Panasonic: Healthier Children
As part as the MHCI Capstone Project my team —Popbox— and I worked with Panasonic to explore how technology can help engage children in healthier long-term behaviors. By encouraging active play and healthy choices, we hope to combat the childhood obesity epidemic.
8-month-long exploratory User-Centered Design process conducing to a high-fidelity prototype for a healthcare solution for Panasonic R&D, as part of the Capstone Course for CMU Mastert in HCI
CAROLINE RECORD – Project Lead
MONTSE LOBOS – Design Lead
NIKHIL POPAT– Research Lead
BARATH JAWAHAR– UX Lead
LINUS CHANG – Teach Lead
Exploratory user research,Heuristic Evaluation, Contextual Inquiry, Affinity Diagrams, Competitive Analysis, Personas, Adapting methods for children, Prototyping, User Testing, Illustration, Animation, and, most importantly: Teamwork!
Intro
As part as the MHCI Capstone Project my team —Popbox— and I worked with Panasonic to explore how technology can help engage children in healthier long-term behaviors. By encouraging active play and healthy choices, we hope to combat the childhood obesity epidemic.
OUR CLIENT
Panasonic is a multinational consumer electronics organization headquartered in Japan. While known as a consumer electronics giant, Panasonic is also involved in many other enterprises. The company recently developed technology to aid senior citizens. Now, Panasonic wishes to develop similar technologies to promote the well-being of other populations.
OUR GOAL
To understand the set of pressures and constraints that contribute to childhood obesity and engage children in healthier behaviors.
PROJECT TIMELINE
Research Phase
Our human-centered research process took place over the span of three months and involved both Domain Research & Field Research. This allowed us:
- To take advantage of the years of cumulative knowledge generated by academics and nutrition, fitness, and medical experts
- To get a first-hand understanding of the day-to-day negotiation that occurs between parents and children when pursuing and maintaining healthy lifestyle choices.
Our domain research suggested that engaging children in healthier behaviors is far more successful when a child’s caretakers are involved.
Synthesis
Iterative Design Process
After conducting our domain and field research, we synthesized the data obtained and conducted ideation workshops to create design visions. After validating these visions with different stakeholders and our industry sponsor we consolidated our 3 visions into one and started our iterative design process.
Over the span of 6 weeks we went though four iterations of prototypes of increasing fidelity, doing user-testing and expert validation at each iteration.
Ideation
We generated over 70 high-level concepts and validated them through speed dating before starting iterating on the design.
We got our creative juices flowing and sketched over 75 ideas. We collaborated to refine and consolidate those ideas into vision storyboards. We built small paper prototypes and enacted use-case situations. We ran workshops at a local art center for children to start candid conversations with them and gather insight on their attitudes towards health and food. We validated our storyboards and refined key interactions. We tested our concept early on using speed dating to assess initial users reactions. After validating our visions we refined our product scope and identified our minimum viable product. We used several techniques to build the most appropriate prototype to answer our research questions. We presented the results of our research and initial ideas to our client and conducted a moderated visioning session with him. In the photo: Jean-Claude Junqua and Team Popbox playing Ideation Poker. Jean-Claude Junqua and Team Popbox evaluating some of the initial visions.
OUR VALIDATION METHODS
Designing interactive systems for children is a challenging and highly rewarding experience. We wanted children to feel comfortable enough to speak with us candidly during research and testing sessions. So, we tweaked existing research methods and created some new ones to obtain valuable feedback from our target population:
STICKER SORT
We asked children to pick their favorite characters from a randomly assorted stack of stickers we created as a conversation starter. As a child chose a particular sticker, facilitators then conversed with them about their choice.
PUPPET THEATER
We asked children to create characters of out of everyday vegetables and then stage a play using these characters. The activity encouraged children to speak candidly about food, activity, and common food-related characters.
FUN SURVEYS
We created child-friendly surveys designed to gauge children’s perception of the age and gender of various cartoon characters we were interested in including in our prototype.
WIZARD OF OZ
This is a technique in which a particular aspect of the prototype is ‘faked’ by a facilitator or separate piece of technology. In each case, the participant is unaware of the simulation and believes the prototype to be fully functional
EXPERT REVIEWS
Members of our team conducted expert reviews of two leading activity trackers, the Nike Fuelband and Fitbit Flex. By wearing these devices, team members were able to familiarize themselves with common wearable interactions
EXPERT INTERVIEWS
We spoked with experts ranging from game design specialists to medical professionals to inform each stage of our iterative design process. These conversations helped us to critically assess our product’s value proposition and long-term viability.
SPEED DATING
Speed Dating is a user-research method in which participants are shown multiple design ideas in quick succession. Researchers then observe participants’ emotional response to each idea.
TASK ANALYSIS
We identified critical tasks a user needed to accomplish to successfully interact with our prototypes. We evaluated the usability of our products by observing whether users were able to sucessfully accomplish these tasks.
USER TESTING
We used think alouds to gather insight on children's attitudes and reactions towards activity trackers, our system characters and the overall concept of collecting activity points.
We found stickers to be a more engaging adaptation of card sorting to use with children. We used stickers with various characters on them to initiate conversations with children about their selections.
We tested children's engagement levels with activity trackers using a 'wizard of oz' testing method.
We used a wireless speaker to simulate instant auditory feedback with one of our prototype
We asked children to evaluate our prototypes by completing a friendly survey.
Giving children the freedom to be spontaneous was key to obtaining valuable feedback.
Some parts of this project are proprietary so I cannot show them here, but I’m happy to discuss the design process in more depth. Please contact me!