design activism. research example. judith tan.
The next step was to look into emergent practices and find a design response to an issue related to homelessness. There are many types of emergent practices, and the following project is an example of design actvitism, or social design.
Objective
Based on the research from the past four weeks, I found fast food company’s success on branding and advertising. Then I started to think, there should be various healthy food companies as well, however, their branding looks not very successful. I have never seen a healthy food advertisement on Facebook or Instagram, and I don’t even have a brand/shop that sold instant healthy food in my mind. To prove my thought, I conducted a primary research about branding in fast food and healthy food companies with a Korean girl, Julie, who is on young generations in the age group of 18 to 25 and struggling with her weight. To began, I asked Julie five simple questions to study her thought and understanding about fast food and healthy food brands.
Interview transcript
Julie: Obesity can be caused by eating habits such as unhealthy choices. For example deep fried foods and instant foods, and large food portions. The calories that you eat must be burnt off by doing a reasonable amount of physical exercise but if you don’t, then you will start gaining weight and if it happens repeatedly, one day you will be overweight/obese.
Julie: Fast food Brands: McDonald, KFC, Hungry Jacks, Oporto, Domino; Healthy food Brands: Sumo Salad…Maybe Subway? Because Subway has a lot of veggies inside? Not sure of what other healthy food brands because I don’t eat healthily and I don’t eat salad.
Julie: The reason why people love fast food is because it’s fast and convenient to buy, it’s delicious, fatty food are always nice, and it’s also cheap. The reason why people don’t like fast food is because it’s unhealthy, The cooking kitchen and process is perceived as unhygienic, and it’s fatty.
Julie: People love healthy food because it’s healthy, has fewer calories, makes you feel light and maybe they just like the taste of greens. People don’t love healthy food because they might not like the taste of the greens and they are in love with the unhealthy food already and don’t feel necessary to eat healthily.
Julie: Fast food brands are things that are deep fried, pre-made and served quickly. Although fast food stores also sell salads, they are distinguished as fast foods because their main menus are full of deep fried things are pre-made and ready to go when the order is placed.
Probe
At the end of the interview, I asked Julie to Google some images of fast food brands and healthy food brands. The aim of this probe is to study fast food and healthy food’s branding on social media. The two screenshots below are what Julie got.
Response
“The fast foods give me specific brands, whereas, there isn’t really an answer to healthy food brands. I think it is fair to say that there is no answer to healthy food, healthy food can be a standard of how people think. For example, I consider subway a healthy food brand, whereas other people can consider it a fast food. It depends on what you think is healthy.”
Discussion
Base on the whole primary research process, it is obvious to see fast food companies have done a good work on their branding and advertising. Google ‘fast food’ can always give the audience specific brands, on the other hand, healthy food companies are over insistence with a label instead of their branding, they loved to emphasize words such as green, organic and low fat on their products and wish these words can influence consumer’s decision making. Nevertheless, even young generations aware healthy food are good for body health, they don’t prefer healthy food for their primary food choice. For example, Julie chose to eat less instead of having the salad for diet.
Result
Taskolej, 2014, Healthy Food vs Fast Food, video, viewed 17 August 2016, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evyZh_48ndw>.
Emergent Practices 
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