The issue that I concern is about obesity and health. Therefore, during class, I originate my idea: creating an application to help people form right and healthy eating habit. From the feedback of the tutor, the most prominent problem is that the app is too impractical. It will be a difficulty for people how to understand and use it. Certainly, I have got another idea, but it need some discussion with tutor; so I will introduce my initial idea here now.
In the application I conceive of, when someone opens the app, it will first locate the user’s position. According to its position, the app will recommend cafe ,restaurant or any booth around. Then, every time a person wants to eat something, and the app will give some lists about healthy food around. In addition, this list can provide you the calorie figure of the food recommended. In this way, people can control the quantity of eating and naturally avoid in-taking to much calorie. This app aims to give people healthy suggestions on eating. When the user uses the app first time, he needs to upload one picture of himself. When he looks food around, if he chooses the unhealthy food, he will see that he becomes fat in the proportion with the calorie that he intakes from the unhealthy food. The utmost important of this app is to give people more advice for him on keeping healthy, not to prevent people getting obesity. However, the utmost important of this application seems to be the biggest weakness which cannot be ignored. If this app only give people, it, I’m afraid, will not work as the original conception. Because of the deeper desire, people extremely possibly will let the suggestion alone and then get satisfied from food without any further thinking. As Frued says, at that time, the inner self will control his mind. He will not care about health at all. Under this situation, the application has totally lost its function and equals vanity.
The second idea
I would like to set up an electronic interactive map setting in a densely populated area that can be viewed as a landmark. This thing is like a small touch screen, he will collect all the healthy food around the restaurant. People by clicking on the screen, you can find all the specific location of the restaurant and what healthy and delicious food. At the same time, in front of the landmark set an invisible body scale. People can connect their own mailbox on the screen, the system will send a private message to people’s mailbox, tell people their health, give some advice on healthy living.
I focus on designing interventions that can change the personal shopping behavior to address the obesity issue. The previous draft proposal is designing a record system that can record/ present personal sugar consumptions in a week/month/year. The system is presented in supermarkets via self-checkout machine. The intention of this design is to showing people the ‘scary data’ of sugar consumption to raises alarm bells in their mind.
I received a lot of feedback from my tutor and my group about the draft idea. Unfortunately, this design doesn’t really work. And my tutor suggested me to come up with other ideas that not conventional. Also, he suggested me to think about the ‘tone’ of the design (do you want it to be entertaining or serious). After the discussion, I decided to think of some design ideas that is more engaging.
I drew a lot of mind maps to help me brainstorming more possible design directions. I firstly came up with designing a digital pad(looks like iPad) that installed in a shopping cart. People can use it to scan food products and get to know the ingredients more easily. Also, it will show healthy/unhealthy tips when you put food in the cart.
The second idea is the ‘healthy-eating challenge’. It is a challenge game that present online via website/app. People can take a 10 days/ 30 days challenge of trying a healthy eating habit. For example, there are 20 days of giving up chocolate challenge. Users can invite friends or family to join the challenge and also be a supervision.
The third idea is based on public advertising. The idea is setting digital mirrors in the snacks/sweet beverages area in supermarkets. When people go to buy unhealthy food, they will pass by the mirror. And the mirror is reflecting yourself, but in a ‘weight-gain’ version by surrounding various of snacks/sweet beverages.
I decided to develop the third idea further: Project title:“Do you still want a chocolate?” ‘magic’ mirror -smart mirror reviews possible body changes
Practice type: Service design
The issue:
Personal responsibility plays an essential role in promoting the obesity epidemic. There are already a lot of online information or knowledge that suggesting healthy eating habit; they are easy to access via website/apps. However, a lot of people still seems to care less about dieting habit; they still shop unhealthy snacks because they think ‘well, one chocolate bar, not big deal’. Thus, the fundamental way to tackle the obesity issue due to bad eating habit, is to change people shopping habit.
The idea behind:
Every time we enter the supermarket, we are being manipulated. By design, all the fancy tasty snacks and sweet beverages are present at eye level, and will grab your attention immediately; and on the other hand, food like eggs, healthy cereal are put in the bottom. But could we be manipulated for the better? Design can nudge people a better direction toward food choices. There are a lot of research showing that advertising that included words like ‘healthy’, ‘low-sugar’ and ‘low-calorie’ caused people who were overweight or dieting to subconsciously buy fewer snacks. Seeing those words can remind them to choose eat healthily.
Possible change:
Remind people the shop wisely.
Help people to change people shopping behavior – stop buying unhealthy food.
Through discussion about my service design with partner on last week, it was hard to explain ideas due to my proposition quite squeezed many functions with complex proposals. I tried to finalise proposition with clear and simple proposition to follow the main theme that decrease sugar consumption and develop consumers’ awareness of sugar.
Prototype of Smart Sugar
Project Title : Smart Sugar
Practice Type : Mobile Service Design
The Aim
Create a service design based on user experience design tools which has high value of usability and easy accessibility to be one of the closest on our ordinary life.
To decrease consumers’ consumption of sugar, ‘Smart sugar’ will save customer who are exposed to be persuaded by exaggerated package design, advertisement and promotion easily without knowledges of hidden form of sugar.
To alert risk level of sugar follow the individual health condition
To inform general knowledge of nutrition facts and an accurate sugar level of food through easy and simple infographic design.
The Issue
Significant numbers of consumer have not purchased sugary foods or products with recognition of nutrition facts which presents how much sugar include exactly. They usually persuaded by sympathetic advertisement and exaggerated package design without any knowledge of hidden form of sugar.
People have lack of awareness of how much we need to exhaust physical energy and what kinds of physical movement to burn fats or calories from sugar intake.
The process of design / function
Simple and easy accessibility
Ability to measurement of sugar
Customisation features ( function to alert limitation of sugar level and using navigation to set jogging route/ course for users’ environment )
The Possible change
Support consumer’s awareness about how much exact amount of sugar included in our product and recognition about the hidden form of sugar in the package design.
In the process of conversion to ‘kilometre’ from ‘calories’ ; change to distance of user need to burn calories from eaten amount of sugar, user can calculate how much they should exercise to keep their sugar level or develop health.
Provide exercise motivation.
In overall, I need to develop design through categorised in three maps to show each steps or process of each inputs and outcomes with using textualised contents and symbolic icons . In addition, It should contain cause, possibilities and effectiveness as a detailed process to interact with design project and users in the final outcomes.
The previous draft proposal I have been explored is a service design response. By associating smartphone’s Health app to user’s Facebook, it creates a competitive platform among friends. We had the opportunity to analyze and dissect our draft proposal with fellow classmates. I was paired in a group that has three other peers focusing on different issues from me which means they have a totally fresh brain to my topic and they are probably able to share different insights with me.
The feedback I received from my colleagues is although people would be keen to join the competition, it probably would just be a transient fad and wouldn’t be profound. Moreover this idea seems already been designed. There is another idea inspired by peers, which is to re-design food package and use graphics to visually communicate in metaphors and parables of how junk food can effect you. However in reflection on my feedback from tutor, I should be aware of confusing packaging design with data visualization. Also as I didn’t have enough time to penetrate into design possibilities around the issue, the initial proposal I have come up with is too superficial. Tutor suggested me to continue work on mapping possibilities of design and take a deeper understanding on each emergent practice options, as it is the most vital part of the project.
After brainstorming more possible solutions of improving teenagers and young adults eating and living habits, here comes a refined proposition.
Project title:
‘You Are What You Eat’
Project type:
Service Design
The issue:
As most of teenagers and young adults don’t have a huge healthy issue to confront, they are rarely conscious of how harmful junk food is to them both psychically and mentally. In addition they have low or lack of awareness of healthy living and and low consideration of their future.
The possible change:
The possible change would be enhance teen and young adult’s awareness of obesity and health as well as help them to understand how these dietary changes can impacted physical and mental health. And moreover, to allow them to change their living habits idiomatically and change the way they eat profoundly.
The design action to support change:
To create a mobile app, which allows users to keep a food diary and according to the enough data collected from food diary, the system would generate a diagram and visual illustrations to predict what user would be look like both outside and inside in 10 years future. By changing user’s eating habits and recording different food diaries, the result can be significantly different. The diagram includes a vivid figure of user’s in 10 years as well as a figure of user’s internal organ, a predictive report of user’s physical and mental condition and a healthy rating scored out of 100 points. The service also provides healthy tips, food recipes workout tutorials for users to achieve. User can also share their prediction report and food diary on social media.
Even though I finished writing blog post 8, it was difficult to decide one of five possible design responses. I was considering between 2 design responses as my final proposal. At that time, my peers helped me to choose one of them. They gave me good comments on each design response, and let me go with application service design on the final stage. What is more, the feedback from peers was useful to develop the design because my draft proposal was not enough to understand how the design works properly. They pointed out the things that I missed and suggested to make my design being strong.
Revised Proposition
Project title: Hey mate!
Practice type: Application – Service design
The issue: Being sedentary brings about diverse physical and mental problems such as obesity, lower back pain and depression. People have already recognized how harmful being sedentary is. However, some people need to be sedentary, especially if they do sedentary work. Also, it is hard to change their fixed lifestyle immediately due to the lack of willpower, tired and lazy after work.
The aim: There are no reminders that they need to avoid living sedentary lifestyle for their healthy living. It aims to give not only awareness, but also remind the office workers of caring about their health, and suggest doing some physical actions like simple stretching.
The function and process of application:
Companies can install this application on their employees’ computers to encourage them doing some physical actions during work and after work.
– The application is able to recognize the workers’ computer activities, and interpret that same as sitting hours.
– The application pops up the text with moving images in a window to suggest doing simple physical actions.
– The text is in friendly tone, and the illustration will be humorous to give a little fun during work.
e.g. text: “Hey, mate! I feel so numb! Can you make me feel better?”
Illustration: the butt part with text in speech bubble
– It also shows simple actions how to stretch that part.
Examples of the texts with illustration in windows
The Possible change:
– The office workers can be active during work and after work by reminding them of it.
– They may change their sedentary lifestyle to active lifestyle slowly via this application.
– They may be smile due to the humorous text with the illustration.
After delivering my revised proposition to peers and the tutors, I could recognize what is the strength of my design properly. In addition, I got the idea how I should propose my possible design through the feedback. Therefore, I am going to push the strength on final proposal, and describe the process of using the application by diagram and map.
Due to I missed the class in week 7, I present my chosen proposal, interactive billboard, to peer student in other tutorial classroom. The feedback indicated my proposal doesn’t really belongs to any three format, generative, service designs and data visualisation. She suggest some specific direction which is using the number of touch as an collective data so it can be developed in data visualisation format. The great thing about this one on one peer feedback was the response is immediate and able to discuss in depth within designer’s point of view. By sharing each other’s proposal, I could find its weakness that I’ve missed out on and understanding of designs and supplement the point.
Final proposal
Project title
‘From your heart’
Practice type
Generative design +bit of data visualisation
The issue
Apart of genetic inheritance, acquired method of livelihood that built in childhood is important to lead further health life. The parent is the prominent factor that shapes children life habit. However, Permissive parenting style, which has lack of guidance on children, interferes to implement healthy behaviour for child. This progressive parental education, relies on child’s own control, tends to be shown in younger generation parent. How can change them more participating to educate their children with awareness of health habit in childhood is important.
Target audience
The proposal targeting adult 18-24, who is young parent or potential parent
The possible change of user’s behaviour
It purpose to imply the idea of indulgent parenting threatens children health and kids need be educated how they behave healthier with parent’s consistent education under affection. By experiencing the design, the audience aware the issue and be more participating on children education.
The design action to support change
Proposal design is interactive billboard that will installed in public space. The screen presents animated child doing unhealthy performance repeatedly like eating junk food. When people give the child a proper guidance by touching heart icon on the screen, the kid temporarily stops the motion and get health with showing his body size getting slimmer. After some certain time passes, the child restarts bad habit as it requires consistence of education with affection. It will produced as series design include other unhealthy behaviour, such as over spending on screen time, lack of bed time, buying sugary food or extra. The screen counts number of touching with a tagline of ‘you’re the (number)th person who cared this child’ to collect action data. Based on the collected data through touching activity, it provides visual result how the child have become adult with which kind of lifestyle. It will show different results of children depending on number of participation the screen has been counted. The higher number, The healthier result. The result image can be reached through QR code on the bottom of screen.
Speaking with a peer member about my proposition allowed me to gain an idea into how she understood my proposition and feedback was received into the ways she felt the proposition could be improved to increase it’s chances of success. Her feedback allowed me to reconsider, and consequently, completely redesign my proposition, as she, as well as my tutor bought up some interesting points that I had overlooked or not put too much thought into. These were the following:
What would the main influence or take home value be
Be more specific about the target audience or it may be hard to influence everyone
How could you create a more obvious motivation to get people involved
How could you create surprise in the minds of the audience to influence a bigger impact
Could this turn into a game somehow
Taking this feedback into consideration lead me to completely scrap my original idea and come up with another, that had been highly influenced by my earlier research. I also realised this idea was, in reality, less of a design solution to educate and more of an event for entertainment. The line I wanted to draw was somewhere in between this crossover.
As mentioned before, the key insight from my research that assisted me to create this new design proposition came from an interview with one of my classmates who disclosed thoughts on the stereotype of being unhealthy as someone who is overweight. I found this interesting at the time because of existing ideas I had about metabolic and genetic differences affecting the breakdown, distribution and storage of energy cells, thus affecting the visual side effects of consumable intakes. This insight prompted me to ask myself the question, what if the elements affecting weight gain were the same for everyone and solely determined by the nutritional breakdown of consumables placed into the body? I also drew on research surrounding the power of edutainment; which is education taught through the emergence of technology, particularly games such as phone applications or game consoles. Here, I was able to create the basis for my game proposition and My Hungry Buddy was born.
Revised proposition
My hungry buddy is a service design and part generative system that aims to educate people on their food choices in an attempt that the consequences of physical weight gain or loss and potential future health problems may influence the individual to make wiser food choices.
My Hungry Buddy provides a personal logging system and education platform on eating behaviours and encourages people to make sensible nutritional choices. The game works firstly by the user creating a customised avatar and profile of themselves, including height, weight, age, body type (if known), and basic activity level. The game then creates their character and uses this information to calculate intake requirements and basic vitamin requirements. The user then logs their food intake by meals, like in the existing app, My Fitness Pal and this information is then placed against the intake requirements and influences the user’s avatar by either placing weight on or off the character. It also analyses the meal for nutritional or vitamin imbalances and warns the user of potential future health complications if this type of eating persists.
In addition, the user has the opportunity to scan barcodes while shopping and place these into their intake to see if a particular food is healthy or not healthy. They have the opportunity to store this information of items in a catalogue called a ‘food pantry’ for future, quick go to uses and can also share this information on a forum platform provided, to connect with other users.
My Hungry Buddy hopes to educate solely on nutritional requirements and therefore does not take fitness into account at this stage of the proposition process, however there is potential to include this in the future. Edutainment in this regards, is a private journey by participants that can have the power to promote healthy choices and educate on healthy living.
During the class, I have proposed one idea to my colleague and my tutor, from my proposal, the feedback was the system design is too complicated, and until now, I have another ideas but I need to have feedback from my tutor, otherwise I cannot start to write this blog post. Therefore, in this blog, I will try to explain my first idea that I talked with my tutor from last week in the class.
My initial ideas focused on service design, I wanted to create one app, I would like to start with the health of citizen who has obesity. Lack of exercise is a major culprit in obesity epidemic. It has be the decade since most of American who work in the field and factory; they like to sit throughout their workdays. This means less exercise for every day. On the basis of one study, just 20% of today’ work require physical activities, and also from the other study, people lives in American just burn 120 to 140 fewer calories one day than they did fifty years ago.
The system that I create would effectively motivate people change their behaviors to address the challenges presented above. Specifically, this app would show people how can the system effectively incorporate intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation or both, this is the internal gamification project design, targeted at the institutional goals of the city government.
To help improve the health condition of people who have obesity by increasing physical activities, I used the internal gamification framework to design the exercise health-tracking app. firstly, in order to involve as many participants as possible, I need to use both intrinsic motivators and extrinsic motivators. To provide all people who have obesity this issue with a good physical examination and present a result with guidance to healthy life handbook and an individual exercise health card. This healthy card will be linked with every cellphone application and also would to redeem the tangible reward. Second, this app also will focus on people habit change by day to day’ activities, I wanted to set up the point system in both online and offline. People who have obesity issue could earn points by learning the health advice from this app, such as the tips: 2L water is good for your health, also attended to participate in each weekday’ collective activity, for example, Monday people need to eat vegetable, and Tuesday people need to ride their bike or walk, go to the gym, such as do some aerobic physical activities, in rush hour, people can walk in stairs instead of using elevator, and also they could buy low calorie food with the healthy discount in shops. The accumulated points would be used to redeem for the equipment, such as jumping rope, the whole healthy food basket or the free gym gift card.
The second idea that is the app reminder, most of people everyday spend long time on staring at their phone in our daily life. But in reality life, the only things that get a workout in either case are thumbs. It does not mean we cannot have health life with our phone, and I created the second app for helping people to have healthier life. If people do not have health life, it would help to remind them to change their activities. Pick one goal, there are so many options, such as lose your weight or eat better, then the app will send the reminders such as please drink one cup of water, feedback to help improve the diet, and simple graphic way to show your progress.
Last week we were given an opportunity to work closely in pairs to reflect and discuss my proposition. Working closely with my partner I established that my direction was a little too broad and needed to be narrowed down. Targeting fitness organisations and athletes was not my main concern and my partner helped me realize this through exchanging ideas and brainstorms focussing on the outcome I was trying to achieve. We both agreed that I was specifically focusing on younger males, so I had to take into account what they are most susceptible/ exposed to. That is more than likely social media, so a website made sense in this regard. To make the solution more personable and effective I had to think more critically collating my research to solidify a solution.
Acknowledging the increase in the fitness industry in Australia, lead to me finding quite a sizable amount of the population (specifically) younger males ranging from 16 to their late 20’s putting themselves through vigorous training and diets in a competitive manner, ultimately comparing themselves to one another never satisfied clouds one’s self from their achievements and motivations.
The more pressing concern is the popularity of performance-enhancing drugs to speed up or feel included amongst fellow fitness enthusiast. Using certain drugs is not always as bad as the news or almost any reference makes out but without correct guidance, testimonials or help, substances can lead to serious harm specifically in younger men who haven’t given their body’s time to fully mature.
I propose a project called ‘Pumped’-natty vs juice which will include 3 different mediums to promote and advertise. The first is a series of videos found on YouTube linking to the second space (website). These videos aim at educating by conducting a social experiment on two physically active subjects (one natural and one un-natural) over the course of a 17-week time frame (as per cycle period). This experiment will monitor the mental and physical results through the progression of weeks producing an overall video summarizing each participant with a data visualization to support both actors.
This video will also indorse the exhibition that I think is most important. With young teens feeling a sense of marginalization at times with their fitness aspirations, there is a great sense of inclusion and acceptance formed from this event educating the attendees by showing there are other people experiencing the same feeling. The expo will encourage a ‘tell all’ theme that includes a main fitness ambassador (possibly a social media icon in the industry Elliot Hulse) speaking on the day, accompanied by ex-bodybuilders and some athletes currently in the business today.
A website will include both these elements and also facts with easy to read information for those with short attention spans with the option to view a more in-depth info for people wanting to know more. Testimonials are available along with a help line devoted to assisting people through emails or over the phone contact.
In discussing my draft proposal, the key feedback I got was to suggest me focus more on my point collect system instead of the food event, as the point collect system sound more feasible. Originally, I thought a food event at school could create more fun for students and provide students more options of food choice at school. However, to eat healthy at school is not enough to correct their eating habits, they should seek out healthy options for themselves in whatever environment they are in, even in school holidays. Moreover, the event did not clear the boundary between unhealthy food, healthy food, and whole food. For instances, the fats used in salad dressing are necessarily healthy fats. There is still much need to refine and improve.
On the other hand, my point collect system has a lot of merits. As this system can work in a various environment, rather than just in school. Apps can provide more information to users such as the location of the restaurant, the menu of the restaurant and the fat used on food. It is more flexible and doable. In conclusion, I think I should build my entire proposal, and used the food event might be a good idea as a one-off activities that travels around to different schools as part of the initial promotion of the idea.
Base on my reflection, I came up with this revised proposition below.
Revised proposal
Project title
Grwin
Eat green to win!
Project type
Services Design
The issue
Due to lack of regulation of unhealthy fast food advertising and various advantages of fast food, fast food industry are extremely successful. Nowadays, fast food advertisements are everywhere on social media, especially on Facebook and Instagram. With it low price and convenience, more and more adolescents and young adults prefer to eat fast food even they aware it is unhealthy. On the other hand, the boundary between healthy and unhealthy food are unclear. The label on food packaging and advertising such as ‘sugar-free’, ‘organic’ and ’98% less fat’ are very common. However, are they really that healthy?
In order to encourage people to continuously eat healthy food and correct their eating habits, and provide people a guide to finding and have healthy food, the Grwin project is here to help!
Target audience
Adolescents and young adults, especially high school students and university students who need to eat out and have the ability to pay a small amount of money for their food.
Students who want to save money on food.
Students who love healthy food and/or don’t know where to find healthy food.
The insight
To promote whole/healthy food.
To give people direction of finding healthy food.
To incentivise people to eat whole food as well rather than just ‘healthier’ fast food. (i.e. the fats used in salad dressings are not necessarily healthy fats)
To encourage adolescent and young adults to eat healthily.
To help people build a healthy eating habit
Possible change
More people know where to find healthy food and whole food.
People loved to eat healthy food and whole food when they eat out.
People willing to continue eating healthy food and whole food and form a good eating habit.
What is Grwin?
Grwin is a point collect system that will be visualise as a mobile application. Anyone can download this application for free and with your name, email address and location for registration. Restaurant and school canteen that support Grwin project will be shown on the application, however, only healthy food and whole food can gain points. For example, a school canteen that joined Grwin project sell hash brown and fruit salad, the user won’t gain any point for purchasing a hash brown, but a fruit salad will. In order to incentivise people to eat whole food rather than just ‘healthier’ food, more point can be gained by purchasing whole food. The healthier you eat, the more you gain! For example, a garden salad could gain more points than a chicken salad. Points can be exchanged to discount coupon for your next healthy meal. The aim of this reward is to help people build a healthy eating habit.
Design action
1. The restaurant that supports Grwin can stick a Grwin door sticker on their door or windows. (like Zomato)
Stickers on menu
2. The restaurant can use their existed menu and stick a small Grwin sticker with reward point next to food that’s healthy. Grwin is happy to provide free sticker for the restaurant that supports Grwin.
3. For the restaurant don’t have healthy food yet but willing to join Grwin and restaurant don’t want to change their current menu can create a new Grwin special menu that only has healthy food and whole food.
4. The application user can see the restaurant that supports Grwin and their menu on the application. Only healthy food will display on the app’s menu. The exactly calorie and amount of sugar, salt and fat will be displayed as well.
* Grwin will need the test all Grwin food included the calorie and the amount of sugar, salt and fat of food in order to provide Grwin user an absolutely healthy menu.
What’s more?
Grwin project is more than just an app, we also provide an event – Grwin Festival. Grwin Festival is a one-off event that only sells healthy food and whole food, and will be a travels around to different schools (area) as part of the initial promotion. The restaurant that supports Grwin are welcome to have a stall for themselves to promote their business and Grwin!
Throughout the weeks, I have been researching very deeply into the issues of obesity and healthy living. As I looked into many issues, I started specifically focusing on an area that was interesting and came up with a design proposition as a possibility to assist the issue. The problem I have been focusing on was the effect of promoting plus size models on media which was a way of normalising and encouraging obesity. This makes one feel positive and confident about their body shape but it also demotivates them to be in a healthy shape. My initial design proposition was “to make people who are simply used to living in their size feel the satisfaction and the reward of weight loss through a competition where the participants can win a fashion voucher to spend at a clothing store for their new shape which will be the drive of motivation.” My classmate’s feedback to this proposition was that she liked the idea of making them feel the satisfaction but suggested of creating something that is rewarded upfront so they feel the satisfaction as the drive of motivation instead of having a reward that they can only experience when they achieve it.
From this class session, I have come up with new ideas in ways I can give experience to them to feel the reward ahead so it becomes their motivation to take action and achieve their goal. The new ideas were creating a feathery experience for them to physically feel themselves in a fit body shape with controlled gravity, visualising their body in a slim healthy appearance with a computer generated mirror, High tech device that can clear the mental health issues caused by obesity, and rewarding people with fashion vouchers that has a system to only allow the purchase of clothing that is a size below their body size.
These new ideas were presented to my tutor and with great feedback, I was able to develop and revise my design proposition and created a service design is called “we drive motivation”. Firstly because we drive one’s motivation, and secondly, the service design is on wheels and drives around local areas and giving the experience and motivation to people. My new proposition is “to provide overweight or obese people an experience of what it feels like to have a fit body. Focusing on the feeling of the weightlessness, my aim is to give those who had lived years with a heavy body an enlightening and pleasing experience with those excess weights off their joints. This allows them to feel the satisfaction and reward upfront which can create their starting point. The design action to support change will be carried out with a flyer/ poster design to promote the “we drive motivation” campaign.
In week 7, I had the opportunity to partner up with an individual outside of my issues group to discuss our draft propositions and exchange feedback. During the session I briefly explained the research that had led me to the proposal,
“Improving the rate of obesity within adolescents due to the social pressure and expectations within our society to look a certain way. To raise awareness and educate people on the foods they consume and to upkeep regular exercise, but most importantly to encourage people to be more accepting of each other and not conform to society’s expectations. This can be achieved through an automated text system that sends facts and statistical data to the public that will help them understand the serious consequences that weight-based bullying and fat shaming can have on individuals, in hopes of creating a more accepting and supportive community in leading a healthier lifestyle.”
The feedback from my partner and tutor helped me to understand that although the objective of my proposition was clearly stated and heading down the right track, the design solution needed more consideration and refining. I realised the following points:
People in the age group 18-25 may not be interested in reading a number of facts and statistical information on obesity and the impact that weight-based bullying has on individuals.
An automated text system may be too invasive, unwanted, and perceived as spam.
The draft proposition is too wordy and it is trying to achieve too much.
The design solution and chosen channel isn’t strong enough to provoke an emotional reaction from the audience.
The Issue: Weight-based bullying among youths and people aged 18-25 years is considered the most common form of bullying. People often overlook the seriousness and impact it has on individuals who fall victim to it. Constant criticism and bullying can lead to emotional eating (overeating), depression, anxiety, isolation or even suicide/self bodily harm.
While data-scraping, I found various tweets that fought back at fat-shaming comments, some that were links on how to lose weight and become healthier, some that were unpleasant fat-shaming comments, but very few that shared their personal stories and experiences. From this, it is clear that this issue exists but there are very few people that actually show or express the effect is has on the victim.
The Possible Change: The proposed design will enlighten people of the seriousness and impact that the issue has on people experiencing weight-based bullying, both physically and psychologically. By doing so, it could encourage the majority of “average-size” people to be more supportive and accepting of obese people and encouraging them to lead a healthier lifestyle, rather than putting them down and pressuring them into doing so. As well as this, it could relieve the pressure from the victims that feel the need to conform to society’s expectations and lose weight.
The Design Action to Support Change: Part A – Data visualisation of stories and experiences from victims of weight-based bullying posted on Twitter. These could then form the basis of a campaign that aims to reach the target audience on an emotional level and make the think about
Part B – A campaign involving a series of videos shared around social media platforms and a website. The videos will show “victims (actors)” sharing their stories and experiences from being fat shamed and bullied. The website is an online space provided for victims, as well as “normal” people to share stories, fitness and health advice, and support each other in leading a healthier lifestyle, without copping judgements or criticism.
Peer feedback is such an integral part of the design process and allows for further development and discussion of an idea. When discussing my draft proposal with a classmate I was pleasantly surprised to discover that they had quite an in-depth knowledge about Type 1 Diabetes, not only from the perspective of understanding the disease but also the issues surrounding the topic. This really helped when discussing my proposal and meant that I received some fantastic feedback that has allowed me to develop my proposal soundly.
My partner really liked my devised process of generation, collection, and collation that would result in a final exhibition. We discussed that at the core of my proposal was the idea of connection, exploring how this connection could be fostered between people living with Type 1 Diabetes as well as wider society. It was suggested that to inspire these connections individuals could be given the opportunity to deliver their postcards themselves to the exhibition space. Not only would this provide people with the opportunity to meet each other in person but it would also humanise the issue and disease.
One issue I did face when discussing my proposal with my partner and tutor was that I was still struggling to articulate by issue and devised response in a way that it could be understood clearly. It was suggested that I attempt to narrow in on my target audience and issue so that my response is more targeted and specific. I’ve put a lot of work into trying to better refine my proposition so that my issue and generative practice are clearly linked and explained.
Revised Proposition:
When living with Type 1 Diabetes there is a ‘constant and tiring mental dialogue of trying to balance the un-balanceable, trying to do right not wrong and with you, the only listener.’ It is this constant cognitive battle that sufferers struggle to voice, particularly to those not living with the disease.
TOP (Type One Peers) is a generative practice and service project that aims to bring people living with Type 1 Diabetes together to talk about their chronic disease, not just in medical terms but in a social, every-day manner. The project seeks to engage sufferers in a process that will see them first visualise their individual cognitive struggles before coming together alongside other young people living with Type 1 Diabetes to discuss, support and share these struggles and stories.
A TOT package is mailed out to all registered NDSS (National Diabetes Service Scheme) individuals, containing a collection of A5 postcards. Each card requires a different response from the individual and are specifically tailored to engage and explore the mental and physical struggle of living with Type 1 Diabetes. The proposed draft postcards with their tasks and aims are shown below:
Card 1
Card 2
Card 3
Card 4
Card 5
Depending on location and context, participants are then invited to either send back their completed postcards or bring them in themselves to a local workshop that will engage sufferers in curating and putting together an exhibition. The exhibition will ultimately be a visualisation and exploration of Type 1 Diabetes that goes beyond stereotypes and the physical aspects of the disease but rather focusses on the mental and cognitive struggles that are so hard to voice and share for those living with Type 1 Diabetes.
Due to time, economic and distance boundaries there will also be an online exhibition that allows those who cannot physically be at the workshop and space to still engage and connect with fellow sufferers. By bringing together individuals throughout this experience it is hoped that it will empower them to share their stories and provide supporting for one another in a way that they may currently struggle to do.
The exhibition also provides an opportunity for those living with the disease to communicate and begin a discussion with the general public about how the cognitive demands of this disease can be better managed and understood. It is hope through this process that sufferers learn to express their cognitive battles with the disease more freely not only with their peers but others in their life. It’s also hoped that this struggle is recognised by the general public so that other support systems and networks arise.
During class, I have proposed 2 different ideas to my colleague and tutor. The first proposal, the feedback was not very positive. However, the second one I have received very good comments and encouragement from my partner. Unfortunately, I did not have enough time to receive any feedback from my tutor for the second idea after I presented to her.
The first proposal I presented to them was the generative design which solves an issue of how vegetarianism is not well promoted on social media. I will create an online platform which everyone can join for free and create an account. The user then can upload photos of their everyday meals, share cooking recipes, tips and tricks of how to become vegetarians/vegans. The website will also include articles from trustworthy professionals and nutritionist to educate the users how to eat correctly to stay healthy or according to their needs (eg: lose weight). The feedback that I got from my tutor was that I should focus on only one problem of vegetarianism instead of try to solve all. For example focusing on eating greener because I don’t want to kill animals or a design that can show the pro and cons of vegetarianism. And the feedback from my peers is it’s not very interesting for them too. And personally, I found this online platform not engaging enough so I developed another one.
So the second proposal is a service design which solves the problem of how young adults age 18-24 years old are not very health conscious because they think they are still young and most of them like to eat unhealthy food. Therefore it is very hard to engage this target audience to vegetarianism if they really want to become one and this app can be a solution for that. The aim of this app is to “trick” people to eat healthier, fun to use and also educational.
The user can download this app to their smartphones or can go to the website. This app lets the users pick an emotion that they are feeling and it will give out different types of food that might help them feel better (Eg: sad => eat cacao nibs), and of course, these food that is recommended are healthy and can easily find in the supermarket. Another function that this app will help is to find a healthy substitution for the users. They can type in what type of food that is craving and it will show a healthier choice or cooking recipes for that. The longer they use it the better they feel and this app has slowly changed their eating habit without them knowing. Hopefully, it will strengthen theirs believe in eating healthy as well as vegetarianism. The feedback that I got from my peer are positive and they said it sounds very fun but also very helpful too.
Overall, I can see the potential for the second idea of “food can change your mood” project. And I need to do some further research in order to find out more about which types of food can effect our human’s emotion and hopefully it will be helpful for my design outcome.
I identified issues and problem statement to determine proposals on the last blog post. I will examine specific target audience and clear understanding of my topic through five ‘W’ s which are ‘who, what, when, where, and why’.
WHO
The general consumers particularly who want / need to improve their health condition and are interested into dietary life by intaking essential nutrients in balance. It will be beneficial impact on consumer who would like to do productive their grocery consumption with accurate awareness of nutrition facts especially in sugary foods. Moreover, it will affects on the company or manufacturers of food industry.
WHAT
Design solution will support to establish certain understanding about the sugar and strong awareness of what product/ food includes how much amounts of sugar they’ve included and how much sugar consumer needs to intake depends on individual health condition. It also delivers representation of structured infographic graphics of complex information to people access easily.
WHEN
Anytime in everywhere; when they do shopping, prepare to meal and check their health balance.
WHERE
Everywhere at anytime; where they purchase grocery products, particularly sugary foods at shopping centre, supermarkets, restaurants, cafes and their home etc.
WHY
All of customer have responsibility to recognise about the product how much amount of sugar include in fact and improve each of consumers’ health through improvement of knowledge impact and effectiveness of sugar on body. They also need to know hidden forms of sugar on package and advertisement to avoid excessive sugar intake and reduce consumption of sugary foods.
Brainstorming potential design solutions
After specified topic through generating of 5 ‘W’s, I discussed about my possibilities of design solution with group and it was opportunity to expand my ideas with peers in overall. Then I re-organised my brainstorm in broad ways of design thinking and this process navigates what I should research more about and existed design for health caring service such as health interface design by delivering clear infographic and simple information. It also needs what kinds of campaign for health and obesity issue already started and what’s their profits and effectiveness.
The process of brainstorming, collaborative issue mapping and discussion of ideas in participatory weekly group work lead my uncertain ideas to identify as topic within the cultural, economical and political sectors. Moreover, weekly documenting on blog support direction of design processes and develop depth on issue that inform a design possibility.
Problem statement
I will articulate possibilities about issue of sugary foods intake which relates with our healthy living, impacts on culture of consumption and generates conflict about economic consequence between policy of government and management of food company through taxation of sugary sweetened beverages.
Identified Issues
Design should inform accurate knowledge of sugar which has both beneficial and detrimental effects on issue of obesity and our healthy living. It supports how sugar becomes to be an essential part of our physical and psychological cycling through historical references and scientific research. In comparison, it needs to alert awareness of negative influence on our body and ultimate cause of obesity or related diseases to people who have ignorant behaviour about sugar.
Significant numbers of consumer have not purchased sugary foods or products without recognition of nutrition facts which presents how much sugar include. They usually persuaded by sympathetic advertisement and exaggerated package design without any knowledge of hidden form of sugar.
To avoid obesity and high level of cholesterol, people have lack of awareness how much we need to exhaust physical energy and what kinds of physical movement support to burn fats from sugar intake.
It is important to survey of public opinion about the taxation of sugary sweetened beverages which is ongoing process of political issue that increasing consumption of sugary food is one of the serious problem world widely. And persuade people to let them change their mind as taxation is more important to reduce obesity related issues in diverse ways than profits of company on food industry.
People have weak mind to cook low sugary foods and lack of awareness about replaceable organic ingredients instead of sugary processed foods.
To prevent children obesity who is one of the major target audience of sugary sweetened foods, design should focus on how it will educate about their eating habits and improve understanding of sugar at the level of children.
Proposal
I aim to create a service design through user experience design tools which is one of the importance of designing and enhancing solving issues in contemporary our lives. It will prevent obesity and lead people to live healthier than nowadays’ their ignorance and lack of seriousness of their body by sugar intake that is an interaction between users and issues. Its high value of usability and accessibility to be one of the closest digital platform on our ordinary life to alert risk level of sugar depends to people depends on each their health conditions individually and lead them to do physical movement follow their sugar intake. Moreover, easy and simple infographic statics, icons and graphic elements will develop their general knowledge of nutrition facts or recognition of what many different kinds of hidden forms of sugar appeared at package or advertisement.
Sugar and carbohydrates are the real culprits in the obesity epidemic.
–Writing in the British Journal Of Sports Medicine, 2015
Sugar is to blame for obesity Why blame sugar? ——high sugar consumption and the rise in obesity
There is substantial evidence that a high intake of added sugar in processed food is linked with weight gain and obesity, increased risk of diabetes and heart disease.
US Sugar vs Obesity, Chart by Rhett Allain, 2016
Added sugar Why is sugar added to foods and drinks?
Added sugar provides little to no nutritional value, but it does serve many uses in food processing. For example, added sugar can improve the flavor, color, or texture of foods and drinks.
Added sugar consumption increased by 30% over three decades in U.S, source from The obesity Society Annual Meeting at ObesityWeek 2014
Main causes of the obesity epidemic
■ Diet habits
1) Most Australians eat processed food every day.
2) People get used to having sugary drinks with food. Sugary beverages have become their part of dietary habits.
■Food culture
source: USDA Economic Research Service, 2009
1) The increasing availability of unhealthy processed food and sugary drinks.
2) Processed food is everywhere.
Food industries put more and more added sugar in processed food. Fats was been considered the culprit of leading obesity issue, a lot of people are more aware of fats consumption and would like to buy foods that are low in fats. However, most low-fat foods are not tasty, thus most food industries put a lot of added sugar in their food products to make them tasty for increasing sales. Additionally, sugar is cheap, which is perfect for food industries to increase profits.
Low fat – high sugar (27 grams), image: Ashild A. 2013
■ Increasing social acceptable of being overweight or obese/ more accepting of obesity
“Why is there a fat-acceptance movement when there is no tobacco-acceptance movement? Fat-acceptance is not the answer to obesity” —— Kay B. 2013
Even though the discrimination towards obese or overweight people still appears, most areas tend to be more accepting of obesity, thus most people get used to seeing obese people and not see them as ‘special group of people’. It is a great thing of the fat-acceptance in society. However, the acceptance also creates an excuse for obese people, making them think it is okay to being overweight or obese and keep living an unhealthy lifestyle. In many developed countries such as American and Australia, society is making great effort to ‘support’ obese people. For example, XXXL size clothes are easy to buy, large size food/snacks are provided in a lot of restaurants.
On the contrary, in many Asia countries such as Japan, it is not that easy to buy XXXL size clothes. Thus, the social support and acceptance of obesity can aggressive the obesity epidemic to a certain extent.
■ Lifestyle (eg. transportation – cars; frequency of watching TV/ using phone; no exercise)
With a lot of secondary and primary research (interview and probe) I have done, I was particularly interested in a phenomenon — most people do know what they are putting in mouth, and knowing they are not good for health, but they still choose to eat them. I wonder if it is blame to personal responsibility or the society or food industries.
Certainly, personal responsibility plays an essential role in promoting the obesity epidemic. Food industries or retailers cannot force people to buy a sugary drink or a chocolate bar. It is true that people are free to choose what they want to eat. The food labeling system has been improved a lot over the years, people can find how much sugar contains in a chocolate bar on the ingredient list no matter how complicated the information is. In addition, there are a lot of knowledge and information about healthy lifestyle online.
Question: A lot of people can choose live healthier, but why it is so hard to give up a piece of chocolate?
Personal food choices
To get a better understanding of personal food choices in order to seek possible interventions to change food behaviors, I started with researching factors that might influences people’s food choice behaviors (see the mind map below).
Changing food behavior – interventions Place to shop food:supermarket, where the majority of the people buy most of the processed food.
1) Personal experiment of a shop tour: (i) make a shopping list before do the shopping (ii) limit shopping time (iii) check food nutrition information before buying a food.
2) Nutrition label (make it easier to navigate, improve food labeling policies);
3) Food packaging design (right guidance to making food choices);
4) Advertising (posters/flyers, digital screening)
5) Receipt (might be a media to put guidance/warning information about food)
6) Self-serve checkout machine (a possible media to show information about food) Workplace, schools
a) Availability of food: Increasing availability and appeal of fruit and vegetables in worksite canteens/ school cafeterias; decreasing the availability of unhealthy/ junk food.
b) Vending machines: put educational information on the machines (eg. posters); increasing the availability of healthy snacks. Knowledge, education
Improve nutritional knowledge (eg. public education, public advertising).
Improve cooking skills: provide more healthy and tasty cooking menu. Family, friends support
Encouragement in making and sustaining dietary change.
Design Proposal
Theme: Sugar and obesity: partially looking at added sugar in processed food Target audiences:
Those people who know eating too much sugar is bad for health, but they still buying them. Those kind of people might looks healthy, they don’t have serious health problem even though they kept this unhealthy diet habit. But when it heaps up to a certain extent, it might lead to obesity or even serious health issues. Design:
A system that can record the amount of sugar that you have consumed in a month/ a year; and also speculate your future health result if you keep having this much sugar in a certain period (eg. a year). Medium to present the system to people:
A shopping ID card.
Primary applied in self-checkout machine in supermarkets How it works:
Before you check out, you have to swipe this card, information will be shown on the check-out machine’s screen. It will show how much sugar you have consumed in a month/ a year, and also showing a speculation of your future health result if you keep having this much sugar in a certain period.
It will also have a tip/ option after you click to close the information window: “Rethink your shopping items?” Yes / No
Then you can put back the items that high in sugar which you don’t want. There might also be a ‘Regret basket’ next to the check-out machine, thus people can easy to put back items.
The problem
There is substantial evidence shows the link between calories and obesity is caused in part by high sugar consumption from processed food. Who does the problem effect?
Children, Parents, obese people, customers (shopping behaviors, making food choices), businessmen (food industries, retailers, profits), politicians (eg. food labeling laws), nutritionists, doctors, researchers, designers(advertising, food packaging design), etc. What are the boundaries of the problem?
■ The relationship between added sugar (in processed food) and obesity.
■ Personal responsibility vs social responsibility(food industries)
■ Personal food choices When does the problem occur?
The consumption of added sugars has been dramatically increased since the 1970s.
The main reason is because of the demonisation of fats by the mid-1990s, and sugar was considered a healthy alternative. A lot of advertisings suggested that sugary drinks as part of a healthy lifestyle. Where?
For example American and Australia. Why blame sugar?
There is substantial evidence that a high intake of added sugar in processed food is linked with weight gain and obesity, increased risk of diabetes and heart disease.
Brainstorming possible design directions in group
Mindmap based on my issue topic: sugar and obesity Mindmap based on one of our group members: parenting shopping choices and child obesity
In the group session, we brainstormed possible design directions together. This is a very helpful process for generating a design proposal with the help of other group members. In addition, working with other group member’s specific issue topic also help come up with new ideas as we are all working on the same big issue topic — Obesity. From the part of working in ‘parenting shopping choices and child obesity’ issue, I gained a lot of ideas about how to change shopping behaviors, which is also related to my issue topic.
The session of working in ‘what, who, when, why’ is very useful for refreshing and arranging all the research and ideas over the weeks. It also helps for think of the problem in a comprehensive structure.
As we work in a group and discuss our topics, each of the group members had the chance to give their opinions feedbacks for others topic. Because everyone might have a different perspective on an issue and a way to solve problems, therefore, this class exercise was really helpful for me.
And because we are all design students, we are trained to solve problem and train to come up with design solutions, it was an exciting session where I can learn from others group members on how they came up with a design solution for each other’s topic. I also learn how to work effectively in a group, how you share your opinion, how to discuss an issue without offending anyone and learn from each other.
Not just learning from my fellow students, I also have good feedbacks and comments from other tutors (by combining classes) and hear what their own opinion on my topic as we as teaching me how to brainstorm effectively in class.
Weaknesses:
One of the weakness that I think have happened is that not all of the group members have a good knowledge about the other’s topic, therefore, the information they provided may not be correct.
Another weakness for this subject, in general, is the fact that we have to keep on changing groups and moving class is very confusing but in a way, it’s a little bit helpful because I have the chance to speak to other students and hear their perspectives on my topic.
My last thought for the brainstorming exercises, I feel like I have been repeating myself, again and again, writing similar things overall again. And this makes me lost interests in this brainstorming section during class which I hope that the tutors can improve the class exercises in a way that is more engaging to the students.
From the group brainstorming session I have been focused on five key words associate to obesity issue, which are laziness, willpower, social pressure, Tess Hollidays (plus-sized model) and discrimination. The issue mapping reveals both positive and negative aspects around social media. Positive aspects include athlete’s influence, healthy food trend, recipe sharing and social pressure in someway. Negative sides involve positive body movement, plus-sized model influence, morbidly beauty standard. After that I decided to focus on specifically social media impact on teens and young adults.
Who does the problem effect?
The problem affects mostly everyone who uses Internet and social media but in this session I specifically focus on teens and young adults as they are easy to persuade and lack of awareness about obesity and health.
What are the boundaries of the problem?
Teenager’s low awareness of health and they are easy to influence by friends, social media and celebrities. And also their low willpower would be one of the boundaries.
When does the problem occur? When does it need to be fixed?
When the Internet had been built and social media has been blooming. The issue needs to be fixed once it threatens teen’s health and make the younger generation facing obesity problem.
Where is the problem occurring?
It is occurring on Internet and the social network platform.
Why is it important that the problem is fixed? What impact does it have on all stakeholders?
As the most important age group for whole society, teens and young adults being obese is a very serious problem because obesity can be highly harmful to them both physically and mentally.
Summary of five possibilities
Enhance teens awareness of obesity and health
Focus on how social media can positively influence teens and young adults
Using social pressure to boost their willpower.
Set competition between friends
Using social network platform to advocate healthy living
Draft Proposal
My initial proposal is to associate iOS or Android’s Health app to user’s Facebook. The service allows them to view how many steps their friends take per day and interact each other with thumbing up or thumbing down. Every day’s champion is being awarded. By setting a competition on every day’s steps taking, walking and running distance and flight climbed, this project provides a positive competitive atmosphere to persuade customers being more active.
Emergent Practices 
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