Questions and Thoughts

How do you get people to eat better using design as a catalyst for dietary change?
Using design as the medium, I can educate people about what additives to avoid and which are okay. Hopefully they can use this knowledge to adjust their diets and eat better, simply by glancing at the back of a food product and recognizing the different ingredients in it.
The design needs to be simple and understandable, while grabbing people's attention to make them want to read it.

How will I frame my research?
My research needs to come from reliable and proven sources. I am going to try and avoid basing my research off of biased information, or information that is not solid or proven.
If I am attempting to educate people, I would hope that what I am teaching them is correct and not just an assumption.

Healthy eating campaigns at fast food places
I am going to take a look at these campaigns and use my research to see if their food is actually healthier, or if the unhealthy additives are just hidden in the ingredient lists.
It is one thing to claim that food is free of a certain ingredient, but that won't matter if it includes a handful of other harmful additives.

Political, Economic, Perceptual and Chemical Boundaries
I will need to look into why food additives have been deliberately obfuscated for years.
Are there differences between countries?
There is an economic interest to keep people from understanding all of the aspects of additives.
Is it cheaper for the companies that make the food?
Do they think people will buy more of their product if they can make it taste better with additives?
A lot of my research will need to be on the chemical formation of these additives. How safe are they? How are they made? Would it be different if they had names that weren't so chemical sounding?

Will the complexity of the information make it difficult to communicate in certain mediums?
The amount of information I am trying to get out there will dictate the medium I must use. A longer motion or PSA piece would do a better job of giving a lot of information than a print piece. An interactive website may work, or a pamphlet/dictionary, or a mobile app.
I am thinking that I may want to concentrate on just a few additives - the most common ones, or ones that have the most confusion around them.

What distribution channels make sense for this information?
I think that it is going to have to be a medium that people can be exposed to easily. Such as a PSA or webpage.
I do however also think that if the design is strong and interesting enough, the medium may not be as important. As it is the information that people are interested in and not how they are being shown it.
I do also understand that this is a design thesis, so the medium is important in that regard. I can't concentrate more on the information and let the medium form to it. It is important to consider the medium equally and allow it to effect the development of my thesis.

Who am I likely to reach?
I have been thinking that my main target would be the modern mother. She is the one that does the shopping and has the wellbeing of her family in mind when choosing food products. She has concerns for her and her family's health. She is aware of certain additives that she has heard of in the news and is prone to steer away from them, mainly because of one piece of information she heard, even if it may have not entirely been true. She would like to learn more about additives in her food so that she may stop worrying so much about what she puts in her and her family's bodies.

Research the design approach towards information sharing
I am going to need to look into how it has been done in the past. What are the best ways of getting across information in a simple and understandable way. I will concentrate on information related to food, as it will be best to stay in the field that I am researching. Are there many success stories of how people's views and opinions of something have changed because of how the information was presented to them?

Current information labels
I need to look more into the work of Burkey Belser of Greenfield/Belser (gbltd.com)
Labels may have been written up in Comm Arts / PRINT Mag.
How were these labels researched and adapted?

What artists/designers am I looking at?
I plan to find an array of designers who concentrate on designing for food. The more recent the better.
Their ability to convey confusing information in a simple way will be important.
I am also going to look at designers who are more along the lines of my style. I plan to incorporate my style into my designs but I want to make sure that my style can be appropriate in this field.

What kind of work is being done in this area?
I believe most of the work being done in the topic of food additives is more literary and scholarly, and less in the design field. I hope to position my work against that work in a way that I will be able to stand out against them as my work will be more easily understandable and approachable by people. My work will hopefully be fun to see and not as boring as a pdf or article.