www.systemic-design.net

1. Employing Service Design and Systems Thinking
Approaches as tools to support collaboration across
a multi-stakeholder initiative:
the responsible food consumption exemplar
Jenny Darzentas*, **, Helen Petrie*, John Darzentas*,**
University of York*, UK Department Computer Science
University of the Aegean**, Greece, Dept of Product and Systems Design
Engineering,

3. Background: Food Security
• United Nations Sustainable Development Goals
(Goal no 2 = No Hunger)
• Global Food Security: UK funded research
programme across many disciplines
• IKNOWFOOD Project: Integrating knowledge
for food systems resilience
www.iknowfood.org

4. Food Security
first definition 1974…today’s definition
“Food security exists
when all people at all times
have physical and economic access to sufficient,
safe food for an adequate diet
that meets their nutritional needs and
preferences,
and which forms the basis for an active and
healthy life.“

5. Some facts…
• Not enough food to feed the world
• By 2050 the planet will have a larger population
• Our food production is wasteful
• Global food loss and waste amounts to between one-
third and one-half of all food produced
• Consumers are wasteful
• In developed economies 100kgs of food per person per
year
• Depletion of resources
• e.g. 17,000 litres of water to produce 1 kg of beef
• Logistics and “food miles” (fossil fuels)

6. What causes this?
Climate change? water depletion?
soil erosion? over production? Mono-cultures

7. Concentration of Production
86% of worlds’ calories comes from just 8 foodstuffs:
wheat, rice, maize, sugars, barley, soy, palm, potato

8. I KNOW FOOD:
20 researchers, many disciplines
4 work-packages:
1. Food production (farmers)
2. Food supply chains (retailers)
3. Food consumers (everyone)
4. Network (integrating)

9. Design?
• Brought in by Workpackage 3 to help design
interventions for consumers
• Also saw an opportunity to work on the
collaboration process of the whole project
• Interesting since many people within the
project ‘speak’ systems language
• Thought the integration workpackage might
benefit from this
• Opportunity to work in complex problem
space- on many levels

10. However..
Focus on data collection
Focus on resilience :
• in the context of Food security
• for each of the groups of actors.
• Is this being reductionist?
• Tension between producing results that are useful
(exploring the data)
• And …
• No time? No tools? for the ‘sum of the parts’ and
emerging properties

11. Compounding factors
• The role of the funders (UK’s Food Security -UK
after Brexit Dependence on food elsewhere
• (2nd order Cybernetics view)
• How can to make these complex problem
spaces tractable?
• (Food security; resilience; collaboration with multi-
stakeholders; )
• Answer in the project brief (tweaked by us) is
to “collect data” “ share data” and to learn
and create shared understandings if possible

12. The farmers
• Know food production is wasteful, uses a lot of resources,
• Uses chemicals that are harmful to the environment, both in their
use, and in their production …
• and to humans, firstly farmers?
• (glyphosate and soya)
• Want guidance, want to exchange best practices, want to reach
markets for their produce, want to exist (organic farming)
• Interested in new technologies (sensing and monitoring)
• Technologists (Agri-technologists)
• Re purpose their technologies: the gait sensor carpet to
monitor feeding habits of pigs
• Sensors on tractors (soil moisture, and soil samples deep under
the soil surface)

13. The retailers (Service Design?)
• Vulnerability of food supply chains
• Vulnerability of being supply partners
• Legislation and cartels
• Consumer power (demand) can “Make or
break” supermarkets and companies
• take custom elsewhere very easily
• susceptible to food fads, and want all year
availability
• competition (e.g. via price comparison)

14. The consumers
The researchers are keen on the theme of
“Changing behaviour”
 Epidemiologists worried about obesity (break
down consumer’s resilience to change reluctance
to stop bad habits)
 See obesity in the world
https://iknowfood.org/our-research/
 Computer science: how can we leverage
technologies to make people aware and change
habits ..for themselves, for the planet

15. No lack of information, but very
confusing to get guidance
Lots of bits of “sound bite” information
available in the media
For example in the UK…
https://www.theguardian.com/global-
development/food-security

16. Consumers on Wasting food
(from retailers research)
1. People do not understand labels
2. People do not understand cooking
and hygienic food preservation
3. People do not know how to eat in a
way that is nutritionally sound

17. Two apps created by students
Students were on a Master’s Course and
did this work as part of their thesis.
The Master’s course was the Master’s in
Human Computer Interaction and
Technology, Department of Computer
Science, in University of York, UK

18. Wasteless app
App to help decrease waste
• Warning of food needing to be used
• Suggestions of what to do with it
(recipes, freezing)
• Accountability
Give new insights:
what to record: the whole family, not
just an individual, people liked the
suggestions

19. Food miles app
Provoke thought:
better to buy produce locally, and
support the farmer doing organic
farming (potatoes from York?),
or to buy products produced by a less
resourced country, and support an
emerging economies (potatoes from
Kenya?)

20. Services to Consumers?
Conscious consumers said they wanted such services
How to reduce wastage?
How to consume responsibly? e.g. the “Food miles concept”
Is it really possible to get advice from an an app on food miles
No, but gets people interested, aware, and ready to join in
Behaviour change is at a level of enquiry
But also enforces the realisation that consumers can do things:
they have contributions to make
and responsibilities ..

21. Consumers as participants
Food Security
contributions
responsibilites

22. Interest in systems thinking
Consumers can participate
Lingua franca created
Knowledge is important…
Communicating it is equally important

23. The notion of resilience in food
systems (adapt and change)
Food systems can adapt and transform
themselves in such a way that no matter
what the future looks like, they can still:
• produce enough healthy food to
which everyone has access,
• avoid environmental damage,
• contribute to livelihood generation.

24. Resilience and the Soybean saga
• Great dependence: Soybeans are one of just 8 staples
that are found in most of our food
 Ecological balance: Brazil has converted forest to soybean
plantations
• Monopolies: Soybean production is controlled by just a
handful of companies
• (soya barons richer than oil barons)
 Actually required detective work by IKNOWFOOD team to realise this
 Alternatives to soybeans for our foodstuffs is not treating the whole
question
 Lots of livelihoods invested in soybean production and distribution,
 Also supports food chain indirectly, e.g. animal feed..(meat and fish)
 Important source of protein for many people

25. Resilience to change
(consumers)
• Consumers continue behaviours
knowing they are damaging
themselves (addiction?)
• Consumers continue behaviours
knowing they are damaging the
planet(“not my problem”)

26. Resilience in systems language
Reslience: Return to previous state after
shocks and perturbance
Resilience and requisite variety: the
system has enough variety to be able to
compensate for shocks and
perturbations

27. Where are Designers in this?
Designers as thinkers (Buchanan 4th Order)
Not facilitators (3rd order)
We want to draw on the power of Systems
Thinking
Along with service design approaches
To bring a designerly thought and design
interventions,
to support the changes that are required in
this area..

29. From knowledge …. to wisdom?
IKNOWFOOD set out with “achievable” aims:
• To gather data from different stakeholders
• To understand tensions and trade-offs in the
food production and supply chain
• To devise potential mechanisms for
creating a more resilient food systems.
We add to that our learning and designerly
thinking, looking to support the collaboration in
this multi-stakeholder problem space

30. Thank you!
jenny.darzentas@york.ac.uk
helen.petrie@york.ac.uk
ioannis.Darzentas@york.ac.uk