Food Monster
A dietary recording app embedded with a gamification system to help children eat healthier.
Project Type
Individual School Work
DESINV 290
Studio Foundations
My Role
UI design
User research
Illustration
Tools
Figma
Adobe llustrator
Adobe Photoshop
Duration
2 weeks for research
2 weeks for ideation
4 weeks for design and iteration
Instuctor
June Chang
Floor Van De Velde
BACKGROUND
01 What's the
Problem?
Children’s dietary problem is non-negligible nowadays. According to the National Diet and Nutrition Survey:
92%
of children consume more saturated fat than is recommended
86%
of children consume too much sugar
72%
of children consume consume too much salt
96%
of children do not get enough fruit and vegetables
Children's dietary health, in particular childhood obesity, is widely recognized as one of the most pressing public health problems. So the design challenge will be:
How to improve children’s eating habits and help them eat healthily to meet nutrient balance targets?
RESEARCH
01 Secondary
Research
Understand Stakeholders
Kid’s current catering pattern includes different stakeholders. Elementary school or daycare center provides lunch and snacks for children and parents actively provide breakfast and dinner as their main diet.
Competitive Analysis
In order to find the possible solution and the room for further strategic development, I looked into the current applications that help kids eat healthier.
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All of the target users of those applications are adults. Although these apps can help to improve children’s diet habits, none of them really includes the kids in the service system and give them specific consideration.
Parents can use those tools to track and document the ingredient information of what kids ate, while kids can’t actively participate but passively being told what they should eat by their guardians. Children have different behavior patterns and their emotional needs aren’t satisfied by current products. Based on this outcome, I assumed:
Children need more specific consideration to get motivated on a healthy diet
02 Primary
Research
To better understand parents’ pain points and the reason why kids don’t tend to eat healthily, I conducted a survey for parents whose kids are within 5-12years old to gain more insights. 68 surveys are sent and 64 valid questionnaires were collected.
“
To what extent do you think you know what your kids have been eating in school?
A. Completely know
B. Probably know
C. barely know
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“
How did you know your kids’ eating habits in school?
A. Directly ask their kids
B. Text or e-mail teacher to know more
C. Check kid’s eating records in a shared platform
“
To what extent do you think your kids have enough motivation to eat healthier?
A. Fully motivated
B. Have some motivation but still needs supervision
C. Barely have the motivation
“
If your kids don’t have enough motivation to have a balanced diet, what do you think might be?
A. The rebellious mindset towards parents’ demands
B. Eating healthy is not a funny experience
C. Don’t get enough reward
From the result of the survey, I have two findings:
03 Findings
01
Parents: Lack of understanding of children's diet at school and needs a more effective information sharing system with the school.
02
Kids: Lack of self-motivation and need a more interesting eating experience and gain rewards.
Based on the two findings, I reframed the design challenge as:
how might we design a diet information sharing system between parents and school to help kids eat healthier and at the same time give kids more motivation to stick to good eating habits?
WHAT I DID
01 Gamification
Children’s emotional needs were ignored during the good habit cultivation process. A game system will make cultivating healthy eating habits a sociable and playful experience for children. Kids are no longer exclusive of the system but gain more self-motivation to have a balanced diet.
The diet data collected by parents and schools become the nourishment of the little monsters that kids raised and these monster friends will evolve if kids eat healthily and meet the nutrient balance goal. By combining external supervision and internal motivation, kids can grow up with their monster friends more healthily.
Mechanism of the game system:
02 Final Design
LittleFoodMonster - a mobile application to motivate primary school kids to cultivate healthy eating habits by introducing a shared diet documenting system between parents and school and the role development gamification system.
Feature One
Today's meal record
Feature Two
Add eating records
Feature Three
Eating summary & rewards
Grow up with monster friends
Feature Four
03 Visual System
To be more kids-friendly, I used colorful illustrations and icons to attract their attention and utilized dark green as the main color to create a healthy and welcoming vibe for this project.
Color Palette
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Typography
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Icons
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Illustrations
* The food monster characters are all from the web game "Roco Kingdom"
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