Background Research

Our team was allocated a challenge topic, ‘Design for Truth’. At the beginning of the project, we interpreted the ‘truth’ as ‘to increase transparency within our society by providing valuable information and creating trust between each other’.

In order to design the truth safely for the good of our society, we focused on the food industry. As Jessica Fanzo, a professor John Hopskins University, mentioned, foods are one the most impactful factors to us. In fact, poor diets account for 1 in 5 death in the world. Particularly, although 95% of shoppers seek healthy foods, 72% say it is just too difficult to find the best foods during buying them. So our main concern was how to deliver correct information of food.

Problem Definition

We picked up three possible users including Marco who has diabetes type II, and created Marco's customer journey during buying foods at a supermarket and analyse his problems. In addition, we analysed stakeholders related to the food industry in the UK and how can they connect to patients like Marco.

Finally we defined the problem as the following. Patients with food related diseases, such as diabetes, are reliant on the right diet and cannot eat certain ingredients, which can affect their health. However, marketing can deliver misleading information to consumers, which can have negative impacts on their health.

Design Proposition

Nutrified is a platform to manage health condition of patients who have food-related disease and give them accurate nutrition information. This make plans based on patients' medical information from hospital. So at first it could be suggested at the hospital. It suggests and notifies his personal plan including meal, exercise and taking medicine anytime. While their shopping, it reveals the nutrition information (including visualised details) of food products by scanning such products through an AR function of smart phones. At the time, the standard labelled by NHS certification can distinguish whether foods are suitable to the patients. If foods are dangerous to them, the app will alert to tell them.

Impact

This platform can help not only patients to avoid harmful foods and improve their daily habits but also people who are not yet diagnosed with any disease to prevent early onset of food-related diseases. Moreover it can impact on other stakeholders. For NHS and hospitals, it can reduce cost of diabetes and other food-related diseases and also provide credible food information relevant to certain diseases. For food industry such as supermarkets and food companies, it can collaborate across the food system and improve people's diet.

It also has further potentials. For example, it can expand to other food-related disease. It can also provide affordable and accessible mobile stores authorised by NHS.