Design Thinking: The Ramen Project
Background
Instant Ramen US annual consumption = 3.9 billion meals, $10 billion US market Worldwide annual consumption = 85.7 billion meals – Japanese convenience Foods Industry Association 2005
Brief
Instant ramen: it’s a meal for some people, for others a hot snack. Some people eat it every week, and some people only ate it in college. It’s study food, emergency food, camping food, and bulk food with a longer shelf life than your shampoo. Some eat it raw, some follow the directions, and for some, it’s the muse for whatever is in the fridge. It’s a million different things to (literally) a million different people in the US and around the world. For these reasons, it’s a great platform to learn and practice the user-centered design process. Its scale ensures that you can rapidly prototype it as an experience and as a product. Its variety ensures that you will have the opportunity and challenge of many points of view. Its ubiquity ensures that you will have many opportunities to observe its use and interview its users.
The Design Project: A group of food-focused entrepreneurs looking to make waves in the instant ramen industry, has retained a group of hotshot designers (you!) to improve the instant ramen experience. The epiphany came when two of the members were traveling, and instant ramen was the only “safe” thing they had to eat. The question they asked was, “Why does ramen have to be so crappy? Why can’t there by a healthier, satisfying alternative?” They feel that existing brands (Nissin, Maruchan, Sapporo Ichiban, etc.) offer only a highly undifferentiated array of high sodium and high fat choices. Their goal: gain a competitive advantage by offering a better instant ramen experience.
These entrepreneurs have retained your group to engage in design thinking to help offer new ideas for the product
Exercise
- Based on the above background, explore the 3 phases of design thinking that we’ve discussed in the lesson:
- Answer the following questions:
-
- What’s the problem?
- How might we solve the problem?
- How can we make it better?
