TPD4121 Design 3 – Fall 2021
Figma, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe InDesign
The aim of this course was to create a digital solution to assist a selected target group to fight obesity. While researching the topic, we found that preventing obesity is more effective than simply treating it. With the goal of starting preventative measures at an early age, we decided to focus on children.
A poor diet and lack of exercise is the leading cause of obesity. While children’s diet is mostly dependent on parents, we saw an opportunity to increase activity in children without having to involve parents to a great extent.
During this project, I worked with research, concept development, and testing.
Process and idea generation
When starting this project, the first step was to research the topic. Based on the secondary research conducted, we chose the user group children. We then conducted interviews with children, teachers, parents, and previously overweight people to get a deeper understanding on how to solve our problem.
I interviewed two people working in a kindergarten as sports and health professionals. Some of the key findings was it was essential for the children to master activities. Children are often aware if they are behind others regarding for example motor skills. When that is the case, they often get discouraged. To avoid this, activities should be easy to understand and not require a lot of physical skill.
Another finding was that it is often harder to convince parents than children when trying to change dietary habits. The interview object experienced that the children often ate what they were served, however, parents were reluctant to change. Using information from the interviews, we developed an affinity diagram to systemize our findings and choose a focus point.
Based on the issues that we found most prevalent from the interviews, we focused on three problem statements. Under each statement we formulated questions beginning with “how might we”. This made it easier to focus on solutions to the different issues. After describing different solutions, we chose our main idea based on the imagined effort and impact.
We made an affinity diagram based on the information we gathered from interviews. The diagram helped us systemize the information to get a better picture of issues regarding children diet and activity.
From our problem statements we formulated different questions starting with "how might we". Writing down the problems as a question to solve rather than a statement helped us to focus on solutions to the issues
We placed the different solution on a graph based on the effort required and the imagined effect. We chose to combine two of our ideas for the main concept. Our solution was to create an app that suggested different activities where the children also received a visual prize for being active.
Developing and testing the solution
Our solution was Agora, an app that brings children together to engage in activities and earn prizes as they go. When developing the app, we used the MoSCoW-method to determent what functions to include and started wireframing to visualize how to navigate through the application. When we tested the app (using only wireframes) in class, some of our fellow students pointed out that one of our buttons did not have a function anymore.
After working further with the content and functions of the app and developing a Figma prototype, we did a user test with the target group, children between seven and ten years old. During the testing we found out that the children didn´t know the digital clock. Their teacher explained that they were learning it and thought that including both the digital and analog clock could help the children learn it while they were playing.
Key takeaways
One eye-opener from this project, was that when working closely with a project, a whole team can overlook a simple mistake, that seams completely obvious to the user trying it for the first time. When we changed some of the functions in our application, one button became useless. However, we had included it in every iteration from the start, and didn´t realize that it was no longer needed.
When testing with the target group we discovered that we had to include an analog clock for the children to understand. Using a digital clock was a natural choice for us from the beginning, and we didn´t consider that children in elementary school might not understand it. These situations both emphasized the importance of user testing throughout the process.
The solution
Agora is an application aimed at children in elementary school, living in urban areas. The goal is to bring children together to do activities in their free time.
Their account is connected to Feide, and they can access the activities at the school ground where they meet up.
After doing an activity, they earn points to collect visual prizes. Check out the application in the video.