design,behaviour, groceries and politics

This semester, in my design project class, the professor told us we could choose any issue we liked, but using a specific methodology.
We had to go to the " real world " and take notes and photos of problems we would like to solve. The suggested subjects were Trash, Obesity and Water.
My partner and I approached different issues and finally we made a decision.
We would redesign the supermarket trolley. At the beginning we thought that it had to be redesigned in order to make people use reusable bags instead of disposable plastic bags. Then we found out that the latter was not really a big problem. Most trash came from grocery-packaging. Supermarket plastic bags represented a very small fraction.
I was very disappointed about the project.

I started reading as much as I could about history of supermarkets, statistics of food retailing in mexico and population facts.
I found that the view on the next 40 years in Mexico was very pessimistic : the population would be mostly elder people, almost half the of the population would not be able to satisfy their daily need of clean water. Children today would be obese and with economic problems since today there is not a culture of saving.
For me, it was good news because I thought the design of the supermarket trolley could help people be more aware of what they buy (thus probably beeing aware of their consumption and money spent) and also aware of what they eat (thus the consequences for their health).

In simple words, the redesign I have done so far consists in:
A frame that has hooks for the reusable bags and sliding racks if one needs to buy big/heavy stuff.
It has no lower rack, only legs with wheels so that the user has everything in view and supposedly becomes aware of how much he buys.
The frame has a RFID antenna, which is a magnetic identification technology.

The idea behind the frame is having the cart read the information of every product and explain it to the buyer.
What does it mean to have this much calories, and how much of your shopping is carbohydrates, fresh vegetables and sugars? ...etc...
The nice phrase I came up with is " The supermarket cart as a transformer of information into knowledge"

The idea behind the bag-holding- frame was to have people take the containers with them and we hoped this would make them be aware of how much they planned to buy and how much they really bought.

If the design is successful I thought people would buy only what they needed, since "buying is bad because it is anti-ecological and consumerist"

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Now I feel this project is a phallacy because I do not think that a supermarket cart will make the people aware of how to live a better life. Furthermore, it is MY vision of the good life and it would be like imposing it to the community of use.

I realized that the project had its foundation on the idea of scarcity.
It would be much better to design for abundance. Pretty much like the concept that William McDonough exposes in his conferences and in his book " Cradle to Cradle" : a system that benefits economy, ecology and society.

What do you think of this?

Can design change the way people act?

Behavioral psychology and economics studies why the people act the way they act, even when they know that what they do is not good for them i.e. eating too much, not saving...etc
Is "knowing" different from being aware?

Can design transform information into knowledge?

Is design of physical objects still necessary ?

I have thought that education, politics and spirituality can have more impact on society than design.

Does service design include design of politics? How does industrial design relate to policy making?

la primera

Richard Buchanan dio un taller en la universidad a un grupo de estudiantes de diseño industrial a nivel licenciatura y estudiantes de maestría en administración de empresas.

recuerdo que la definición de diseño era algo como:

emotion is the ability or state to have a feeling aroused towards a point of awareness

también dijo que

designers should have rich emotional lifes

de esto deduzco que se refiere a que los diseñadores debemos tomar consciencia de lo que sucede en nuestras vidas, los sentimientos nos indican un punto de verdad (?)