Today product placement in grocery stores is influencing consumers to buy products that may not be necessarily healthy and may drive a behavioural change at a community level. Not only this but 40% ion food from the grocery stores end up in the landfill. There us a massive carbon footprint generated because of the supply chain from sourcing raw ingredients to the processing stage of a product.

We as a team decided to bring alive the not so great side of the entire lifecycle of a produce in a grocery store from production to processing to packaging to distribution as well as purchasing and dumping in the landfills in the form of a game. With this project we aim to bring more awareness to student sand children about the decay we call ‘Grocery Stores’ and introduce the concept of value when the stakes are high.

This project started with a 2D mapping of the concept go grocery store as a decay to a complete value driven board game for all age groups.

Course: Strategic Design & Management in New Economies | Professor: Adam Hayes
Team Members: Dhairya Sathvara, Supanit Loharjun, Ifah Pantitanonta, Valentina Palacios

“we spend 2% of our lives in grocery stores”

Part 1
Design project 01
2D Mapping

How can we represent ‘Grocery Store as a decay’ in a two-dimensional map.

Concept Generation Phase

Decay of ideas

We started out by identifying a decay of the 20th century. Uncovering the decay and exploring ways of addressing the issue. We went ahead with ‘Grocery Stores as a decay. Something which is an absolute necessary yet unsustainable at multiple levels.

“Coffee is sourced in Colombia roasted and packaged in Thailand and sold in US, contributing to the rising carbon footprint”

“I’m a farm worker in Washington state, picking apples during the wildfires. All I have is a cloth mask to protect myself” - Mr. Gonzalez

“Your grocery waste and packaging clogs up the seas, the beaches, and the digestive tracts of sea life.”

We iterated various concepts to depict how at a systemic level grocery stores are a decay. Right from unsustainable farming practices like ‘monoculture’ to inhumane labour wages and practices to inequality of food distribution and food waste. Below we wanted to bring alive the 2D mapping by creating a simulated version of grocery store and the entire landscape, introducing game like tools or ramifying the 2D map for interest and finally making the map collaboratively (How can both designers and non designers can build a 2D visual map)

Final Artefact

Scroll right to see the entire 2D mapping process as well as the final map. Click here to see the existing Miro Board on which the map was created and a PDF version for greater details.

We used Miro to collaboratively make our 2D map. We sourced hundreds of icons to represent various elements of our grocery eco system. From farm to table.

Each of the team members picked up a space of food production and processing. We created our individual 2D maps which highlighted the various aspects of energy consumption, carbon footprint generated and contribution to landfill all pictorially represented.

We finally combined our maps and created one final 2D map. This was iterated multiple times to align all the individual maps to maintain consistency of representation of information

Part 2:
Design project 02
3D Model

How do we bring alive the 2D mapping and create a 3D model for the same.

GAME AS 3D MODEL

We wanted to create awareness and education around Grocery stores and systems. Based on the 2D designs we identified critical areas that need to be addressed to reverse the ‘decay’ of the entire system. We wanted to engage next-gen users and educating them the complex system through a fun board game.

Why a game?

Behavioral change at an early age
Introspection of core values in a fun manner
Understanding the ecosystem and learning about the ‘decay’
Interactive tool to enable ‘play’

Early game design options: We experimented with the kind of game as well as a form of the game we would want.

We created elements and all the moving parts of the board game and sketched out a prototype. These included the tokens, the characters and the concept.

We took inspiration from monopoly to try and simplify the game for the users

We created four categories on the board game - one for every section of the system and created action items or tasks for the players

From Generate to Degenerate

From Groceries to Gross Stories

Defining Value | Value Coins
Decision Making | Collaborative decision on the winner
Co Operative and not a bank | Community first
Value of tangible things | Defining scale

A game where you can win morally or by adopting unethical practices. Choice is yours.
Gross Coins a new age cryptocurrency for managing the supply chain business for transaction.