My Hungry Buddy helps people stay healthy

Post ten

By Marie Good

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.

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The five W’s and unlimited potential

Post nine: Visual documentation of the brainstorming session

By Marie Good

Before I could work on developing a design proposal or situating my design statement in a decisive way, it was essential for me to firstly understand all the elements of my target audience involved. The following questions had to be asked, with my responses included below.

WHO

Consumers; the general public; particularly people with little knowledge of the foods they consume or people with a medium / strong interest, yet not qualified as a reliable source of information. It also affects the manufacturers and producers of foods.

WHAT

There is a general lack of awareness or desire to be aware because of the complexity and boring structure of current information. Also potentially a lack of accessibility to information or healthy options.

WHERE

Every time a consumer purchases or consumers. In shopping malls, supermarkets, cafes, their own kitchen etc.

WHEN

When shopping, when hungry, when preparing food.

WHY

Nutritional information currently is not desirable to read. People would rather read an unreliable blog post or watch a reality cooking show than learn the fundamental chemistry of profile of nutrition.

After this, I was able to work on creating a design statement which I discussed with my peers. This discussion proved very helpful for myself, in understanding if what I was investigating made sense to others, instead of only myself. They even informed me of some areas I could look for information on my topic.

Next I took all the suggestions and feedback I had received and started brainstorming potential design solutions. The important part here was to think as big as I could and create ideas not limited to my own available resources for reality but the skills and funds featuring a more collaborative approach. I asked myself, if my own funding and skills were limitless, what could I achieve to create change. This thinking pattern created some very far-fetched, yet potentially extremely effective design solutions, as well as some more grounded and realistic ideas. In order to create some structure out of my chaotic jhand generated storm, I recreated this by computer intervention. The end map is pictured here below.

This process of collaboration was highly effective in this instance as the reactions of others and their feedback, enabled me to understand if my thinking made sense or was of value to those other than myself. Their suggestions for further research as well, allowed me to uncover more sources of information that hadn’t even crossed my mind.

Type 1 Diabetes: Brainstorming for a Design Response

Post 9 by Lucy Allen

The word brainstorming as so many immediate connotations, not all of these very exciting. When it comes to understanding a topic and defining an issue however the process of brainstorming is vital. We explored a number of brainstorming activities that provided us with the depth and material to then define a design response.

One of the initial brainstorming tasks we undertook in class asked us to identify some issues in regards to our topic and then break these down by defining:

WHO Does the problem effect?
WHAT are the boundaries of the problem?
WHEN does the problem occur? When does it need to be fixed?
WHERE does it occur?
WHY does it occur?

An example of this method in practice

I found this activity particularly helpful in forcing me to breakdown an issue so that myself and others could understand it fully. This activity also provided a structure for me to write my issue statement from.

It was also mentioned that when narrowing in on an issue a really fantastic way of exploring and understanding it is to continuously ask why, just like a child would. I absolutely LOVED this exercise and it allowed me to really understand WHY this issue existed and work out where within the system change and response was needed.

An extract taken from asking why

 

When it came to brainstorming as a group, attempting to map potential responses to my specific issue was quite a struggle for other members of my group. I think this was due to the fact that my issue is so specific and knowledge dependant. Despite this barrier we were able to come up with a few really promising emergent responses to my issue. One of the benefits of doing this particular task as a group meant that I got to hear the different opinions and responses of my group members, brainstorming responses I may otherwise have never ventured towards. It was a shame that this particular brainstorming took place at the end of class as by this time everyone was quite tired and lacking brain power!

Group Brainstorm

I received some really valuable feedback in response to our groups map. It was suggested that I think about the values of understanding, connection and acceptance in their individual forms, particularly when deciding on which emergent response to pursue. From this initial group brainstorm I was inspired me to continue developing and brainstorming responses to the issue, developing the map and honing in on a particular response.

Building upon our group brainstorming

I did find throughout this process that it was hard to generate lots of ideas. Despite this I found a few responses that I’m excited to pursue, you can read all about this in my recent blog post A Design Response for Type 1 Diabetes.

You can’t handle the truth, but how about a pop up?

Post eight

By Marie Good

Collaborative group work has played an essential role in the discovery and exploration of my understanding into the issue that is obesity and healthy living. It has allowed for an accepting space where a knowledge bank was allowed to be created based on different experiences, insights and conducted research points that group members had acquired. During a recent brainstorming session, this and also the ability to communicate ideas verbally helped me to discover possibilities and to create a proposal.

 

The possibilities discovered included:

• Food allergies, particularly in response to food additives and man made chemicals, are not being highlighted as an important consideration in the design spaces and marketing environments products exist in.
• Edutainment has an important role to play in the future of humanity and how we relate to and perceive the world and who we are in it.
• People are generally uninterested in taking the time to discover how food properties and their chemical make up can influence bodies in particular ways.
• There is a general lack of understanding on where to seek qualified, experienced and reliable advice for the issues of healthy living and obesity.
• Our information receptors are at over capacity when it comes to ‘fad diets’ and fad ways of conducting healthy living, that we become overwhelmed and undereducated about real issues.

Through my possibilities I was able to create a problem statement for further design responses to be investigated as a solution to influence change.

Problem Statement

Design a way of assisting people in understanding and building awareness about the nutritional breakdowns of consumables.

Proposal

I have realised the main issue within obesity and healthy living appears to be a lack of education and a lack of attitude to learn, because of an oversaturation of inaccurate information and a tried and tired nutritional panel that is unexciting and inefficient to read.

I aim to create a service design, which will essentially act off the back of the success of pop up restaurants and food trucks. I propose to create a travelling restaurant space that serves food and drink products in response to where the patron is sitting in that restaurant space. The restaurant space will be separated through aesthetic style based on degrees of nutrition and the balance of a meal, ranging from very bad to very good. In order to gather an interest from the general public in such an event, I propose working with and gaining the participation of well known health, fitness and nutrition actors and developing a three phase campaign; 1 – tease. 2 – excite. 3 – sustain. The results themselves, will educate participants to develop an awareness and conscious attitude towards the nutritional value of their food.

Type 1 Diabetes: Issue Mapping

Post 7 by Lucy Allen

The first mapping exercise we undertook as a group was looking at and categorising different word associations to the topic ‘Obesity and Healthy living’. Working collaboratively we collected a mammoth range of words that covered the entire topic. It was so fascinating to see what words we all wrote and which came to mind in relation to our individual topics we’ve been exploring, enabled us to come up with a diverse range of words.

The many words we came up with as a group:

After writing the antonym of each word on the back, we were then given the opportunity to ready through the words of other groups to choose five words that we felt related strongly to our personal topics.

The chosen words that I felt related most strongly to my area of interest:

 

 

Then bringing out individual words together as a group it was interesting to see that we all had quite a few in common such as ‘motivation’ and ‘support’. As a group we then voted again to draw out the key words from which we could all relate too.

The group’s collection of key words:

 

The final collection of words that we voted on as a group: 

The next section of the mapping task was my favourite. We were asked to collect the words and make maps based on what type of word it was and what it evoked. The categories we worked with were; emotive, disruptive and factual. It was this section of the mapping that really saw us working as a team and questioning each others decisions. If someone didn’t agree with the categorisation of  a certain word we would have a discussion as a group to decide. Everyone’s opinions were respected and we had some fantastic discussions about word associations and meaning within this field.

Categorising word by Its impact and type:

We next undertook an exercise in ranking our key words on a spectrum of positive to negative. Again the group had differing ideas of where these words should be placed on a spectrum however we were able to discuss this and make an informed decisions. I noticed that our negative vs. positive associations were quite influenced by our individual focus areas. For example, for me and my focus on Type 1 Diabetes, the word ‘drugs’ ranked quite positively on the spectrum as without drugs, Type 1 Diabetics couldn’t survive. In opposition to this, a group member who’s area of focus is sugar consumption, the word ‘drug’ is associated with sugar as a drug and ranked quite negatively on the spectrum. When it came to these conflicts of interest we were able to compromise by thinking about the topic holistically and from a broad sense.

Working on this word mapping with my group I came to understand something that is really vital to my own research and work based on the varied responses and understanding of words from my group members. I realised that even when it comes to medical terms and disease names there are still areas of opinion and perspective. For example, smoking is an easy to define, specific word however people have individual associations with that word and their own opinion as to whether it is negative or positive. This is important to keep in mind when analysing and judging people’s opinions and understanding of Type 1 Diabetes.

Looking at the issue mapping my group completed in class the week I was away it was interesting to explore the process they’d undertaken when mapping the actors. From my understanding the started by brainstorming all the contravercies within the topic of Obesity and Healthy Living before choosing ‘steroids’ as a topic to persue. They then mapped out all actors in this system under the subheadings of value alignment, hierarchies, politics, associations, capacities, issues and challenges

Group Brainstorm of Steroids:

Group Actor Map of Steroids:

 

I’ve noticed that all members of my group have worked in quite unique and specific areas of Obesity and Healthy Living, meaning that the work and mapping we do in class needs to have a broad approach. Not only does this mean we’re all exploring other areas but it gives us a chance to work and map broadly and then take our learnings and apply it to our own more specific topics. It gives me new perspectives to look at my issue from as well as an ever-expanding knowledge of different areas such as steroid use and the impact this has with my own topic of Type 1 Diabetes.

Taking the process and mapping work of my group, my learning’s from this weeks readings as well as my own knowledge,  I sought to create my own actor map on Type 1 Diabetes. For my issue mapping I wanted to focus on the issue of knowledge and people’s lack of understanding of Type 1 Diabetes. From here I could map out this issue space by looking at key actors to form a greater understanding of the issues surrounding Type 1 Diabetes itself. I identified the key actors as being Government, Sufferers, Health Professionals and Wider Society.

Individual Actor Maps:

After creating these individual actor maps I would ideally collate them into a larger issue map to begin drawing relationships and the cause and effect between different actors and their differing values, actions and abilities.

I can however already see in these maps possibilities for action to greater change, particularly in the areas of actor’s values and connections. I think that if all actors could exercise greater empathy and strengthen their connections to other actors there would be a better communication of information, education as well as understanding around the subject of Type 1 Diabetes. As the issue is so complex and involves such a range of actors, it would involve taking action within multiple actors to have a long-lasting impact. In saying this, most disconnections within the issue can be traced back to the Government’s lack of strategy and commitment to the awareness, treatment and education of Type 1 Diabetes. This is a potential point of intervention when thinking about an emergent practice in response to the issue.

 

 

Reference List

Rogers. R, Sanchez-Querub. N, Kil. A, C. 2015, ‘Issue Mapping for an Aeging Europe’,  Amsterdam University Press B.V., Amsterdam 

Digital Methods Initiative, C. 2016, ‘Ageing Places: Digital Methodologies for Mapping the Issue of an Ageing Europe’, University of Amsterdam, 2015

Schultz. T, C. 2015, ‘Cognitive Redirective Mapping: Designing Futures That Challenge Anthropocentrism Design and It’s Wild Cards’, Design Ecologies, No. 6

‘Big now, dead later,’ – Steroids

Post 7: Issue mapping

By Marie Good

Steroids by Magin 2016

Controversy: noun; a lot of disagreement or argument about something, usually because it affects or is important to many people (Cambridge dictionary 2016).

When it comes to living and the issues that affect us all, we are placed into a position of a passive or aggressive stance. As humans, we feel strongly about subjects such as obesity and healthy living and because of this, create controversy over and within many areas surrounding it.

Recently during a class exercise, I had the opportunity to map out actors of controversy with regards to this topic and zone in on a particular area of investigation. My group and I decided to focus on the area of performance enhancement supplements, recognising it within our first map of controversies, as a subject each group member had some knowledge about but thought might be interesting to explore. We broke this off onto one known performance enhancing drug, steroids, to investigate further in detail.

Steroid are by nature, a performance-enhancing drug, particularly found in the areas of, but not limited to, bodybuilding, strength conditioning, endurance sports and performance athletes.

We recognised six main categories we could examine closer to develop a detailed insight into the actors involved in this controversial subject, being: politics, associates, value alignments, capabilities, hierarchies, issues and challenges. From here, it was essential and crucial towards our process to involve each member’s thoughts and ideas as we all had different knowledge levels, experiences and therefore insights into steroid actors.

On looking over our end map and findings, the main issue with steroid use is formed on the basis of drug stability in regards to quality and sustainability of the individual’s life. I can identify a possibility that in order to change the minds of individuals in this area, education, potentially in the form of a health and fitness, virtual reality edutainment app could be developed or other means of education in perceiving our future selves with regards to now. This unfortunately seems to be a contradictory area within the minds of young people particularly, where by the mentality they have is focused on the idea of fun now, responsibilities later. This way of living is not sustainable to themselves, their friends and families or the communities around them.

 

Reference list

Cambridge dictionary, 2016, Controversy, date viewed 1 September 2016, < http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/controversy &gt;.

Magin, R. 2016, steroids, date viewed 1 September 2016, < http://ryanmagin.com/go/new-steroid-poormans-nobs/ >.

Twittersphere suggests fast food can actually make us healthy

Fast food, fast change by Lea Peck 2015

Post 6: Data scraping

By Marie Good

Twitter is a social media platform where users can subscribe (or follow) other users to stay connected with their updates and posts. In order to access most functions, such as posting you, the user must have an active account and the technology to connect via app or an Internet platform. One of the significant and most commonly used features is posting written updates on your thoughts or activities, which creates a communicative and relaxed tone of conversation, unless, of course, controversial subjects are the targets of play. In this case people can use freedom of expression and freedom of speech to ‘vent’ their opinions and affirm their identity in a way.

One feature in particular that I have utilised, as a tool to analyse hashtagged material with specific keywords relating to obesity and healthy living is the advanced search function. Using Google Spreadsheets and a twitter scraper application, I decided it would be interesting to look for the usage of two words – preservatives and organic. These two terms relate strongly to my desired area of investigation and provided some interesting results for analysis.

Through my analysis, three main take away points became obvious.

1. Organic food is expensive, unaffordable for the majority of people and a heavily marketed advertising term.
2. Excitement for fast food chains that switch to products that don’t use preservatives is rising.
3. Many of those tweeting about switching to organic, or eating foods without preservatives are health professionals or have some sort of education/work interest in the area

After sorting through only a small section of the responses received, it became significant to note that the use of ‘organic’ was predominantly part of advertisements for products and services, instead of use in general conversation. For example, these tweets below display how marketing has latched onto the power of a niche market to influence consumers on a broader spectrum.

L: Skin loving luxury by Organicfelicia 2016. R: Organic matcha green tea by Ecomugsstore 2016.

Not only does it appear that this is the case but also that due to this, many people associate expense and affordability concerns with organic products. One tweet displayed below, details the anguish and disgust of high prices on organic produce.

Organic is so expensive by Mamakaexo 2016

LOL do you even know what minimum wage is by Ayershole 2016

On the other hand, we see joy and excitement about a recent decision by McDonald’s Canada to adopt preservative free methods of cooking within their chicken nugget range. This tweet was retweeted numerously and recurred throughout my search hundreds of times. This shows how people tend to accept their love of fast foods, while also admitting, although not directly, of knowledge about the negative health properties of chicken nuggets. This idea made me reflect of my interview conducted recently where my interviewee suggested fast food establishments need to adopt small changes in order to influence a healthier and more sustainable future.

Mc_D Canada preservative free by 20YS 2016

The last area I found provoking in my search was not what, but who were discussing these keywords in their tweets. It appeared the majority of tweeters had dealt directly or do deal directly with the health industry, as businesses, qualified health, fitness or nutrition personally or/and the more general health and fitness advocates. This almost seems to suggest that those willing to use these terms essentially need to have some interest or stake in the obesity and healthy living area. This then presented me with an issue for further investigation.

I believe here, the challenge for design in this area lies in its ability to influence the general public who are not necessarily interested in the chemical composition of foods of product. How can design create change, or increase the accessibility of information so that is it placed in an easy to understand format that the user wants to access. Potentially through edutainment technologies or awareness campaigns supported by major fast food organisations or product manufacture and distribution houses. Through this means, the information is placed in a house that is already furnished with a collective and consistent audience who, according to my data scrape findings, do actually care about what they put into their body when it is brought to their attention that a positive change has been made.

Reference list

Ayershole, 2016, ‘LOL do you even know what minimum wage is,’ 4 September, twitter post, date viewed 4 September 2016, < https://twitter.com/Ayershole/status/770449656568426497 &gt;.

Ecomugsstore, 2016, ‘Organic matcha green tea,’ 4 September, twitter post, date viewed 4 September 2016, < https://twitter.com/EcoMugsStore/status/772580048444329984 &gt;.

Mamakaexo, 2016, ‘Organic is so expensive,’ 4 September, twitter post, date viewed 4 September 2016, < https://twitter.com/mamakaexo/status/770398230865731584 &gt;.

Organicfelicia, 2016, ‘skin loving luxury,’ 4 September, twitter post, date viewed 4 September 2016, < https://twitter.com/flwrgardengifts/status/772579947802046464 &gt;.

Peck, L. 2015, Fast food, fast change, YouTube, date accessed 3 September 2016, < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBCFBEIXC0w >.

20YS, 2016, ‘Mc_D Canada preservative free,’ 4 September, date viewed 4 September 2016, < https://twitter.com/20YS/status/772172835406110720 &gt;.

Issue mapping for sedentary lifestyle

Blog post 7. Issue mapping

Written by Hyunjoung You

In week 5, our group shared each thought about obesity, and we created mapping for the actor in controversy, which is related to obesity issue. It was opportunity to expand and obtain the knowledge about controversial issue of obesity. We are divided into 5 sections: people, emotion, behaviour, barrier, and environment. The mapping is shown below:

Mapping for the actor in controversy

 

After finished the above mapping, I narrowed down the topic to ‘sedentary lifestyle’. I found ‘Active lifestyle’ as opposite side to my topic, and I figured out the controversy between sedentary lifestyle and active lifestyle by classifying into 6 categories: people, emotion, behaviour, barrier, environment, and society / network. While I created this mapping, I recognized there are lots of associates and causes of sedentary lifestyle. Moreover, I discovered the associates were busy modern people, disabled people, and people who have sedentary work. This means that busy lifecycle and their environments bring about sedentary lifestyle except disabled people. Therefore, I would like to do further research about work environment since I have thought it is hard to do physical activities after hard work. I believe that their workplace environment is the most effective solution to people escape from sedentary lifestyle. Hence, I decided to make actor mapping using sedentary work.

Controversy mapping

To create actor mapping, I should think about different aspects of sedentary work: trigger, capacities, associates, politics, value alignments, weak connections, hierarchies, issues and challenges.

Actor mapping

It helped me to organize diverse factors surrounding sedentary work properly: the associates are related to sedentary work, the results by sedentary work, and issues and challenges. Especially, issues and challenges was useful aspect to come up with the possible actions to change. Also, it made me consider the barriers would come along to practice these possible actions. Here are possible solutions to sedentary work:

– The companies provide the employees with some programs or work environment to promote their physical activities such as morning yoga program, team sports activities, and standing desk.

– Creating info graphic poster to help the employees being aware of the importance of physical activities to prevent from being obese.

– Short animation or visual narrative about how sedentary lifecycle affects negatively to people.

Twitter Archiver for collecting data

Blog post 6. Scraping the web for data

Written by Hyunjoung You

 

As Media Access Australia (n.d) states:

Twitter is a popular social networking tool that allows users to send a short, mostly text-based message up to 140 characters long known as a ‘tweet’. These tweets are then published online and can be publicly viewed. Twitter users can post their own tweets, follow the tweets of other users or contribute to a wider online discussion based on a particular topic or event.

Twitter is fast personal communication. People can share personal insights on something with other people. Moreover, they can follow the celebrities and send feedback on any events such as a live television show. It is also commonly referred to as a short web log (blog). Social Media News Australia reported that Twitter becomes Australia’s most popular social media microblogging tool with approximately 2.8 million unique visitors in Australia and over 300 million users worldwide in the early of 2016.

My research process 

My specific topic is the association between sedentary lifestyle and obesity. Therefore, I searched using keyword ‘Obesity’, ‘Fat’, ‘Sedentary’, and ‘Lifestyle’ at first.

Twitter Archiver Research 1 – #obesity #fat #sedentary #lifestyle

The data that came out on the list was exactly same as what I though about. However, as you can see the above screen shot, only one tweet showed since I used too specific keywords. I realized that I needed to use more general and suitable words to collect useful data.

Twitter Archiver Research 2 – #obesity #fat

This is the result by researching using keywords of ‘obesity’ and ‘fat’. I could receive lots of personal insights about obesity, but it was hard to find the information what I looked for because keyword was so broad to bring about specific data. Nevertheless, there were few results were related to my topic. After this, I searched using keywords ‘lifestyle’ and ‘office’ as well; however, it was not enough to gather useful data. Hence, I moved on Twitter search engine.

As you can see the above images, I typed three words ‘fat’, ‘sitting’, and ‘office’, which are more related to my topic. Many tweets came out, and they all indicated that sedentary work made them being fat. It shows that many people already recognize sedentary lifestyle is associated with obesity, but all tweets were their feelings about being fat like sad or anger. There were no any solutions or ideas for that issue.

 

While I scraped data via Twitter Archiver and Twitter search engine, I found how they were useful tool to discover information what I looked at using simple keywords. Twitter Archiver offered the list, which included the keywords I typed. It helped me to recognize what kinds of issues people share and discuss nowadays. Also, it provided wider knowledge that is related to obesity issue. Overall, I could have a look different personal insights and opinions about specific issues. It is really good to know them as a designer because we have responsibility to act for people needs and build the solutions to solve problems. Therefore, it is appropriate tool to scrape data to understand specific issue and personal insights.

 

Reference

Media Access Australia, n.d. ‘Twitter’, viewed 4 September 2016, <https://dev.twitter.com/overview/documentation&gt;

Interview and Probe about the association between environment and obesity & healthy living

Blog Post 5: Approaches to design for change, design-led ethnography

Written by Hyunjoung You

 

I have conducted the interview about obesity & healthy living to my specific issue to my interviewee in the class. There are five findings from this primary research.

 

1.  Interesting issue about obesity & healthy living

The interviewee was more interested in right diet than other issues that are related to obesity and healthy living. She thought that people do not have enough knowledge what diet is good for their health and preventing from being obese. Therefore, she believed the early education is important so people can use to have proper diets.

Through her answer, I realized people were aware of the importance of right diet. However, there are no opportunities that people learn which diet is better properly. I thought children education would be helpful to solve future problem is being obesity to children.

 

2. Major contributors of obesity & healthy living

Modern culture & busy life

The interviewee said it is one of major contributors to obesity & healthy living. Many people do not have time to do exercise, and cook at home. Today people prefer eating outside or buying takeaway food due to convenience. Also, some people pursue their convenience too much; even though the distance is short, some people choose driving car rather than taking walk.

Advertisement industry

The interviewee talked about food advertisement as well. She could see lots of soft drink like Coca Cola or junk food ads, but it is hard to find the advertisements for alcohol, soft drink or food by healthy companies.

Education

She pointed out the lack of education about right diet in childhood. Children education is important to prevent from being obesity. She believed that eating habit could make people being healthier or not.

Three contributors that the interviewee came up with obesity & healthy living were all appropriate. Besides, I found three of them are related to my issue. It seems like busy life tend to make people living sedentary lifestyle. In addition, the environment they live in has more unhealthy food shops than healthier food shops. Therefore, it might bring about a limited choice of diets to people.

 

3. Active urban design prevents obesity or not

My interviewee was not sure if active urban design could prevent obesity. However, she was certain that it could help public health in general; more green spaces and better recreational areas can encourage people to exercise more. She also gave me the example that is dedicated urban bicycle lanes are really helpful for people who are thinking about cycling especially in Australia, as it can be dangerous to cycle on roads. Additional parks and green spaces are also good for promoting the community to do physical activities.

My interview has a broad understanding of the association between our environment and public health. This shows how our environment impacts on our health.

 

4. The possible opposition to active urban design

The interviewee thought there would probably be opposing views of creating active urban design since everyone would always have different opinions. However, she did not think that the disagreement was based on whether or not they wanted to have health promoting urban design. The disagreement might be going to be about what kinds of urban design in specific that is needed in the area. She said there would be concerns, for example, do we want to build a cool playground for kids or build a public gym? She was sure this was the type of opposing opinion happened all the time.

I realized that I overlooked the thing that my interviewee pointed out. It was nice time to think about other issues about this solution.

 

5. The ideas for preventing obesity

She mentioned about children education again, but she thought urban design and children education could be connected. For example, growing plants or fruit by children in specific areas to help them have right diets.

I thought it was good idea combining both ideas together. Hence, children can be familiar to eating vegetables and healthy food, and some parts of urban design create by public.

 

Probe

After the interview, due to my issue that I have looked at so far is about the association between environment and obesity & healthy living. Therefore, I wondered the environment around her in particular to food industry. I asked she usually cook at home or not, and then, she said that she normally ate food outside. Therefore, I asked her to capture the map of her place to see what kinds of food industry are located in.

The map around building 6 and interviewee’s house (http://maps.uts.edu.au/map.cfm)

 

This image was from my interviewee, and she put the red lines on the place where she normally went to eat. She also mentioned there are some missing shops like KFC, sushi shop, and lots of takeaway food shops between building 6 and central station such as Thai, Chinese, and sandwich shop, and so on. She lives in UTS accommodation that is why she usually has food around there. She added there are not much healthy food shops compares to sugary or junk food shops; therefore, she does not have many choices to choose healthier foods.

Through this probe, even though I looked at the food environment of small area, I could find that many people are already exposed to those kinds of food industry. The way to prevent it is only a change of our environment for people. We need to choose healthier choices easily in our environment, and it can be happened by our acts. It might be one of our responsibilities; everyone should be aware of it, and act now.

After primary research, I could see what is difference between primary research and secondary research. When I used secondary research to write previous blog posts, secondary research includes existing research, and involves analysis or literature reviews. However, primary research, especially conducting interview and probe by one person was personal. Thus, I could get diverse perspectives of the issue by different people; they have different opinions and ideas, so it is really helpful to come up with the thoughts that I could not have.

Mapping and image archive

Blog post 3. Mapping and image archive

Written by Hyunjoung You

 

Group mapping of Obesity & Healthy living in class

 

Environment we live in (Stakeholders / Values) mapping in class

During the class, our group created the mapping for issue, which is related to obesity and healthy living. Also, we made stakeholders mapping; we divided into 2 sections for stakeholders like human and non-human. This exercise helped to build the knowledge about diverse issues are associated with our topic (obesity and healthy living). In later class, we wrote down the words are linked to our topic. We shared each group words, and checked what they were interested in the words. For our group words, the most interesting word was ‘Active design’, and then, ‘Healthcare professional’, ‘Public health’, ‘Environment’, and ‘Healthy lifestyle’, and so on. I realized most of words are related to my specific issue that is the association between active urban design and obesity. Therefore, if I keep looking at this issue and trying to make better ideas, it would be definitely interesting to many designers and design students. In addition, there are many interesting words from other groups what I could not come up with even few words describe my issue properly. Thus, it was useful exercise to get the point of what I have to go with my issue.

 

10 Image Archive

Image 1. Put the Smartphone down: social media use and sleep disturbances linked

First image includes the guy who grabs his mobile cannot fall in sleep properly. This describes using smart phone for a long time brings about sleep disturbance. Nowadays, modern people often use social media such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, etc. They use their mobile to keep checking social media, and it is still happened before people go to bed. Deep sleep is necessary to good health; therefore, this image shows technology is also one of distractions to healthy living.

 

Image 2. Dove Real Beauty campaign

In post 1, I already have written about the issue, which is related to this image. This image aims to women have the confidence with their natural bodies. However, the article what I read in post 1 insists that ‘real’ from that slogan could be problem because there are no standard for normal and real body. Also, it highlights these kind of campaign might lead to negative effect on public’s lifestyle and eating behavior. Therefore, this image is controversial even the purpose is good.

 

Image 3. Disease trigger

Right diet is one of significant factor to healthy living. As you can see this image, today many young girls have wrong beauty standard, for example, skinny is prettier. They become being very self-conscious, and they cannot be satisfied with them. It causes eating disorder such as overeating or anorexia; and this image is one of example showing anorexia successfully.

Image 4. Are You Eating Your Feelings?

The person eats the cookies with the different feelings in this poster. It shows people can overeat due to their feelings especially when their feelings are sad, tired, stressed, depressed, lonely, or anxiety. As you can the words in the cookies, all words represent negative feelings. The poster emphasises that people should stop overeating by bad feelings; they should find other appropriate solutions except overeating to make them feel better.

Image 5. How Coca-Cola, Britvic and Innocent are tackling the sugar issue

This image shows how soft drink has lots of sugar successfully. Therefore, it helps people being aware of it, and people can avoid drinking soft drink much. People are easy to addict sugar, so reducing sugar intake is really important thing to be healthy and avoid being obesity. This image is also used to support ‘sugar tax’ that I already mentioned in post 1; 20% tax on sugary drinks and sweets to help people reduce their daily sugar intake.

Image 6. Sedentary Lifestyle is a Health Risk

The potato is on the couch in this image. This points out an increase in sedentary lifestyle today. Many people prefer convenience; therefore, people tend to find easier ways when they travel, go or do something. They do not have enough physical activities, so it would bring about health risk such as heart disease, diabetes, colon cancer, and high blood pressure. Although this image describes sedentary lifestyle, it will lead to awareness to people.

Image 7. Urbanism as a public health issue: Oklahoma City’s battle with obesity

The silhouette of obese person is in front of many junk food shops. This illustration highlights urbanism as a public health issue, and it also says that urban environment should change for public health. I posted the design guidelines about this issue in post 4. This image shows the real environment that affects public health negatively. If there are less unhealthy food shops in our environment, it will definitely helpful to public health. However, there would be many objections by especially junk food and sugary food industry.

 

Image 8. Killer at Large

This image is a documentary poster. It includes the fries in the cigarette packet. People recognize how smoking cigarettes is harmful for the health. The image uses that common sense to let people realize how junk food is also as bad for our health as smoking.

 

Image 9. What are you letting your child put in his mouth?

This image is United Way + American Heart Association joint campaign poster. The poster has gun shape of the chocolate with the texts below it. It points out children obesity can be prevented by parent’s right diet education. The visual aspect and the phrase are appropriate to describe how right diet is important to children.

 

Image 10. Obesity is Suicide

This image is a campaign poster to raise awareness of obesity. This poster might be sensational, but it will make people to think that obesity affects their health negatively. Thus, people try to choose healthier choices, not unhealthy things.

 

 

Reference

Brown, V. 2015, Dove Real Beauty campaign, news, viewed 11 August 2016, <http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/beauty/face-body/study-claims-plussize-models-may-contribute-to-obesity-epidemic-and-unhealthy-lifestyle-choices/news-story/9742de8fb4ef04633b2a67681bf5d376&gt;.

Chill Out Point, 2009, “OBESITY IS SUICIDE” AD CAMPAGIN, viewed 20 August 2016, <http://www.chilloutpoint.com/art_and_design/the-best-of-ad-campaigns.html&gt;.

Ellis, M. 2016, Put the Smartphone down: social media use and sleep disturbances linked, MNT, viewed 23 August 2016, <http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/305665.php&gt;.

 Greenstreet, S. 2008, Killer at Large, viewed 23 August 2016, <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0903660/&gt;.

Hamid, S. 2010, United Way + AHA Anti-Obesity Campaign, Behance, viewed 20 August 2016, <https://www.behance.net/gallery/United-Way-AHA-Anti-Obesity-Campaign/438465&gt;.

Hochberg, A.T. 2015, Urbanism as a public health issue: Oklahoma City’s battle with obesity, Archinect, viewed 20 August 2016, <http://archinect.com/news/tag/206280/obesity&gt;.

Obesitysoc, 2015, Are You Eating Your Feelings?, viewed 23 August 2016, <http://www.obesitysoc.org.uk/images/Press_2015/Website2015/obesity_poster_eat_your_feelings_2.jpg&gt;.

Roderick, L. 2016, How Coca-Cola, Britvic and Innocent are tackling the sugar issue, Marketing Week, viewed 23 August 2016, <https://www.marketingweek.com/2016/01/27/how-coca-cola-britvic-and-innocent-are-tackling-the-sugar-issue/&gt;.

Stark, S. n.d. Disease trigger, A Stark Reality, viewed 23 August 2016, <http://www.astarkreality.com/2014/10/religious-fasting-can-exacerbate-eating.html&gt;.

Sullivan, R. n.d., Sedentary Lifestyle is a Health Risk, Sci-Unison Fitness, viewed 23 August 2016, <http://www.sci-unisonfitness.com/sedentary-lifestyle-health-risk/&gt;.

 

 

 

 

If you’re holding the gun, who is pressing the trigger?

Post three

By Marie Good

When considering the stakeholders of the issue of obesity and healthy living, you better clear your schedule for the next hour, make a cup of tea and have several large pieces of paper on standby to record all the major participants you can think of. The world of health is the world we live in every day and are unable to simply take a holiday from. As humans it is within us and around us every moment of our lives, which is precisely why everybody and everything we are, plays a part in how it functions in the bigger picture.

During a class exercise recently, I was required to do just that (minus the cup of tea, sadly). With my group we wrote down as many stakeholders as we could and positioned them in line of most important and influential to least. Gaining this overview we uncovered some insightful and surprising positioning within the list. Some stakeholders we had thought would be big players in the issue, when compared to others, were actually less important than those we initially considered less important. For example, economic position was deemed of higher influence than that of social media in its line of influence. This insight lead me to the idea that healthy living may just be a luxury for those with a socio-economic affordability for it, leaving the poorer to become poorer and unhealthier.

Furthering on in class we decided to plot out the relationships and connections between stakeholders which formed an intense web of lines, communicating how complex this issue is and how many influences have other influences via other stakeholders.

On leaving my class I decided to pursue this map and create my own, with particular focus on four crucial areas to draw connection between the groups and view any overlaps in influence. After listing initial stakeholders for the four main groups; emotional, medical, humans and environmental, I decided to pick an important word from each group and link it up with words from alternate groups. This mapping exercise further displays the complexity of the issue. I was interested to see though, how substantial the human and emotional group was in connection and influence with other stakeholders.

During a following class a week later, another mapping exercise was conducted but this time it was not concerning stakeholders only, but any word that could be related or influential to my topic. My group decided to divide our answers into five categories; education, expectation, support, role models and social to address the question of who and how these elements are formed. We also made subcategories listing who would use those words in everyday conversations. From this exercise I drew the conclusion of support being a crucial element to the recovery of a healthy lifestyle, however, not a readily available offering in today’s society.

 

Image archive

These 7 mobile apps will help you find GMO and additive-free foods by Healthy Holistic Living, 2016

This image displays an emergence between the food and produce market and portable technology. It is a representation of how two unlikely elements can be paired through their connecting feature of data to create a further efficient source of information for tracking, keepsake or other personal reasons. Unlike written understandings of this, the picture allows us to see and interpret how the technology is used in the real world.

 

Farmacy by Piraro, 2011

A comic styled image with a humorous and witty catch, this image draws the audience in by utilising their knowledge of generalised pharmacy perception, as a place of medication and healthy influence and highlights the importance of eating healthy regularly in keeping the body in a positive state. The use of humour furthers the audience’s connection with the image, unlike traditional written statements and explanations.

 

5 ways to get fit and healthy by Women of Substance, 2015

A powerful image displaying a female actor kicking a mountain of junk food. The food has been made bigger than her, to symbolise how large the struggle is to rid our lives of such things. Images like the one above plant an idea into the minds of the audience quite quickly and efficiently, without the use of words.

Microbiome by NaturalHealth365, 2016

Unless you’re a doctor or studying the human biome, our internal structures are not something we like or have to think about much. This image almost acts as an infographic or informative insight into our internal gut system and how gut inflammations are caused through our biome. It assists our understanding in guiding our minds creativity towards imagining this as explained in words.

 

How your gut flora prevents you from getting fat and sick by Natural Mentor, 2015

Another powerful image, quite scientific in nature, suggesting humans are predominantly created from DNA and our genetics. This emphasis placed on merging the two highly recognisable forms is effective and easy to understand.

 

Magical ways to control your health and fitness by GagaTrends, 2015

This image is actually used as a feature image for a previous blog post of mine on the same topic, post one. In this blog post I gave an overarching view of obesity and healthy living subjects presented in the Australian press. The reason behind this image choice is because the items presented in the image are associated with our first thoughts of the term healthy living.

 

10 facts about obesity, by eNews channel Africa, 2014

Another image I have used as a feature image displays an overweight child, positioned next to a pizza box and playing video games. This, unfortunately is one of the stereotypes younger generations of people have today when the term ‘gamer’ or ‘overweight’ are used. It’s effective in conveying an emotive and therefore engaging and successful image.

 

Augmented reality fitness games coming to tablets and phones by TechRadar, 2013

The emergence of technology and physical activity has become an idea that seems to be accelerating at speed into shaping the future. This image is an example of augmented reality doing just this and encouraging people to get off their couches while gaming, instead of sitting, as pictured in the image above.

 

Food additives and behaviours by Yummy Tuckers, 2014

The image above displays a quite literal representation of the chemicals and additives being placed into a common household breakfast item. It is effective in doing so as these chemicals are usually hidden quite well (even on the information and ingredient panel) and the general consumer is not consciously recognising they are in what they are eating.

Doesn’t work, does it? by Kevin Prezzi, 2016

It’s no secret that our society is over medicated and under enthused about life in general. This image heavily communicates how reliant humans, as a collective, are on the pharmaceutical market. It suggests we are full yet still consuming medications, toxins and drugs ‘off a silver spoon,’ as the saying goes.

 

Reference list

Augmented reality fitness games coming to tablets and phones, 2013, TechRadar, date viewed 19 August 2016, < http://www.techradar.com/news/mobile-computing/tablets/augmented-reality-fitness-games-coming-to-tablets-and-phones-1188130 >.

Doesn’t work, does it, 2016, Kevin Prezzi, date viewed 20 August 2016, < http://www.kevinpezzi.com/blog/steve-jobs_mel-gibson_cancer_appearance.php >.

Food aditives and behaviours, 2014, Yummy Tuckers, date viewed 20 August 2016, < http://www.yummytuckers.com.au/food-additives-and-behavior/ >.

How your gut flora prevents you from getting fat and sick, 2015, Natural Mentor, date viewed 19 August 2016, < http://naturalmentor.com/how-your-gut-flora-prevents-you-from-getting-fat-and-sick/ >.

Magical ways to control your health and fitness, 2015, GaGaTrends,  date viewed 20 August 2016, < http://www.gagatrends.com/magical-ways-to-control-your-health-and-fitness/ >.

Microbiome, 2016, NaturalHealth365, date viewed 20 August 2016, < http://www.naturalhealth365.com/microbiome-gut-inflammation-1857.html >.

Piraro, D. 2011, ‘Farmacy,’ Bizarro, date viewed 25 August 2015, < http://pioneersettler.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/farmacy.jpg >

These 7 mobile apps will help you find GMO and additive-free foods, 2016, Healthy Holistic Living,  date viewed 22 August 2016, < http://www.healthy-holistic-living.com/these-7-mobile-apps-will-help-you-find-gmo-and-additive-free-foods.html >

5 ways to get healthy, 2015.,  Women of substance, date viewed 22 August 2016, < http://www.womanofstyleandsubstance.com/5-ways-to-get-fit-and-healthy/ >.

10 facts about obesity, 2014, eNews channel Africa, date viewed 21 August 2016, < https://www.enca.com/10-facts-about-obesity >.

Fast food and fast judgement; an interview

Fast food and fast judgement by Epoch Times, 2015

Post five

By Marie Good

Recently I was able to conduct an interview with a class peer of mine who provided me with some interesting insights into the way she views Australia’s health an obesity status. My interviewee is from China and due to this, her knowledge of Australia’s status was based primarily on her relation and experience with an Asian lifestyle. At the end of the interview I was interested in her personal position in regards to her food intake, due to her knowledge and access to a culturally different society than myself.

We firstly discussed her view on Australia’s health and obesity status in general which she considered was quite healthy because of it’s access to organic produce and ability to produce and market it’s own, home-grown food. However, she thought there might be a problem in regards to our junk food saturated market. On pushing this further it was revealed the real reason she developed these views is because of the amount of red meat and fatty, cholesterol contributing processed foods Australia consumes compared Asia. She also touched on the increasing amount of alternate, labelled lifestyles popping up vigorously of modern times such as veganism and vegetarian, continuing to state, ‘for me, I am from Asia and people there like to eat more vegetables, grains and not so much red meat. As a result I think this is reflected in their weight.’

Her answer was very interesting and led me into asking what this statement meant for her stereotype of an unhealthy person, which she responded to as someone who is fat. I consider this quite an interesting take on society’s perception of what it means to be unhealthy. For example, when it comes to matters of the metabolism, which is the major consideration factor for the influence of fat distribution in our human biology, many people think slim people with a lower body mass index (BMI) are at less risk of developing health complications. This is a debatable topic in regards to body types, genetics and our body’s individuality in the matter.

We moved onto the area of what need to be changed in order to alter the way Australia is heading with fast food markets on the rise. My interviewee answered that current fast food companies need to consider making the change to using healthier ingredients. I suggested the idea of healthy fast food chains as an option to which she did not see much success in, commenting that, ‘such a fast change would not be successful, this is why we should try implementing small changes to the system and hope for the best.’

Throughout our discussion it was evident my interviewee’s knowledge of the obesity and healthy living topic was based on her own personal experiences. It made me view each individual as having almost an umbrella of knowledge, mostly only extending towards what they have personally accepted within their life circumstances.

I followed the interview by assigning a research probe activity to my interviewee with the following tasks:

1. Keep a food diary for a day and record what you eat.
2. Draw or write a list of healthy and unhealthy foods and write why you think this way.

The results from this probe task displayed a fairly low calorie yet heavily processed diet, with much noodles and low GI foods, however medium amounts of protein and fats to promote feelings on content and fullness. The list generated for both healthy and unhealthy foods mainly showed my interviewees knowledge of ‘healthy’ as being associated with vitamins and energy production whereas unhealthy was associated with traditional Chinese thoughts, particularly on cold drinks being bad for women, fast food, high amounts of oils and a lack of fresh quality. One area of insight from this probe task was seeing ‘cake’ and rice listed under healthy due to its ability to create energy. This clashes with ideas I hold towards cake and rice, as nutritionally, this energy is sourced from insulin release associated with large amounts of high GI carbohydrates (such as sugar, predominantly). It’s further pondered my thinking into why individuals view healthy lifestyles the way they do, the reasons behind it and the associations they make.

Five key points from both of these exercises to summarise my findings are:

• Australia has a high junk food saturated market with too much heavy meat and not enough vegetables, unlike those of Asian countries
• Most people perceive being unhealthy as someone who is overweight
• In order to change the decline of Australia’s health and obesity status, fast food companies should undertake slow change to become more healthy and responsible towards their part in the problem.
• Individuals have almost an umbrella of knowledge, mostly only extending towards what they have personally accepted or experienced within their life circumstances
• Many people go by what others have told them are healthy and unhealthy foods but don’t go further into why this may be the case or how they have been classified in that way

 

Reference list

Epoch Times, 2015, The Western Diet Is So Unhealthy, It’s Affecting Our Eyes, Epoch Times, date viewed 27 August 2016, <http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/1365599-the-western-diet-is-so-unhealthy-its-affecting-our-eyes/ >.

 Lam, Y., Y. 2016, pers. comm., 16 August.

Augmented reality to the rescue

Augmented reality by Dezeen 2013

Post four

By Marie Good

 

When we see a problem within our community or the lives of others, it’s easy to feel helpless for a moment. We consider the situation, how small we are in comparison to the world and simply turn a blind eye when the realisation is too much and our own micro lives start flooding back into centre stage. It takes a different kind of attitude to evoke change. Firstly, the individual or group must identify a who and how for their why. Over the last few weeks I have been uncovering insights into the injustices and inequities towards healthy living attitudes. In particular I have discovered the emergence of augmented reality and education systems to change worldly perceptions and attitudes towards healthy living.

Augmented reality (AR) is a term created by Professor Tom Caudell in 1990 (Lass 2015) to define a recreation of reality that has been altered with overlaid graphics. Unlike virtual reality, AR stands alone as it utilises real existing environments, allowing the audience to be connected and influenced to it, through the device.

One area AR is proving to be increasingly revolutionary is in the area of healthcare. ARnatomy (Carson 2015) is a term used to describe the emergence of these two sectors. HELPlightning is an ARnatomy concept that does just that. Utilising two screens, HELPlightning connects the camera data from one screen to the camera data of another screen, overlaying the two images and essentially acting like a modern day remote support system.

Present presence by Help lightning 2016

The system involves two users at it’s current development state, one who has a visual problem and a responder who has the knowledge but not access to be physically present to assist in the situation. The creators of HELPlightning, thanks to the statistics provided by the British Journal of Clinical Psychology realised the power of statistics and turned the discovery of nonverbal cues being 430% more effective than verbal cues into a design solution for existing problems.

Present presence by Help lightning 2016

Along with its direct application to healthcare and education, HELPlightning has the capacity to completely replace remote assist technologies such as those used on computer systems currently where authority is given to another party to do a complete system takeover. Potentially it could be used in long distance education, to make customer help lines quicker, and even save lives in remote areas where emergency medical assistance is not available. It works to maximise speed, quality, satisfaction and experience and minimise delay, cost and waste.

 

 

Reference list

Carson, E. 2015, 6 cool uses for augmented reality in healthcare, Tech Republic, date accessed 20 August 2015, < http://www.techrepublic.com/article/6-cool-uses-for-augmented-reality-in-healthcare/ >.

Dezeen, 2013, ikea launches augmented reality catalogue, Dezeen, date accessed 21 August 2016, < http://www.dezeen.com/2013/08/05/ikea-launches-augmented-reality-catalogue/ >.

Help Lightning Inc. 2016, how it works, date accessed 21 August 2016, < https://www.helplightning.com/how-it-works >.

Lass, W. 2015, The future of augmented reality: limitations, possibilities and hopes, Emerging Tech, date accessed 20 August 2016, < http://www.emergingedtech.com/2015/07/future-of-augmented-reality-limitations-possibilities-hopes/ >.

The Active Design Guidelines for healthy living

Blog Post 4. Identifying and collecting a design example

Written by Hyunjoung You

 

While I wrote blog post 2, I could obtain useful information that is related to the association between obesity and food advertising. Blog post 2 gave me opportunity to think how our environment affects our healthy living once again. Therefore, I looked back the issue of obesity and healthy living, and thought what we can do for this issue as a designer. I believed the most effective design for obesity and healthy living is good urban design. Urban design is the closet factor to people today, so urban design might influence public health positively if it is well designed to let people choose healthier choices.

Active Design Guidelines: Promoting Physical Activity and Health in Design

I found ‘The Active Design Guidelines: Promoting Physical Activity and Health in Design’ is introduced by The New York City Departments of Design and Construction (DDC), Health and Mental Hygiene, Transportation (DOT), and City Planning. The Active Design Guidelines (2010) states the problems of obesity and with it type 2 diabetes are getting worse rapidly in New York City. It is caused by population’s over-consumption of calories, which is formed by the built environment in which we live, work, and play. The Guidelines aim to encourage physical activity by providing appropriate design of environment such as promoting stair climbing, walking, bicycling, transit use, active recreation, and healthy eating.

Summer Streets is a program of the NYC Department of Transportation in which designated routes are temporarily closed to motor vehicles and opened to people for walking, bicycling, running, and exercising over multiple weekends. Park Avenue

Research has suggested that greater land use mix is correlated with lower obesity. Partial land use male of New York City, showing the intense mix of land uses in the city.

 

Reference

 

City of New York, 2010, The Active Design Guidelines: Promoting Physical Activity and Health in Design, viewed 18 August 2016, <https://centerforactivedesign.org/dl/guidelines.pdf&gt;

 

Perkins+Will, 2011, ‘A New Design Movement That Can Help Us Beat Obesity’, Fast Co Design, viewed 20 August 2016, <http://www.fastcodesign.com/1663272/a-new-design-movement-that-can-help-us-beat-obesity&gt;

Building my expertise using scholarly secondary sources

Blog post 2. Building my expertise using scholarly secondary sources

Written by Hyunjoung You

Outdoor advertising, obesity, and soda consumption: a cross-sectional study

This study is written by Lesser (Department of Health Policy), Zimmerman (of Health Services) and Cohen (RAND Corporation). They stated that obesity is one of the most intractable health problems, and they described food marketing is a major contributor to cause obesity. They looked at not only the association between outdoor food advertising, the consumption and obesity, but also, difference in obesity rates among socioeconomic, racial and ethnic groups. As a result, they discovered interesting result; living in high SES zip code was mostly protecting from exposure to outdoor food ads regardless of race and ethnicity. Thus, they suggested that reducing the amount of food ads in urban areas. Furthermore, they recommended that

innovative strategies such as warning labels, counter-advertising or a tax on obesogenic advertising should be tested as possible public health interventions for reducing the prevalence of obesity.

I think that a tax on obesogenic advertising is better way than sugar tax. I believe that it is more reasonable and effective solution to consumers and companies.

Restricting marketing to children: Consensus on policy interventions to address obesity

This journal is written by Raine (Centre for Health Promotion Studies), Lobstein (International Association for the Study of Obesity), Landon (National Heart Forum) and et al. They points out the seriousness of childhood obesity,

“500,000 children are obese, and child and youth overweight/obesity rates in 2007 – 2009 were double than those of 1981.”

They note that the causes of obesity are multifactorial, but they highlight unhealthy diet and inadequate physical activity as major obesity determinants. Therefore, policies should make environments that help healthy choices easier and create chance to accomplish healthy weights.

They study the political environment, issues, evidence and challenges of placing prohibitions on marketing of unhealthy foods and beverages. Moreover, they suggest:

 

• A Canadian (federal) government-led national regulatory system prohibiting all commercial marketing of foods and beverages to children under 18 years of age, with exceptions for ‘approved public health campaigns promoting healthy diets’.
• That regulators set minimum standards, assure monitoring of compliance, and impose penalties for non-compliance.

Recommendations for standards specific to surveillance, monitoring, and enforcement of compliance:

• Creation of an independent body responsible for monitoring compliance, investigating consumer complaints, advocating healthier media influence, and working with industry for compliance.
• Regular and determined enforcement with clear penalties for non-compliance.

I do agree with this journal. I believe environment should make people to choose healthier choices easier, and it is the most important for public health. In addition, I think that children would lead world in the future, so helping them to live healthy lifestyle is one of our duties. Children are too young to control by themselves properly, so junk food or sugary drinks advertising should restrict to them.

 

Reference

Lesser, L.I., Zimmerman, F.J. & Cohen, A.D. 2013, ‘Outdoor advertising, obesity, and soda consumption: a cross-sectional study’, BMC Public Health, viewed 11 August 2016, <https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2458-13-20&gt;

Raine, K, Lobstein, T., Landon, J., Kent, M.P., Pellerin, S., Caulfield, T., Finegood, D., Mongeau, L., Neary, N. & Spence, J.C. 2013. ‘Restricting marketing to children: Consensus on policy interventions to address obesity’, Journal of Public Health Policy, vol. 34, no. 2, pp. 239-253, viewed 13 August 2016, <http://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/jphp.2013.9&gt;

Obese, unbalanced and addicted to technology

What actually is healthy living? (Ahmed 2012)

Post one by Marie Good

I decided to focus my research on the topic of obesity and healthy living. I currently work in the health food industry and have always had an interest in healthy living and the consequences our ways of living have on the body and broader areas such as our social settings. To begin with I focused my research on secondary sources such as online newspaper; decided also that instead of isolating one particular area of healthy living and obesity, I would tackle a range of topics under this umbrella and work on analysing them at my current knowledge level.

The first article researched, ‘Tim Spector and the genetic epidemiologists view of nutrition and health,’ (Parnell 2016) was written by well-known health editor, Sean Parnell, for The Australian in May of 2016. This article covers opinions related to the increased amount of nutrition information readily available to the public, yet the paralleled confusion and therefore rejection of this information in response. Parnell argues this may be due to the corruption of big player food corporations funding advertising campaigns in deceptive ways to constitute and encourage their share growth in our competitive food market. His inclusion of research conducted by reputable sources, such as the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, the Australian Bureau of Statistics and Professor of genetic epidemiology, Tim Spector, assists the audience to believe his article is scientifically factual to a degree, however from those facts he creates arguments and conclusions of his own presumptions. The article refers quite heavily to Professor Spector and almost seems to entice the reader to purchase his latest book, making us think that his new information can broaden and assist our understanding of topics deeper than the basics, such as the role of microbiome in gut related functions. He goes as far to say this is the type of education that needs to be spread in schools. I do agree with some of the arguments proposed yet disagree with the use of one dominant source for information.

The second article (Williams 2016) by Tim Williams, chief executor of the Committee for Sydney, prominent United Kingdom political commentator and writer for the Sydney Morning Herald, discusses the restriction of walkable spaces in Sydney and blames this for the increase of obesity. Based mostly on opinion with little reference to research sources except two, Christopher Leinberg (land use strategist, developer and researcher) and SmartGrowth America (advocacy coalition for sustainable working and living communities), he argues that the price of real-estate developments and the demand for market share is downsizing the walkability of cities and creating what we know as city sprawl. He correlates a connection between economic and educational wealth of cities and their ability to retain walkable spaces, saying access to employment through transport costs offsets accommodation costs and that in order to increase walking in cities there needs to be a drop in real estate prices. He argues that those who live in expensive urban places can and will afford to walk or cycle for convenience of distance on their daily commute and are already of a higher socioeconomic status than those outside the city, who are forced to use transport as a way of access, thus widening the gap between socioeconomic status’ in Australia further. There is a lot of speculation in this article however William draws some interesting ideas about socioeconomic classes and the affordability of health and fitness.

Vanessa Brown, a Bachelor of Media graduate, Macquarie Radio and Nine Network producer, reports for News.com.au, on obesity as an issue more prominent in English-speaking, third world countries regardless of the diet from other areas, such as France, that are known for their craft of fine cheese, wine and chocolate making (Brown 2016). She uses statistics collected by The Lancet, a UK medical journal, who have compared BMI increases over the last forty years between countries, to fuel her opinions and also heavily publicise the text, ‘French Women Don’t Get Fat,’ by Mireille Guiliano. It almost reads like a book advertisement because of this heavy reference. She does conclude, like in Parnell’s article, that a revised healthy living curriculum needs to be placed into the early childhood education system to change the future of healthy living and place a pause on this trend.

The fourth article (Robinson 2016) analysed is actually written by a practicing Australian general practitioner, Ann Robinson, who does not use speculation and bias in her article but states proven findings in regards to the way modern living can unbalance microbiome in the digestive system. Robinson starts out with sharing her knowledge of what microbiome are and how they protect us from disease, as well as other unwanted conditions, including mood swings, metabolic speed and the immune system. She also refers to Professor Tim Spector in regards to this potentially being the cause of weight gain in some while not in others partaking on the same diet. She uses her own practical knowledge and remains quite unbiased towards the topic. The article is very informative and states what is known to be true while also stating areas that are needing further investigations while providing rough time expectations for that. No bias seems to be presented here and is an informative article of value.

Posted in The Guardian by Jorge Armanet and supported by IBM Watson Health, is the first article I have discovered in support of the latest portable phone application craze, Pokemon Go (Armanet 2016). It covers the idea that gamers, a portion of society known previously for their couch potato nature, are now swapping their slippers for joggers and hitting the pavement to play the game. Armanet refers to previous applications such as, Couch to 5k and NHS Weight Loss, who are seeing people take to their forum rooms about how successful Pokemon Go has been at getting them off the couch and moving. I agree with the fact that it is encouraging physical activity to some degree, yet feel that it is also negatively impacting society on a mental level, with a lack of personal connection becoming a broader issue due to technological intervention. I agree with Armanet as he goes on to say the technology presented in Pokemon Go is a prime example of greater things to come in using technology for societal and personal health/development matters instead of making us lazy, unhealthy and unhappy; which appears to be the trend of current technological interaction within our daily lives.

Through the analysis of these five articles and areas of insight they have uncovered, I would like to research more into the ideas presented by Professor Tim Spector in regards to the influence and interactions of modern daily lifestyles towards our gut health and microbiome. I would also like to explore opinions regarding the emergence of traditionally unhealthy technology systems or augmented reality being altered through collaboration to change our way of interacting with healthy living attitudes and habits. Another area I am interested in exploring is the influence the cost of living has in the gap between sociology economic classes such as the convenience of access, through price and location of health food and healthy living activities.

Reference list

Ahmed, B. 2012, unknown image, gagatrends.com, viewed 15 August 2016, < http://www.gagatrends.com/magical-ways-to-control-your-health-and-fitness/ >.

Armanet, J. 2016, ‘Could Pokemon Go improve people’s health?’, The Gaurdian, 27 July, date viewed 2 August 2016, < https://www.theguardian.com/healthcare-network/2016/jul/27/pokemon-go-improve-health-walking &gt;.

Brown, V. 2016, ‘Study shows that while the world gets fat, the French are staying thin’, News.com.au,  1st April, date viewed 31 July 2016, < http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/health/health-problems/study-shows-that-while-the-world-gets-fat-the-french-are-staying-slim/news-story/7a17371ac2e10127e06b270f40684bcf >.

Parnell, S. 2016, ‘Tim Spector and the genetic epidemiologists view of nutrition and health’, The Australian, 13 May, date viewed 1 August 2016, < http://www.theaustralian.com.au/life/health-wellbeing/tim-spector-and-the-genetic-epidemiologists-view-of-nutrition-and-health/news-story/a1bbedc041669732f72d617f7a67475f >.

Robinson, A. 2016, ‘Is your gut making you sick?’, The Guardian, 1 August, date viewed 2 August, < https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/aug/01/is-your-gut-making-you-sick >.

Williams, T. 2016, ‘Sprawling Sydney makes it hard to walk and it’s bad for our health’, Sydney Morning Herald, < http://www.smh.com.au/comment/its-hard-to-walk-around-in-sydney-and-it-is-making-us-fat-20160721-gqahdl.html >.