Overview
A user research study examining cooking fatigue among off-campus SCAD students, reframing cooking challenges as a systemic issue rather than an individual student shortcoming.
Role
End to end collaborative work - secondary research, fish-bone diagram, observation studies, interviews, affinity diagramming, why-how ladder, how might we construction, 2x2 frameworks, ideation and documentation
Details
Duration : 3 weeks (Oct 2025)
Team : Rucha Nene, Aarshi Jain
Mentors : Dr. Christine Z Miller
Stakeholder map
Observations
Interesting insights
Research
We mapped stakeholders through secondary research, then conducted two 30 minute cooking observations and interviewed five culturally diverse SCAD students.
Recruitment criteria: Off-campus, SCAD Savannah students living with roommates
Affinity Diagramming
How might we
Analysis
Insights from our observations and interviews were converted into I-statements, organized into yellow notes, clustered into themes (blues), and synthesized into key causes (pinks). These were then expanded into How Might We statements to guide brainstorming.
Brainstorming
Important vs Urgency matrix
Feasibility matrix
Potential interventions
Interventions
We generated a wide range of ideas, both student-led and SCAD-driven, and evaluated them using two 2x2 frameworks. This process led to two potential solution concepts - one around social factors and one around the whole ecosystem
Learnings
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Real pain points can only be uncovered through research without assumptions; for instance, a messy kitchen significantly contributes to cooking fatigue beyond time and budget constraints.
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Interventions don’t always need to be a product or service; for example, our final intervention proposed was aimed to innovate as a system, addressing not only cooking fatigue but multiple related problems.