Chef Barton Seaver has helped found several restaurants in Washington, DC that serve exclusively sustainable seafood. His idea is that offering even a few unsustainable options would be a tacit endorsement, and that demonstrating that sustainable offerings are plentiful and delicious presents a model for other chefs and a lure for engaging consumers. He talked to us about his experience as Executive Chef Partner at Hook, a restaurant in Georgetown.
What was missing from the restaurant world that you felt a need to address?
I saw it more as: I just open seafood restaurants, and I’m not going to serve anything but sustainable seafood. It was first and foremost a restaurant, of course, but the idea that certain things would not be served gave me a way to converse with my customers about it.
If a customer asked for Chilean sea bass, I wouldn’t just say “No.” I’d say, “Have you heard about sablefish? It’s delicate and delicious…etc.” I never said “No.” I never even said “Chilean sea bass.”
My goal is to sell them on something they are really going to enjoy, but that they might never have tried before. They might never have thought about sustainability before. But they enjoy the fish and pretty soon they’ll go tell their friends and the next time they go to a seafood restaurant they’ll say, “Hey remember that great sablefish we had? Let’s ask the chef if they have that.” It was about entertaining and engaging the customer.
Read the rest of the interview with Barton Seaver by clicking on the pdf at the right.
Collaboration is key to the design process. And not just by “designers”. Different kinds of thinking from people across a wide range of disciplines can create a dynamic that spurs new thinking and, hopefully, new outcomes. For the Future of Fish project, we assembled a team of architects, consultants, non-profit leaders, fish experts, and more to help us think about the problems facing sustainable fishing.
Synthesis can be a grueling process that requires intense analysis, keen observation skills, deep patience, and a thick skin. Damien and Shannon discuss the importance of putting a good team together (and why clothes matter).
We’ve traveled around the world, conducted hundreds of interviews, and observed thousands of people along the fishing industry’s supply chain. Now it’s time to figure out what we have and how to best use that information. Synthesis is the process we employ to make all the information we’ve gathered make sense and provide insight and inspiration for our team to design around.
Please find links below to some of the useful documents we created during the Future of Fish project.
1. Project Summary – 161 KB
2. Phase 1 Findings – 2.5 MB
3. Phase 1 Bios, Profiles, and Contacts – 1.4 MB
4. Ethnographer’s Toolkit – 832 KB
5. Qualitative analysis, pattern recognition, and design principles – 588 KB
6. What is design thinking – 858 KB
7. Developing a problem statement – 670 KB
Riley Starks is the co-founder of Chefs in Raingear, a unique program that gives chefs and seafood department managers a chance to participate in catching wild salmon.
How did the idea for Chefs in Raingear come about?
The reefnet salmon fishery is kind of a specialized fishery. This is the only place it’s done in the world. Whereas with most fisheries you have to go out for multiple days and there’s no room for extra people, this fishery lends itself to daytrips.
Why engage chefs?
I wanted to market our salmon to chefs because that’s where the best education takes place for consumers: at the restaurant. I knew that once chefs saw what it’s like out on the water and how we fish, they would be excited about reefnet salmon. A lot of them are also curious about what it’s like to handle a live fish.
Read the rest of Riley’s interview by clicking on the pdf image at right.
We used these three methods to help us make sense of the information we gathered in the field. Qualitative analysis is often human centered and insight driven as opposed to data driven. Pattern recognition helps us understand truths about human behavior. And design principles are rules we create that guide innovation and design activities.
Please find a downloadable pdf that further explains qualitative analysis, pattern recognition, and design principles, and even offers some helpful case studies.
Ethnography is a field of cultural anthropology where researchers go into the field and spend time with participants in their natural environments to study what people actually do.
As it applies to design, ethnography has become an increasingly useful way to gain insights and inspiration for innovation. The Central team used design ethnography to study hundreds of people along the fishing industry’s supply chain whose habits and work culture we thought could help us shape our thinking.
Of course, much preparation is required before sending researchers into the field. We spent several months strategizing, taking the time to recruit particular field sites and participants to shadow and observe.
We’ve gathered some of that information in a brief document which outlines some of our initial preparation. We also thought it might help others who are interested in understanding — and perhaps employing — design ethnography for their own use.
Bruce Swift is a fish farmer who runs an enclosed, land-based aquaculture operation in Agassiz, British Columbia where he produces sustainable Coho salmon, watercress, and wasabi.
