Design Challenge
How might time-constrained college students correctly evaluate the importance of breakfast and consume it regularly, so that they can be more productive and focused throughout the day?
Context
It is a common phenomenon that university students are skipping meals due to different reasons. Some of them have a busy schedule, some of them can not afford the expensive food option around campus, etc. As a college student, I deeply empathize the situation they are facing. In order to objectively understand the situation, I conducted multiple research on campus.
Nutritionists believes that a healthy diet can help students focus on study by supplying enough energy. From the literature review, I found out that majority of the students are skipping meals, especially breakfast. Also as the survey points out that over half of the sampled college students do not consume breakfast. Therefore, I decided to focus my research and efforts into a subset of this general population, specifically college students who are skipping breakfast.
Research
Literature Review
Skipping meals is no longer a choice but routine:
Neural scientists point out that constantly skipping meals might set the decision-making part of the brain to sleep mode, which skipping meals is no longer a choice the students make but a part of their daily routine.
(Castillo, 2019), (Buxton, 2014), (Pendergast, 2016)
Survey
I designed a survey regarding university student eating habits.
Majority of the surveys show that college students don’t pay much attention on breakfast. They believe that breakfast is not necessary for their daily caloric intake. Many of them simply just get up late or choose to not to eat breakfast to save money and time.
Contextual Inquiry
Besides literature review and survey, I decided to practice contextual inquiry to allow myself to comprehend the situation thoroughly in person. It has allowed me to confirm on my prior research and get to learn about university student eating habit in a personal level.
Observation:
Around 7pm, Annie is starving because she didn’t eat a proper meal for the whole day except some snacks in the morning during breaks in class.
She is hungry and craving for boiling point. Also she wants to try the tempura add on to the pot. She drove to boiling point near by.
Insight:
Time Constraint: The fact that she did not eat for a whole day shows that she has a busy schedule and she most likely did not have time for eating.
No Breakfast: She did not consume breakfast in the morning because she wanted couple more minutes of sleep. She doesn’t think that breakfast is necessary and important to her. As a result, she was starving at dinner time.
Research Insights
College students tend to skip breakfast due to their lack of attention on breakfast. Most of them do not know why they need breakfast. Majority of them choose to not consume breakfast because they do not evaluate breakfast as one of the most important meals of the day. Further more, without knowing the importance of breakfast, it is hard for them to motivate themselves to consume breakfast, let alone accomplishing a behavior change.
Ideation
Quick bite to grab
App help with preparing meals
Premade meals
On campus convenient food
“Amazon go” style of stores on campus
Breakfast alarm
Food storage place on campus/classroom
Education about the consequences of not eating food
…
Sketches
Among the ideas, many shared similar elements. I selected the key concepts from different ideas and bring them into many storyboards. With the help of story boarding, I was able to explore the pros and cons of each design by walking through the imaginary experience.
Approach
Ultimately, I decided to pursue the breakfast alarm idea because the concept of designing a experience that is customized to the college students and aimed to encourage a healthy diet was more attentive and comprehensive than other ideas.
the benefit and the importance of breakfast:
As college students tend to skip breakfast due to their lack of attention on breakfast, I created this application with the intention of letting the college students realize the benefit and the importance of breakfast in their daily life.
a visual clock of breakfast energy:
Besides helping college students to eat healthy breakfast on time, most importantly, the app(EGGE) shows the user a visual clock of the amount of energy the breakfast provided, in terms of time that can keep the user feel energized. It serves as a reminder and notify the users of their health status.
paper prototype
Wireframe
Design
An alarm that remind the user to have breakfast on time.
A personal information page
The users can explore their breakfast choices according to their tastes.
It tracks and visualizes the amount of energy breakfast provided in terms of time.
A calendar view of planned breakfast.
Takeaway
Know the root of the problem: Why is it a problem? What is exactly causing the problem.
Habits: Changing a “bad” habits such as not consuming breakfast does not only require an app, but a designed experience that help the user to pick up the “good” habit.
Be creative: Always find creative and interesting way to interact with the audience. Just like bouldering, what is the next step in the application that is attracting the user to grab on to.
Next steps
Further research on the user’s interaction: How people actually use it. Would this application help people with behavior changes.
A re-design of interaction: make the notification function more engaging for the users.
Potential food service that users can order, so they don’t have to prepare the food themselves in the morning
Thanks for reading!