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This is a semester long project and
the theme for this semester is "Overcoming Adversity". "Adversity"
can be thought of in a number of ways, ranging from poverty, to
homelessness, physical or mental disability or ailment, to bias,
inequality, loss, etc. We chose to address the issue of obesity as
in the last 30 years, the prevalence of obesity in the United States
has skyrocketed. This disease, which was once mostly limited to
adults, is now increasingly common among children. With it, come
severe consequences for those afflicted, which include diabetes,
stroke, and heart disease. If this issue is not addressed
immediately, our current generation of children can be the first to
have a shorter lifespan than their parents.
We have chosen to focus our efforts towards
children, as we believe that the best way to
fight obesity is by going directly to the root of the problem - the
lifestyle habits that
people pick up at a young age. We want to teach children the proper
methods for taking
care of their bodies from the start. Our project is geared toward
both normal and
overweight children, since similar methods can be used for treatment
as well as prevention.
We have received considerable help in the
form of expert guidance from CNN and Cartoon Network. A discussion
session with Dr. Sanjay Gupta (Chief Medical Correspondent for the
health and medical unit, CNN) helped us in getting a very good
insight into the different aspects of our problem space.
The project has been divided into 4 phases -
- Understanding the Problem
- Design Alternatives
- System Prototype and Evaluation plan
- Evaluation
Understanding the problem:
The key goal of this first substantive part
of the project is to deeply understand the problem space that we are
addressing, its set of pertinent users, and the issues and
constraints that are involved in the problem.
(Read
the complete document with citations)
Design Alternatives:
The objective this phase of the project is
to use the knowledge gained in the previous phase to develop a set
of diverse design alternatives that explores the potential design
space for the problem. |
