Food Future Collab

IDEO Fellowship

Role

User Research, Quick Prototyping, UX Design, Design Strategy

Date

2016

Problem

Consumers are losing trust in food brands. Overcrowded shelves, misleading packaging, and opaque ingredient sourcing have created a crisis of confidence. People want to know what they're eating — but the industry makes it nearly impossible.

Insight

The next generation of food brands won't win on shelf appeal — they'll win on honesty. Consumers don't need louder packaging. They need fewer ingredients, clearer sourcing, and brands that respect their intelligence.

Solution

We designed a brand and product experience built on radical transparency — minimal packaging, honest ingredient lists, and technology that gives consumers real data instead of marketing claims. This became Target's Good & Gather.

Lo-fi AR shopping cart prototype — the pivot point from tech demo to brand strategy

Impact

Predicted the clean-label movement 5 years before mainstream adoption. Good & Gather launched in 2019 and became Target's largest owned food brand, replacing over 2,000 products across the store.

Good & Gather organic product line — Good & Gather organic line — the brand that emerged from our early research

Pickl app concept — rethinking the nutrition label

Pickl app screen — Personalized ingredient transparency screen

Pickl app interaction — In-context food scanning interaction

How We Got There

This project started as a technology exploration — could augmented reality and data change how people interact with food? We built an app called Pickl: an intelligent food advisor that replaced conventional nutrition labels with personalized, truthful information. But as we prototyped and tested, a bigger truth emerged.

The technology was compelling. But the real insight was simpler: people don't need more tech — they need more transparency. That pivot shifted the entire project from a tech demo into a brand strategy that would reshape how Target thinks about food.

Pickl design philosophy — Design philosophy — simplicity over information overload

Rapid Prototyping

As part of a small team, we built an Augmented Reality shopping cart prototype in a single day — a projector and translucent sheeting transformed a standard cart into an in-store heads-up display. The scrappy, lo-fi approach let us test the concept with real shoppers immediately. Clients responded enthusiastically, validating the direction and accelerating the project timeline.

Prototype testing — Testing prototypes with real shoppers

App prototype screen 1 — High-fidelity app prototype — product detail view

App prototype screen 2 — App prototype — ingredient sourcing breakdown

Exhibition at the White House

The work culminated in an experiential AR demonstration using Microsoft HoloLens, showcased at IDEO's Blueprint conference and South by South Lawn (SXSL) at the White House — putting this vision for the future of food in front of policymakers, technologists, and industry leaders.

App design iteration — Final design iteration for HoloLens demo

SXSL exhibition photo — South by South Lawn at the White House

Blueprint conference demonstration — Live demonstration at IDEO Blueprint

From Prototype to Store Shelves

What started as a technology exploration became a product strategy — and eventually a real brand on real shelves. The insights from our research and prototyping laid the groundwork for a fundamental shift in how Target approached its owned food portfolio. The answer wasn't smarter technology. It was a simpler promise: good ingredients, honest labeling, no compromises.

In September 2019, Target launched Good & Gather — a brand built on the principles our work had identified years earlier. It started with 650 products and grew to over 2,000 items, replacing legacy brands Archer Farms and Simply Balanced. Every product was reformulated to remove artificial flavors, synthetic colors, artificial sweeteners, and high fructose corn syrup.

Gather Prototype — Early stage prototoype for Gather

Good & Gather product lineup — Good & Gather launch lineup — 650+ products at launch

Good & Gather organic tortilla chips — Clean-label packaging — no artificial ingredients

Good & Gather southwest salad kit — Transparent sourcing on every package

Good & Gather became Target's largest owned food brand — proof that consumers were ready for exactly what we had predicted: fewer ingredients, clearer sourcing, and brands that respect their intelligence. The clean-label movement we anticipated in 2016 had arrived in the mainstream.