Gamified Diet

NutriShark – A Behaviour-Driven Approach to Mindful Eating Through Virtual Avatars

By Yuchen Liu

Supervisor: Dr. Katherine Gillieson

Overview

This thesis explores the application of interaction and character design principles to facilitate behaviour change towards healthier eating habits among young adults in an enjoyable way. The research question centres around how interaction design can assist in motivating and maintaining a healthier diet. To answer this, the project follows a series of exploratory plans, research, and design iterations aimed at virtual avatar-centred solutions, with a goal to establish a long-term, effective strategy for dietary behaviour change, combining playful engagement with practical tracking methods.

The primary approach of this design is the use of gamification, which is centred on the concept of playfulness. The app NutriShark provides the user with a chance to care for a virtual avatar whose well-being is essentially influenced by their own dietary choices. This establishes an emotional bond between the user and the character, encouraging users to see their food choices as part of a broader self-care practice. This thesis addresses the gap in health design by integrating emotional engagement with behaviour change strategies, offering a more sustainable alternative to traditional data-driven diet tracking. By prioritizing playful interaction and intrinsic motivation, it challenges conventional methods that rely on external enforcement. The app transforms the process of food tracking into a more enjoyable and rewarding experience with visualized progress and interactive feedback.

Beyond Health. Beyond Food

It began with a public health concern about diet, but over time, I have identified additional factors contributing to the widespread lack of healthy food intake. Simply paying attention to what constitutes a healthy diet—even without immediate action—necessitates behaviour change, which, to some extent, is a psychological process.

Despite continuous advancements in health-recording technology and calorie tracking, these innovations have not significantly improved overall public health. While ensuring the efficient dissemination of scientific data is crucial, addressing the issue at its core requires a strong emphasis on awareness in both educational and motivational contexts. This is the focus of my study—exploring people’s perceptions, attitudes, and mindfulness toward healthy eating. It is by its nature, a strategy of advertisement: influencing people to believe in, appreciate, and ultimately adopt healthier dietary habits.

For the design process, I followed the key insights from Agile Design (Gothelf & Seiden, 2017), prioritizing user feedback and involvement throughout the design process. The approach helps designers to create products that truly meet the users’ needs and expectations. In my case, I sketched out my initial wireframes and kept adding elements and refining the concept during conversations with the participants, until they were wrapped up in final designs.

Physical product design exploration. Inspired by Tamagotchi.

Accompanying the app, the device is supposed to serve mainly as a “Cue” in the CREATE behavioural model. Because of its portable, fashionable, and easy interaction(only a few buttons), it is designed to be carried with the user, in pockets or on bags, like a visual reminder of eating healthily.

Analysis and Reflection

Critical reflection

1. Selection of Participants

The current study, even without a direct definition in the primary research proposal, is mainly searching for solutions that associate with young adults(19-35). I would consider this as an initial approach towards healthy eating combined with gamification. If in the next iterations the age range expands, the existing model would need more research with real participants and visual study to satisfy the needs of the users.

2. Nature of the Current Primary Research

Because of the number and the limitation of demographic of the participants in both the survey and the interview, the primary research plays a role that is more for the ideation purpose, rather than scientific facts and theories. It helped me significantly to gather meaningful design ideas and put them into the final prototype.

3. Research Progress

During the research I have access to various research methods. However as my research moves forward, the concept also expands and refines itself. I always felt the need to structure my process to be logical and reasonable, to ensure it is “correct”. 

Eventually, the mindset somehow delayed my progress, and contradicted the idea of agile design. Examining the steps, I found it easier and more efficient to build an initial model first, and then invite human participants to generate feedback. By doing so, I am able to solicit more meaningful and comprehensive insights from the interviewees.

4. Potential User Testing

The user testing/usability test of the app was not officially documented and lacks research ethic application at the current stage. However, to further validate the effectiveness of the approach and proceed with modification, multiple rounds of user testing and analysis are required in the future.

Future Direction and Possibility

1. Animated Interaction

With the current character design being polished, various artistic media can be used, such as 2D/3D animation, Live 2D, comics, etc.

2. AI Language model implementation

Personalized Conversation driven by AI Language models at this stage is a concept with mock-up interfaces. To further implement the function to practice, future testing and research can be planned.