3rd year of competition

48 entries - 15 selected to CHI - 4 teams invited to final

Problem: Designa service for personal monitoring of diet, exercise and health for individuals.

Judges: Kori Inkpen, Wendy March, Kenton O'Hara, Jaime Sanchesz, Gilbert Cockton

Criteria:
- Brief
- Aptness
- Wow factor
- Rationale and persuasiveness
- Process
- Economics

Fitster: Social Fitness Information Visualization
Noor Ali-Hasan, Diana Gavales, Andrew Peterson, Matthew Raw
University of Michigan, USA

Problem Addressed: Design a solution to motivate busy people to exercise.

4 week qualitative research study with 6 graduate students asking them to use a blog to log their step counts.

Final Product: Low fidelity paper prototype. They asked the participants to come back and review their low fidelity paper prototype.

Findings:
- Busy people exercise informally
- People recast activities as exercise (e.g., using the stairs, etc.)
- Casual exercise is hard to track, but a pedometer helped them track how much they were walking.
- Comparison with peers are difficult

Design
- Created a web application to help participants look at their fitness activity in relation to their other friends. They can see how far across Michigan they can walk.

Future Directions - Want to work with high risk populations
- Develop live prototype
- Design iterations based on changing user needs

Questions

1. [Indiana University] Did you find that logging on to a website was a barrier as opposed to having something with them all the time.

We did not have them log in in our prototype system. Our pedometers have USB, so input would be easier. Logging in might be a barrier bute it would be willin

2. [EBay] Orientation of the bars - can you comment on why you used vertical and horizontal? Why did you use that design?

In the vertical - it is more like a weekly view. We wanted it to have it horizontal to show time.

3. [Georgia Tech] Are you just looking at step count? Are you looking at elliptical system versus running?

For this project, it is just step count. It does not know if you are running or walking. We talked to Dr. Richardson about, but the numerical count is an early building block.

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Fitster: Social Fitness Information Visualization
Noor Ali-Hasan, Diana Gavales, Andrew Peterson, Matthew Raw
University of Michigan, USA

Questions

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NutraStick: Portable Diet Assistant
Barry Diarmuid Mulrooney, Mairead Ann McDermott, Nick Justin Earley
IADT Institute of Art, Design, and Technology, Ireland

How it works:
Person scans barcodes on food items
Puts it into their computer (USB port)
Computer program allows you to choose your diet
Then you bring the nutristick program with you when you shop. When you scan an item, if it turns red, it is not good to eat. If it turns green, it is fine to eat.

Design Process:
- Concet design development, user profile questionnaire, case study (low fidelity mockup), and interviews.

Technology Used:
- Barcode scanner with mobile phone
- Barcode Database (How will you find a freely available barcode and nutrition database?)

Questions

1. [AMES] What is your users understanding of the application of how the lights correspond to someone.

You just scan it and all the information is on the barcode.

[What if person is asking why is it yes?]

You can just read the ingredients.

[I was just wondering if there would be more studies needed to look into this]

2. Yes/No (green light/red light) got me because it is very limited in terms of dietary planning. I am wondering if you looked into how a yes/no provides input to train people? It just tells people what they cannot have instead of giving them information.

We could use animations that show people more information.

[Did you explore non-packaged food items?]

Obviously there will things you cannot scan. THis would only be for items with barcodes.

3. [Carnegie Melon] People are not willing to read labels, but have allergies. Who is the responsiblity to make sure the barcodes are affilited with nutritional information.

In Europe

4. [Georgia Tech] How do you deal with a parent with two childrens with different dietary needs.

You can customize it.

You would need different nutristicks for each dietary problem.

[You designed this for the vision impaired with different beeps. How will they find the barcodes.]

If you are completely blind, you would not be able to do it.

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Chick Clique: Persuasive Technology to Motivate Teenage Girls to Exercise
Tammy Toscos, Anne Marie Faber, Shunying An, Mona Praful Gandhi
Indiana University, USA

A cell phone application to let teenage girls increase their activity.

Focused on teenage girls because they become increasingly inactive as they get older and are more likely to use

unhealthy weight control methods.

Video of teens - Why don't they exercise:
- T.V.
- Don't have time
- It won't happen to me, I won't become obese

Design Process:
- Field Interviews with teenage girls
- Spoke with dietitians - better to focus activity

Idea:
- Cellphone application (pervasive)
- Leverages the power of friendships (persuasive)
- Competition

Overall view
- Teen enters step count into mobile phone
- SMS Messages sent to friends in clique
- Group can view step counts of everyone

Design Process
- Low fidelity prototype
- High fidelity PDA prototype

Study
- 2 user groups: high school girl group and middle school group
- PDA prototype used, manual step count input needed

Results
- More steps with Chick Clique than with pedometer alone

Take Home Point
- Chick Clique is a simple solution that is fun and motivating. It fits seemlessly into their lifestyle.
- Increases their internal awareness
- Future work: Longitudinal study

Questions

1. [Georgia Tech] Emphasis on increasing exercise. SHould you also consider times to not increase their exercise -

especially with their body issues.

We did think of this a lot. If you see something going off on a tanget, your friend could intervene. We will be

looking for it when we do our longitudinal study.

[Watch out for them all picking up the habit.]

2. [U. of Michigan] How do you see girls picking this up since it requires some monetary with the pedometer and cell

phones.

We designed this application to desing on many cell phones. Many already have cell phones. SO it would be a matter

of getting them an application. My pedometer was $5 at target.

[Many girls do not notice these issues. How would you motivate them to use this technology.]

MOst important thing is that we are using the social aspect. Once one uses it, we are depending on them all to pick

up and want to use it.

3. [Intel Research/U. of Washington] Are you redesigning [the

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Reflecting on Health: A System for Students to Monitor Diety and Exercise
Brandon Brown, Marshini Chetty, Andrea Grimes, Ellie Harmon
Georgia Institute of Technology, USA

Application to help students not gain weight during their first 12 weeks of school.

4 Main Design Requirements
1. Flexible
2. Mobile
3. Inexpensive
4. Unobtrusive

System Concept
1. Snaps a picture of her food with her cell phone (photographic food journal)
2. Logs in with her cell phone number onto her cardio machine
3. Reflection - she can go home and see what she has eaten and the amount she worked out from a website

Diary Study
1. Diary Study for 5 days with 11 students (7 cell phone and 3 paper diary)
2. Student reflection on pictures during diary study brought up interesting studies "I cannot believe I at that on

that day"

Cognitive Walkthrough with 4 HCI graduate students

People liked seeing pictures of their food, but wanted a way to review it.

Use phone number to log into exercise machine.

There is a weekly view.

Future work
- Actual implementation of design
- Expanding the population: beyond college students
- Image recognition and machine learning
- Exploring the phone and gym application

Questions

1. [University of Glasgow] It seems very burdening of the user. Often people do not know if this is actually good

for me. This does not help them know if it is good for me. The person still has to look at the calories.

We were really focused on the people who want a general awareness of what they are eating. It will only help with a

high level of detail.

2. [CMU] Some research shows the best way to show activity through house cleaning, etc.

We only tested the food journaling component. We are not sure if they would take photos of the chore exercises.

One person

3. You draw strength from qualititative information. I was curious why you would include calorie count. It does not

seem like it is the primary goal? How can you handle exercise along side actually seeing what they are eating.

In our prototype, we show exercise with activities.

We had a spectrum of users. THey just wanted the pictures. But some people wanted an average calorie content. If

they are interested in annotating the calories, it is only those who are motivated.

4. [Michigan] Yours requires active data entry - type the cell phone number, take pictures, etc. How do you sustain

this in the long run? People usually do it for 6-8 weeks and then fall off.

People seem to like the activities of taking pictures especially when considered typing in something. Compared to

existing systems where you have to input a number of different screens. This is more lightweight.

I think also one of the things that came out during our initial interviews that this activity of journaling was

important to being aware.

Judges Comments

Comments on each of the work.

- Judge 1:

Next years students - concentrate less on the groups you know. You relaly know your audience, but it is not as

challenging.

Take a view of outside your home country or outside your group of people you are intimiately acquainted with.

Fitster - Get rid of that logo. They did not include nutrition, but really did the fitness well. The race against

Michigan was very exciting.

Needed more information about iteration.

NutriStick - You were really using a personal set of knowledge about a different group. You thought of various

groups and those with

Maybe a bit simplistic.

Chick Clique - You showed the people you talked to. THat was very powerful. You had a good variety of techniques.

Of course not technically stunning, it is simple and useful.

Fotofit - A sense of reflection is very interesting and awareness was great. I think the gym stuff is a weirdness -

it seemed out there. There is some questions about annotation. Powerful idea.

Gilbert Cochton: I'm known as a mongrol. So my perspective is very commercial - technical feasibility. I focused on

the impact - how aft they are with respect to the brief. How they developed towards a proposal and how they refined

it. Aptness - want to see delight, commercial viability, primarily I'm looking for ability for each design for

appropriation. I prefer designs that are open as opposed to the ones that are closed.

I'm very impressed with the 15 that made it.

Fitster - Took a narrow development of the brief. I'm looking at a balance of being adventerous and not too

adventruous. I like the Michigan game - could be a Harry Potter fictional world or anything with download sites with

maps. Brief good at tracking what people were doing. Development process - upfront very strong. The design work was

good - but they did not take the design as far as they could. THey are 80% of the way there.

Nutristick - Imaginative handling of the brief. The yes/no thing - if the food isn't wrong it is right - and that is

difficult. More consideration needed to the whole life cycle. But the presentation was good and got better than the

brief. I have concerns of technical feasibility - whether the final architecture will fit together. They are 3/4 of

the way there. I like that they engaged with the technical and legal professionals. They have a narrow, but strong

design that could go somewhere.

Chick Clique - The video shows the impact is already there. This is the evidence we are looking for. These are

hygene factors. They shoudl be there. IT is already delivering. It is an open design that can be appropriated. It

allows for people to care and like each other. It is a broad interface with people that I found strong. The

development process is thorough. This one is almost there. My reservations is on the economica costs, but from my

perspective is the final business model that I have some concerns.

Fotofit - We saw evidence of impact - but not usability. But this is where we are seeing designs work with impact.

It was strong with designs in appropriations. Again they looked at some aspects of technical feasibility. What they

have done is good, but they have not taken it as far as two of the other teams. It is fairly close, but becasue of

the technologies they are using, it is almost there.

What is encouraging, they are not held up on features.

Judge 3: Presentations made me change my mind in ordering.

Fitster: They did interesting user research with the blogs. Interesting to see how this fed into the visualization.

The social connections visually done was interesting.

NutriStick: It was very narrow, but it was a relevant problem. Less convinced with the use of this. But allergies

could use this. Design was intuitive. Very elegant. You can see the USB infrastructure being usable. But the use of

databases is questionable.

ChickClique: Usercentered design process is very high quality. Did good interviews and found interesting things. It

was difficult for teenage girls.I liked the use of SMS and mobile phones - good for adoption - does not require new

types of Intrastructure. Paper prototyping - evaluation of the end. They did a whole range of interesting things,

especially with the qualitative data.

FotoFit: Good use of user centered design techniques. Interesting user research. I like the lightweight capture.

Cory:

Fitster - Interesting, feasible, lot of really user centered design work. You did such user centered design work - I

didn't see it in the design.

NutriStick - I would probably buy this product. In terms of cool factor - I really liked it.User centered design

process ad hoc and could have been better thought out. There will be some design issues.

Chick Clique - You really know your population well. You focused on a population and know them well. Your design,

although simple, satisfies the needs of those girls. I think you raised a lot of interesting ideas. WHen I think

about it, I don't remember what your final design. I love the name.

FotoFit - When I first saw your project, I was not enthused about taking photos of my food. But you convinced me.

But it is a lot deeper than what I perceived. I like the ability to tag certain items.

Judge 5: I am in computer science.

Fitster - The interface is clearly specified without overburdening.

Chick Clique - Nice solution. Social factors could have an issue

FotoFit - Sound solution. Special machines for exercise could be prohibitive.

RESULTS - Gift certificate prizes for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd.

1st - Chick Clique - Indiana University
2nd - FotoFit - Georgia Tech
3rd - Fitster - University of Michigan
4th - NutraStick - IADT Institute of Art, Design, and Technology, Ireland

Group	Judge 1	Judge 2	Judge 3	Judge 4	Judge 5	Total
Fitster	80	84	80	85	84	413
NutraStick	93	82	78	87	72	412
Chick Clique	93	89	82	91	96	451
FotoFit	89	90	79	90	88	436