Picture By: Obento20 by Kondo Sayaka Via Flickr

Picture by: obento20 by kondo sayaka via Flickr

Criterion A: Inquiring and Analyzing

Design Brief: What is the problem? Who does it impact? Why does this problem need solving?

The next project we have is called the obento unit/ project. Our assignment is to make an obento for our ‘client’ or ourselves and make it as cute or appealing as possible. Also to make sure that it is well balanced, colorful and has at least a technique or skill or Japanese seasonal food added into it.

What is obento? What is the importance of obento?

An obento is basically a decorated Japanese lunchbox. Mostly through the elementary years in public Japanese school, they eat bring their own lunch boxes as their mother works hard every morning. Some mothers are very hard working, so they wake up every morning to make the obento appealing with cute characters, images on the rice balls, different shapes of egg rolls, and designs on sausages. There can be different kind of obentos according to what kind of season you are in or where you are.

Source / Information Gathered / Positives of Product / Negatives of Product
How to make minions bento lunch box despicable me recipe minion benntou kaitou
guru- no minionn kiki ippatsu reship. (2013, July 26). Retrieved January
12, 2014, from YouTube website: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5nDhEV2BHs / -Minion Obento
-Minion faced egg rolls with rice / -Cute and is a popular character / -Little portion
- Too much time on decorating like the potato challenge
-When finished, there will be a lot of space between the minions, so it will not be portable and it will be ruined.
kissme, M. (n.d.). Kyara benn okazu kanntann ponnderaionn. Kukku paddo. Retrieved January 14, 2014, from http://cookpad.com/recipe/2224276 / -Pon de lion (Mister donut mascot) obento
-Main image is the lion, / -Variety of food
-Colorful / -There are no seasonal food in the obento except meat and eggs and there is no balance between vegetables and protein.
Obake no kyuutarou benntou. (2014, January 17). Retrieved January 19, 2014, from
COOKPAD website: http://cookpad.com/recipe/2465559 / -Obake Japanese character
-Design of the character / -Sufficient amount of rice
-Not a lot of ingredients
-Idea only about the rice, but can add on for the meats and vegetables. / -Not a lot of balance between vegetables and protein
COOKPAD. (2017, January 14).Yukidaruma benntou. Retrieved January 19, 2014, from http://cookpad.com/recipe/2465535 / -Snowman rice ball design / -Sufficient amount of rice
-Fits right into the bento box. / -Again, not a lot of balance between the other required foods.
Winter Bentos Collection Kyara bentou no aidea kyaraben ideas. (2012, December 7). YouTube. Retrieved January 19, 2014, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUWqhJVF8k8 / -Different photos of character and onigiri bentos
-Slideshow / -Cute characters
-Simple and easy- to make onigiris. / -No recipe.
-No ingredients or information.
Tamagoyaki (Japanese omelette) Tamagoyaki Tsukurikata Reshipi-. (2013, May 25). YouTube. Retrieved January 19, 2014, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PrwJxZfBH8 / -Video of how to make tamagoyaki (egg roll)
-Step by step / -If I do make tamagoyaki, it is good to have a video so you can see exactly what she is doing.
-Quite hard to follow with the timing
-Ingredients listed / -No timing or second that have to flip
How to Make Onigiri (Japanese Rice Ball Recipe) Onigiri tsukurikata reshipi. (2008, August 4). YouTube. Retrieved January 19, 2014, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACOmKiJDkA4 / -Technique and instructions on how to make a perfect onigiri.
-Ingredients given / -Shows exceeding amount of instructions on what to do when making the salt and water.
-Easy to understand.
-Different ingredients added in different situations. / -Only showing what to do for onigiri.
-Not for bento.

Further Research:

Source / Information Gathered / Positives of Product / Negatives of Product
Kyara benn panndano akacyannonigiri benntouno tsukurikata How to Make Panda Baby. (2013, January 15).YouTube. Retrieved January 19, 2014, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CKDC0J57I0 / -Panda baby bentos / -Ingredients and information included.
-Easier because it is a video so you can see the skills and techniques that she is using. / -Not many options for different materials.

Criterion B: Developing Ideas

Design Specification:

Design Specification / How Will I Achieve It? / Did I achieve it?
It has to look appealing / Since I decided to make a rice ball that includes the skills of ‘character bento’, it has to look like the character or something that I tried to look like it. I will achieve this by looking at the images and video and listening to the instructions.
Seasonal (food) / There has to be food that can be found in the winter time. Urara sent me a site where there are many vegetables, fish, meat, and fruits that are in the winter season. So as I am using that, I will include at least three ingredients inside my bento.
Balanced-nutrition / To make sure my obento has meats, fish, vegetables, rice or bread, and maybe fruits. At the end, I will check if I have all of the above.
Small portions / Since it is an obento, it has to be in small portion, I will make sure that the bento size will be checked with the chart.
Bento Size / At the end, I will make sure I have the right size and amount with the chart the is on Ms. Lemley’s blog.

Design Ideas and Mediums:

First Idea: I want some sort of character displayed in my onigiri. It does not have to be an animation or a cartoon character it can be as simple as a face, just something that will bright up the bento’s appearance. My first ideas were to make a ghost for the onigiri. It looked simple yet cute and yummy. With the onigiri, I would put egg rolls and some kind of vegetable probably something green or purple or black.

Second Idea: My second idea was to make a snowman onigiri with white ingredients at the side. The making of the snowman is simple because I have a website that can show me the ingredients. What I wanted to make sure is to have seasonal food inside the bento that has the color white. Vegetables such as mushrooms would be fine or mochi balls. It does not have to be a strong white, something that matched the mood of the bento.

Third Idea: My third idea, and I think this one is the one I am going to choose to do my onigiris, is the baby panda onigiris with greens and meat at the side. I decided that I would have small, bite- sized onigiris that can be fit in the bento with the sides as vegetables, meat, and fruit. I will use the vegetables as steamed broccoli to look like the trees and meatball for the obento. I also have to find a fruit that would be seasonal.

Final Design Choice + Justification:

My final design is my third idea, which is the baby panda onigiris with things that relate to the panda as the meat, vegetables, and fruit. I decided to do this idea because the pandas look cute yet simple and the sides and onigiri match each other. I think that it will look very cute and innocent looking like Japanese elementary school bentos look like. I think it will mostly achieve my design specifications looking appealing, small portions, bento size, and balanced looking. The only thing that I have to think about is to add in some kind of ingredient (preferably fruit) to the bento and it should be something that we can get in the winter (seasonal).

Annotated Sketch (Storyboard/ Recipe) of Final Design Choice (including references to Design Specifications):

I wrote my sketch on the paper so please see that for my design and ingredients and materials.

Criterion C: Creating the Solution

Date/Time / Steps / Resources/Ingredients
January 27th 2:25 / - Gather materials
-Rinse the broccoli and cut it up into small pieces
-Pour water into pot and boil water into high heat.
-Pour in the broccoli when water is boiled. / -Quarter- size broccoli
-Pot
-Water
-Knife
2:30 / -Get rice from Ms. Lemley
-Make the panda onigiri (tutorial)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CKDC0J57I0 (on iPhone)
(Look after the broccoli so it does not over boil)
-Take the broccoli out and leave it to cool
-Boil in the meatballs right after putting down the broccoli. / -If needed onigiri shape former (cylinder small)
-Rice from Ms. Lemley
-Nori from Ms. Lemley
-Scissors and face cutter from Ms. Lemley
-Bento box
-Meatballs, crabmeat, broccoli, apple slices (half) peanut butter
-Sieve
2:50 / -Continue making onigiris
(look out for the meatballs so they do not come out of the packet)
-Carefully take out the packet and open it up and put the contents out on one of the little containers. / -Little containers
-Meatball packet
-Pot with boiled water
-Nori
3:05 / -Finish decorating the panda (nori, face and body)
- Place the broccoli and the meatballs in the bento box
-Take the separator and separate the box into two parts
-Take the crab meat and fill the little container with the amount that I want it in. / -Nori
-Face cutter
-Broccoli
-Crab Meat
-Containers
-Separators
3:15 / -Cut the apple into slices that can fit into the last separator in the bento box.
-Fill in the apple slices with peanut butter paste and put them into the bento box. / -Apple slices
-Peanut butter Paste
3:25 / -Cleaning up my station, washing materials, putting back ingredients that I used from Ms. Lemley
-Taking pictures from different angles / -iPhone

Make Any Changes?

I made changes to the design and create for the layout of where I put my ingredients because I had a totally different bento box and the size was also different so I had to change everything. I had to change the amount of how much I put in the bento box and also where I put everything because it was quite small.

Criterion D: Evaluating

1.) My Design Specification Turnout:

Design Specification / How Will I Achieve It? / Did I achieve it?
It has to look appealing / Since I decided to make a rice ball that includes the skills of ‘character bento’, it has to look like the character or something that I tried to look like it. I will achieve this by looking at the images and video and listening to the instructions. / My character bento turned out quite similar to the video product, but I put my own spin to it. As I was looking at the video after I finished decorating the onigiri, the woman had more detail for the panda’s body than I did.
Seasonal (food) / There has to be food that can be found in the winter time. Urara sent me a site where there are many vegetables, fish, meat, and fruits that are in the winter season. So as I am using that, I will include at least three ingredients inside my bento. / When I was planning and designing for the bento, I saw the food’s list that grew during the winter and found broccoli. The broccoli, apples and for the yellow pickles at the side, which is daikon (radish), was added in my bento. I achieved my design specification.
Balanced-nutrition / To make sure my obento has meats, fish, vegetables, rice or bread, and maybe fruits. At the end, I will check if I have all of the above. / As you can see in the picture above, I have crab meat (fish), meatballs (meat), rice (carbohydrate), apples (fruit), and broccoli (vegetable).
Small portions / Since it is an obento, it has to be in small portion, I will make sure that the bento size will be checked with the chart. / I think that the size that I had my bento is the right size to put all the ingredients together without crushing anything and also without letting everything spread out and move while walking home.
Bento Size / At the end, I will make sure I have the right size and amount with the chart the is on Ms. Lemley’s blog. / The size was the right size but it could have been a little bigger.

2.) Please reflect on the quality of your final product for both appearance and function. Please support your statements (feedback from others, comparisons to other products, etc.)

As I was trying to copy the design of the panda onigiri design, I think my final product turned out cute and bite- sized that anyone would love. I think that all of the foods were nicely cooked and none of them were raw or burned. Because of the photo I took was with natural light, all of my ingredients didn’t look dark. If I was leaving the apples for a long period of time, the apple would have changed color so because of the salt and water I added before, the apple did not change color. For the onigiri, I think the video was very detailed with feet and toes, but while I was thinking through when decorating, I knew that no one would be able to see the legs because it would be at the bottom so I decided not to put in a lot of detail except the face.

Most of the feedback from my classmates that were not in my design class and did not see me making it thought that my obento had a lot of contrast between the colors that were included and the balance was not easy to see with a glance, but when they looked at the ingredients they can see that I had all food sources.

3.) Where could you have improved on your product/design process?

For my bento, I think that I could have improved on more colors to stand out. For I had the rice and the apple as the big sizes and they took out most of the space, I could use more colors that stood out. For the design process I had a hard time in getting the measurement or the shape for the obento because I was using a bento box that I was going to bring from home. I looked at the bento boxes that I had just the day before creating, so I had to improvise on putting everything together, so as you can see to my design and the product, some thing’s have changed during the create process. I also think that during the design process, I could have at least seen the bento box faster to get a measurement or the shape so that I didn’t have to change so many things.