Spark Building is an entrepreneurial center that provides office space for startups in Madison, Wisconsin. That building was new and large, employees usually worked on their own quietly in the cubicles. In order to add vitality to this quiet new building, we designed and created a food cart that connects employees with each other through food.
During this 8-week project, we were posed the question of “how might we create a vibrant and energetic environment within the Spark Building?"
We knew right away we wanted to center our work around interactions between employees and utilized various design research methods to inform a product that would solve this issue.
How might we design an experience to help employees in cubicles start interactive conversations?
We noticed that the cafe on the 3rd floor was very empty in the lunch time. There were a lot of nice amenities there, but few people were using them. This cafe looked more like an open office area rather than a cozy dining court. Later, we also learned from an employee that the food options in the cafe were limited and unattractive.
To gain more inspirations, we went to the Memorial Union Terrace where people come for relaxing with their friends and families. We found that foods and drinks are the most essential elements in people’s interactions. Almost for every table, people talked and laughed with each other while eating snacks and drinking beer.
In the meanwhile, we also learned that food attracts people and boosts traffic. The Edo market inside the Japanese Haneda Airport is basically an alley filled with thematic restaurants. The implementation of this corridor boosted the amount of passengers by 6.5% who transited through the Haneda Airport.
1. The 3rd-floor cafe feels more like an office rather than a home.
2. Few options for connecting employees in Spark Building so far.
3. Food brings people together but not at the Spark Building.
Solution 1: Invigorate the cafe that incites people to come.
#1 - Better food options.
#2 - Thematic dining tables.
#3 - Special lunch events in cafe.
Solution 2: Travel the “cafe” to people.
#4 - Food table on each floor.
#5 - A mobile food cart. ✅
We created the food cart prototype in a very basic way as what we would like to test was just the conceptual idea. If it worked well, we could do more research to refine the specific design of the cart in the future work.
We moved the prototype around the Spark Building on a weekday morning to test the cart’s functionality and also see people’s reactions towards this mobile food service.
"Great timing! The coffee refreshed my day!"
"I would like to see more variety of beverages."
"This cart caught my attention, it brought us fun."
"I love chatting with others during the short snacking time"
Based on the feedback we received, I redesigned the food cart to meet with people's needs. The improved cart 3D model was created by using Rhino, grasshopper and V-ray.
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To make the cart have a larger capacity, I created a drawer and a cabinet together with the multi-layer cart. And I also added fences on the layer boundaries to prevent items from accidentally falling out of the cart.
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Since this is an office area, the red flag on the cart would be a nice signal to let employees know that the cart is coming without being disturbing.
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At the same time, the menu of available food can be written on the blackboard on the back of the cart so that employees can easily see the information from a distance.
