- Interviewing
- Data synthesis and design implication
generation
- Interaction design
- Interface design
- Multimedia design and production
Process
Rather than focusing on people who diet for a set period of
time to lose weight, we focused on people who were interested
in maintaining a healthy diet consistently. Additionally,
we focused on college students who traditionally don’t
have the time or energy to ensure that their diet contains
all the nutrients essential to a healthy lifestyle.
Based on initial user research, we developed
a set of design implications for the agent:
- Context-aware
- Mobile
- Not intrusive
- Informative but not annoying
- Adjust to flexible schedules
- Ability to learn
We decided to focus on an agent that would
help students make healthy eating decisions. Our agent, FoodBuff,
is contained in an object that most college students already
wear: a wristwatch. When in a restaurant or grocery store,
Food Buff automatically actives. This is made possible by
the GPS receiver contained in the watch.
If in a grocery store, FoodBuff displays
the relative nutritional value of the closest item in proximity.
This is made possible by RFID tags that are on each item in
a grocery store. We feel that with the dropping price of RFID
tags, it will not be long until such a scenario is possible.
An item’s nutritional value is represented
by a color ranging from green to red, with green being extremely
nutritious and red lacking any nutritional value. This color
is displayed on the face of the watch. We feel that this represents
an important aspect of the interaction of FoodBuff; students
can easily see the nutritious value of a product but are not
forced into paying attention if they don’t want to.
In this way, we are adhering to our earlier design implications
of avoiding an intrusive interaction as well as providing
information but not being annoying.
Food Buff also includes an OLED roll-out
screen that contains further information about the product
closest to the watch. In our RFID-enabled grocery store scenario,
we believe that shopping carts will keep track of which items
have been placed into a shopper’s cart. This information
can then be sent to FoodBuff and used to help the shopper
make informed decisions. For example, FoodBuff will know if
certain vitamins or nutrients aren't being accounted for in
the items currently in the cart and can recommend products
accordingly.
A demonstrational video was created to
showcase the interaction between FoodBuff and a likely user.
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