Project Proposal: This project aims to design and implement an interactive application which promotes healthy eating practises at home. We will use a human-centred design approach, alongside human-computer interaction techniques to create a software product which will fulfil our requirements (Roccetti, Prandi, Mirri, Salomoni, 2020).
Web and mobile applications for supporting self-care and health concerns have become increasingly popular for children; there were more than 325,000 mobile health apps in 2017 (Peng, He, Cutrona, Kiefe, Liu, Wang, 2020). Supporting this, smartphone ownership has grown substantially over the past four years among all ages, increasing from 24% of all 8- to 12-year-olds in 2015 to 41% today, and from 67% to 84% among 13- to 18-year-olds (Rideout, Robb, 2019: p5). However, their application toward health promotion, especially for children, has shown limited results of improvement. The effectiveness of such apps are mixed in different areas, as self-monitoring of dietary intake via a mobile app helped most (n = 87, 74%) participants watch their diets, but considerably fewer (n = 20, 17%) participants reported that the app prompted discussions with family about food and/or exercise (Quelly, Norris, DiPietro, 2015).
An estimated 150 million children worldwide currently live with obesity, and this number is projected to increase to 254 million by 2030 (Yau, Tang, Görges, Pinkney, Kim, Kalia, Amed, 2021). A recent UK study found 21% of adults and children ate takeaway meals at home once per week or more. In conjunction, more than 35% of US citizens reported consuming two or more fast food meals per week (Janssen, Davies, Richardson, Stevenson, 2017: p16). Children are mostly unaware of the impacts healthy diets have on cognitive functions, growth mechanics, body protection systems, and weight (Hart, Bishop, Truby, 2002). Undernourished children also exhibit impaired development and decreased functional capacity. Children who do not receive adequate nutrition and psychosocial stimulation are likely to underperform in school and to have poor levels of cognition and education, which are linked to low-income earnings later in life (Roberts, Tolar-Peterson, Reynolds, Wall, Reeder, Mendez, 2022). The price and cooking time is also exacerbated, as this study found home-assembled meals are potentially a better option than takeaway meals, as they are 15–48% cheaper, have similar preparation/waiting time, and can provide a healthy meal if pre-prepared ingredients lower in saturated fat and Na are chosen (Mackay, Vandevijvere, Xie, Lee, Swinburn, 2017).
Many journalistic nutrition mobile apps have already begun to combat childhood obesity, such as this study showing apps with the highest number of BCTs included were Kurbo (n = 12), iBitz (Schoeppe, Alley, Rebar, Hayman, Bray, Lippevelde, Gnam, Bachert, Direito, Vandelanotte, 2017). Some mobile games supporting this idea are Pick Your Plate, Toca Boca JR, and CookingMama, which focus on healthy food exposure and fun gameplay to engage children.
The interactive application I will deliver will primarily focus on showing children how they can make healthier food substitutions within their daily lives. This will be done by developing a fully interactive 3D mobile game that will use gamified techniques, like rewards and narrative, to improve educated learning on this topic to children aged 7-12.
This is a very passionate subject for me, as I believe child obesity is a global systemic issue that cannot be solved through a normalised tracking application, but instead with a tailored interactive experience that is fun and engaging throughout. I also personally want to enhance my 3D game development skills to hopefully one day end up working in the industry full-time.
Refrences: Roccetti, M., Prandi, C., Mirri, S. & Salomoni, P. (2020) ‘Designing human-centric software artifacts with future users: a case study’, Springer Nature Link
Peng, C., He, M., Cutro