TANGIBLE HEALTH
Bachelor project: Veggie

Philips commissioned this design case about healthy eating. Although many consumers are aware of their unhealthy eating habits, changing it, is extremely hard. Therefore Philips’s question to the students was: develop an application/product, which helps a specific consumer group to increase their vegetable intake. I choose to focus on children from 4 – 8, because only 33% of 4 – 8 years old eats enough vegetables per day.

By working close together with children, parents and teachers, I designed ‘Veggie the Caterpillar’, an interactive product combined with courses that stimulates the supply of vegetables during the lunch break.

Individual Project Bachelor 2.1 – CMD 

In collaboration with: Philips Research – Jettie Hoonhout

Children, parents & teachers at Basisschool de Mariëngaarde – Gorinchem

My key learning points:  Designing for children; The dutch education system; User-centered design processes and approaches (scenario’s; persona’s; user interviews); Tangible learnig; Theories about learning; User evaluation and analysis with children; Ideation/prototyping through sketches and 3d models; Managing stakeholders and mapping values.

Throughout the process children, teachers and parents were closely involved. I started emphatizing with my users through school visits, interviews and a cultural probe. Children and parents shared their eating experiences and habits through multiple fun activities. The insights were used in the next phase, where I conducted several brainstorm sessions and sketch sessions to develop a concept that would motivate my users to eat more vegetables during lunch time.

Veggie the caterpillar is a caterpillar that changes into a butterfly at the end of a school period. This butterfly has the colours of the vegetables that are connected to Veggie in this period. The children connect vegetable boxes when they eat this vegetable. Therefore children will be motivated themselves to bring varied vegetables to school and learn ‘healthy eating’ in a fun way. By connecting the vegetable boxes of the caterpillar they come to life on the ‘smart board’. These vegetables will teach children about their origin, development and possibilities to prepare them in an interactive, fun way. Parents are connected to school activities with an application, for instance parents can be inspired by lunch recipes for specific vegetables (suggested by the child, because Veggie needs it).

The prototype was tested with children from: basisschool de Mariëngaarde at Gorinchem. Children played with Veggie, while learning more about the vegetables they were eating during their lunchbreak. They for example learned about their origin, development and possibilities to prepare them in an interactive, fun way.