The Aftermath of Cooking
> This is a project done as part of my Undergraduate Thesis.
> Duration: February 2022 - May 2022
> Tools used: Miro, Figma, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop
> Skills: Design research, Experience design, Information design, Adult teaching
> Award: Certificate of commendation for best thesis project (Human centred Design)
ABOUT THE PROJECT
How can we make mathematics fun?How can we make adults fall in love with mathematics?
Every individual’s relationship with mathematics is different. This project looks at understanding those who didn’t return to high school mathematics but are willing to revisit it.
The initial focus is to investigate and understand why one fears, dislikes, or even hates mathematics as a subject. Further, this project aims to identify the support required to unfold and under- stand the concepts this subject offers. This project looks at finding engaging, simple, and accessible ways to stimulate positive interaction with mathematics and linear equations. The focus is on communicating these engaging and interactive ways with adults and helping them become more comfortable with mathematics.
I created the content and illustrated a recipe book that teaches linear equations in two variables chapter in a simpler, easy-to-comprehend manner, unlike how the content is currently designed in the textbooks. Each recipe is carefully written with a mathematical concept derived from the recipe that is easy to follow. The cookbook is translated into multiple Indian languages to help many adults fall in love with mathematics!
WHAT I DID
This is a solo project. I conducted field research and followed the design thinking process in synthesising research, drawing insights, brainstorming, and ideating. I experimented with multiple ideas, finally designing a cookbook that teaches a highschool mathematics chapter for adults.
RESEARCH OVERVIEW
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Understanding people’s relationship with the mathematics subject
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Understanding people’s relationship with Linear equations (algebra), in particular
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Understanding aspects that would make learning mathematics for adults more engaging
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Understanding how teaching adults can be made better/ maximised
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Understanding how linear equations can be explained to make it easier to understand and remember
INTERVIEWING PEOPLE TO UNDERSTAND THEIR RELATIONSHIP WITH MATHEMATICS
A selected group of adults in the age range of 18 - 90 were interviewed. Interviewees include people of different educational backgrounds as well. This helped us get information on people’s relationship with the mathematics subject that led us to arrive at a more diverse set of observations and insights
MASS SURVEY AND ANALYSIS
Survey responses - 657
Survey responses - segregated and manually filtered
Plotting graphs using R programming language
Manually plotting graphs
INSIGHTS
META ANALYSIS OF THE CHOSEN ALGEBRA CHAPTERS
FOCUSED RESEARCH
I conducted interviews to understand peoples’ relationship with algebra, understand their everyday life activities, and their preferences to identify potential everyday activities where maths learning can be incorporated into, done through interview mapping.
FINAL CONCEPT
DESIGNING THE COOKBOOK CONTENT
Experimenting with the recipes myself before putting them down in the book. Testing out the alternative ingredients, identifying the important steps and mapping out the different variables such as temperature, weight, etc. that can be used to form equations.
Using illustrations as a medium to visually explain the concept of measurements and conversions and to understand quantities with respect to each other.
Two recipes with detailed cooking instructions, with ‘things to take care of’ highlighted to make following the recipe easy
On the left is an explanation of the concept visually, without using any mathematical equations.
On the right is the word problem, that is broken down and visually represented.
On the left is the mathematical representation of the equations derived and defining the way to solve the equations.
On the right is the representation of the equations with an explanation of how it is derived from the recipe and highlighting the takeaways from the concept.
TESTING THE CONCEPT
Selecting participants to test the final cookbook based on their responses to a survey sent during the research phase. Asking the participant to follow the recipes to solve the exercises provided in the book to check if the users can connect the two concepts of recipes and math.
Result: Participants were able to solve the math question by them-self
Conducted an experiment where a cookbook copy was purposely left on the kitchen counter of a housing facility where people could see it easily.
Result: A ‘cookbook teaching math’ led to conversations over it with users taking self-initiative to open and read the book content.
Tested the book with people who expressed interest in the book's recipes but completely disliked math as a subject.
Result: Participants mentioned that they didn’t feel as anxious as they usually felt when they think of math as keeping up with recipe diverted their attention from the anxiety and changed their experience with mathematics as a subject.
REFLECTION
As a person who had always had a good relationship with mathematics, and a good learning and classroom experience, I was very curious to find out from people their reasoning for disliking math. Math has always been my favourite subject, and I couldn’t understand why people “hate” it that much. Initial research and survey insights have given me an idea about why people dislike this subject. This led to my interest in understanding how learning varies from person to person. Through a combination of secondary research and interviews, I tried digging deeper into understanding various learning-related themes that determine one’s relationship with mathematics.
Combining my personal interest in cooking and baking with my favourite subject, I have arrived at the outcome of creating a cookbook that teaches math. Finding and justifying with adequate reasoning why math can be taught through cooking and how mathematical concepts can be easily taught through this medium was an interesting task for me.
My overall journey in this project has been one of a kind, one that I will remember forever. The learnings I have had
are meaningful in shaping me as an aspiring human-centred designer. I am glad that I could apply my knowledge as a human-centred design practitioner to this project to solve for teaching mathematics to adults. I want to take forward this knowledge of working on a full-scale project in the future.