we take a look inside your fridge…

Shopping

What types of foods do you buy?
How often do you restock your fridge? How often do you shop?
Can you keep everything you want in your fridge? What are the limitations?
What sacrifices do you make? How do you adjust shopping and meals?

Organizing

What items do you use the most frequently?
How do you organize the stuff in your fridge?
Do you have trouble finding things? Keeping track of things?
What’s the biggest challenge with your fridge?

Preparing

How often do you prepare food?
Do you cook a lot? Make a lot of snacks?
Walk me through making a meal. Walk me through making a snack.
Do you plan meals?
Is preparing food a chore; is it enjoyable?

Eating

Where do you eat your meals?
When do you eat? What’s the schedule for meals? Snacks?

Sharing

Who do you share the space, food, utensils with? What are benefits?
How do you have to adjust? What problems arise?

Kitchen

So what would you call this area of the room?
How have you organized it like this?
What are the most important tools you have related to food?
What tools do you wish you had? (fantasy)
Describe you ideal kitchen setup…
(back to reality) What are the essentials?

Experience

Describe the social atmosphere around food for you.
What does food mean to you?
Where did you learn to prepare food?
Do you wish you could cook more? What prevents you?

Features

What’s good? What’s bad?

+ canstor
+ shelve
+ chiller
+ crisper
+ door configuration
+ what else?

For future interviews: I definitely want to explore many of these areas more. I feel like I didn't do a very good job of identifying specific behaviors and problems. For example, "lack of workspace" arose several times in our discussion, but I didn't get many specific examples of how lack of workspace is a problem. I also need to do more work thinking about the spaces of the kitchen area that I see in peoples' rooms.
In general, I found it hard to get Matt to demonstrate things explicitly for me. Instead, I'd move on to something else. As a consequence, I didn't get as many interesting pictures of behaviors as I would have liked.