NutriPlay
NutriPlay is an educational toy for children, designed to gamify the grocery shopping experience while increasing awareness and encouraging conversation to inform healthy food choices. It is an attachment for a shopping cart, equipped with a barcode scanner and a compartment containing a toy reward. During a grocery shopping trip, a child has the opportunity to scan items. A successful scan of a ’healthy’ item is rewarded with a green light along a progress bar, while scanning an ‘unhealthy’ item triggers flashing red. Once the progress bar is filled (with 10 unique items), a door on the box opens to reveal a prize reward (puzzle pieces that can be assembled into a balanced meal.)
Under the hood: Each time an item is scanned, a raspberry pi sends the barcode wirelessly via a router to a remote server (my computer) which then queries a local database, compares parameters (sugar, fat, sodium, etc.) and transmits a signal back to the pi to drive light patterns on a neopixel strip. In this prototype, the motorized hatch (Arduino-driven servo motor) is stand-alone. The puzzle pieces for the prize were 3D-printed. All of these components are housed inside a laser-cut plywood box, which sits on a shopping cart.
This project was a collaboration with my teammates Kiran Delneuville, Michelle Kim, and Sally Tran, as a project for NWMEDIA C203: Critical Making with Prof. Eric Paulos in Spring 2018. For this project, I worked on prototyping the LED and electronics housing, and was in charge of designing and implementing all of the electronics and wireless communication. I am extremely grateful to all of the Citris Invention lab staff, especially KJ Wu, who patiently and tirelessly helped troubleshoot every step of the way.
Reflection:
For me, this project was a unique technical challenge. I had been curious about Raspberry Pis for a while, so used this project as an excuse to take the plunge when we had problems connecting a barcode scanner with an Arduino Uno with an Adafruit Wifi Breakout board - I learned much more than I bargained for! In addition to overcoming the software/electronics challenge, I learned a lot about making intentional design choices - what types of light patterns would make sense in a game setting, what layout of lights, frosting acrylic to diffuse light, having an opaque door on the prize compartment to value the element of surprise. As a team, we went through several iterations of ideas before settling on our final design and splitting up tasks. Sally valiantly led the design of the plywood box, and we worked collaboratively to integrate all the pieces. Michelle designed the 3D-printed puzzle prize, so we had communicate to ensure their fitting in the compartment.
On an intellectual level, this project was designed to provoke conversation about nutrition. During the class critique, we discussed who should set the standards and threshold for ‘healthy’ or ‘not healthy.’ Of course, our prototype vastly simplifies nutrition by casting foods into 2 categories. Nutrition guidelines are constantly changing, as research in the field is constantly evolving (and unfortunately fueled by giants in the food industry), so the idea of ‘healthy’ and ‘unhealthy’ isn’t at all clearcut. Ultimately, I believe the decision should be based on sound scientific research, and guidelines should arise from a conversation between health care providers and parents - NutriPlay has a role more as a point of conversation and starting point to form healthy habits from an early age; it is not meant as a prescriptive tool for characterizing food. Ultimately, we would need do more research to develop a more nuanced model of nutritive values of food. Regardless, increasing conversation and awareness about healthy eating habits from an early age is beneficial.
