Veggie-table
From my previous definition of interactivity, I decided that interactivity not only meant actual interaction, but also included the understanding of how a machine works and what its purpose is, as well as leaving the interaction with something being learned. That means a successful interactive project for me would have to be one that addresses a problem the user may have, and attempt to fix it.
The issue I try to tackle in this project comes from people’s diets, and the lack of vegetables or other healthy foods in some people’s daily food intake. The target audience would be people roaming around in grocery stores, buying their groceries. As some people walk by the vegetables section, they would not bat an eye, but my project would aim to draw people into the vegetable section, and encourage them to buy more vegetables.
The way that my project would work requires simple sensors from arduino, and visuals from processing. A person would walk through the vegetable isle and see a screen with a bunch of different vegetables laid in front of it. The screen would say “Pick one up and see what happens” and a sensor would sense when the if a certain vegetable is picked up. On the screen would display the vegetable’s nutrition facts, as will as a bar that would be filled up as the customer would pick up more and more vegetables. If the customer picks up a sufficient amount of vegetables, the screen would say “Congratulations! You now have a balanced diet!”
What my project basically aims to do is to give information about health and encourage better choices to be made in an interactive and aesthetically pleasing way. The way that most people find out about nutrition in grocery stores nowadays is by looking at the nutritional facts label at the back of the food packaging. Other than being boring and tedious to read, some people might not even know what those nutrients are good for, or what the recommended amount daily nutrients should be. Instead of reading the back of the food label, my project will display the health benefits or drawbacks of a vegetable or an unhealthy food on the screen, while encouraging the person buy more healthy foods rather than unhealthy foods. In order to make the project impact the audience, I plan to use live facial tracking on processing to place the persons head on top of a body. If the person gets more healthy foods, the body will get more fit, and more and more health benefits of eating well will be displayed, whereas the opposite would happen if the person would pick up more unhealthy foods.
I plan to brainstorm visual ideas and sketch out the project until the 27th, and then spend until December 4th creating the processing visuals, and then combining it with arduino sensors with the different foods until the 7th, and lastly go through final testing and last minute changes before showing the final product.
From what I’ve researched, there does not seem to be any physical form of my project idea, but there are only interactive websites which can visually display the health benefits and drawbacks of foods in a visually pleasing way for children. I feel like because I plan to make my project large and physical, as well as targeting older audiences rather than younger ones with harsher and more personal imagery, the impact my project will have on one’s diet will be greater than the simple online healthy food games that I’ve found.