The Challenge

Nowadays, we tend to buy crisps in the supermarket for several reasons: it is cheap, ready to eat, full of fat and salt which we are craving for, it is the standard we have in mind in relation to snacks, and it is available pretty much everywhere. The problem? It is extremely unhealthy: its composition is essentially fat and salt, so it does not satisfy our hunger as it contains very few nutrients.
How can we turn standard snacking habits into healthy ones?

The Outcome

In supermarkets, crisps are usually found among the industrial snacking products section. Crisped. counters this by taking place with the fresh produce instead and using vegetables as a ressource, highlighting the natural quality of the product.

It is a speculative design on the future of supermarkets taking the form of an animation to showcase how the machine should work, storytelling being at the core of this project. It aims to provide a healthy alternative to the standard industrial snack, while magnifying the making process and raising awareness about the food we eat.

The customer selects the size, vegetables and spices on a screen, and the machine activates. Behind a transparent glass wall, the customer can enjoy seeing vegetables getting sliced, spices being added, and a spinning air-fryer mixing and cooking it altogether. Crisps then drop on a rolling mat to cool them down, before falling into the bag which just got printed the corresponding packaging information. The bag gets sealed and released, ready for the customer to enjoy his healthy snack.

The Process

My research started with our relation to food and how we distanced ourselves from whole foods, consuming more and more processed and industrial ones. Crisps being the archetype of processed foods, I chose it as a reference for my project. 

Inspired by the orange juice machine present in many public places worldwide, I wanted to create a contrast with industrial foods by being fully transparent – literally – in the making process of the snack. I researched the existing techniques to cook efficiently to make the concept realistic, while focusing on the user’s experience: How long can the “show” last to be entertaining rather than long? How much control does the user have on the making? What options should be presented to offer choice without getting overwhelming?

I designed an interface from which the user orders his customised bag of crisps using Adobe XD. I could test the prototype (off-context) with some peers, to get their direct feedback on the design.

Try it out: https://xd.adobe.com/view/9bafefd0-1d88-475b-5ecb-83010e78842a-ed9e/

In addition to the animation, I developed the packaging design. I defined the necessary elements which needed to be present on it based on a preliminary market research, as well as three standard sizes (80g, 120g, 160g) to be chosen from on the screen. The design is minimalistic as it has to be individually printed following the consumer’s order.