Soupa Munch is an app concept and board game designed to help students eat healthier. The concept originally began as a board game, but later developed into an app - in order to be more accessible.
The final outcomes can be seen below as large images, while the process can be seen in the slideshow at the bottom of the page.
SOUPA MUNCH - THE APP
SOUPA MUNCH - THE GAME
Soupa Munch - Process
Reflective Statement
In this project, we decided to tackle the issue of unhealthy eating for students. We were drawn to this choice as it’s a constant problem for our peer group to eat well on tight student budgets. We also were keen to undertake the research for the project ourselves, in order to find out why students eat so unhealthily.
Our observations were the kitchen cupboards of all our team members, fast food restaurants menus, and asking friends over social media what they ate regularly. These gave us strong evidence that most students are eating unhealthily due to convenience and budget, however we found that it is possible to eat healthily in some fast food restaurants, perhaps suggesting that the issue was lack on information. We looked at some online sources to inform us about calories and also what’s inside the bad foods we eat each day. Calorie counting website were really helpful as they helped to give information on exactly how many calories are in almost any food. We documented our observations in notebooks and electronically in a shared folder. The researched pushed us in a direction to educate our players about what they’re eating.
There were some hiccups with our prototyping stage, we had planned to create an app to inform people about food near CSM, however testing digital apps is quite complex and difficult. We overcame this by making a participatory version of the app, which served as further research. We found that there are many different reasons why people eat how they do, which made our decision to focus educating about the food as a result.
I think the game was successful as it provided an educational game, which was engaging and fun. Our feedback from the game was positive and generally people learnt something new when playing which is a great pro. In a similar problematic design situation, I would focus more on one idea earlier as it gives more time to really test and improve the product, so it’s of a higher standard. As with anything, I think our presentation could have been stronger, with more preparation and more time, as a result I felt I was a bit rushed too. I think also having multiple speakers can be distracting especially when some people aren’t good speakers. I found that our group worked well together as we were quick to identify are strengths and weaknesses in the group which allowed us all to work to the best of our abilities. I think however it can be difficult to completely reject ideas of people you don’t know very well, regardless of whether they are good or not – this can lead to a weaker product.
The lectures were interesting and provided good contextual information about the subject, I particularly enjoyed listening to Lorraine as it was really helped to understand what the purpose of a serious game or playful learning tool really is.
nhs.uk. (2018). Calorie checker. [online] Available at: https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/healthy-weight/calorie-checker/ [Accessed 18 Oct. 2018].
Zimmerman, S. (2018). Defining Games. [ebook] Available at: https://gamifique.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/1-rules-of-play-game-design-fundamentals.pdf [Accessed 25 Oct. 2018].
Markussen, T. and Knutz, E. (2017) “Playful Participation in Social Games”, Conjunctions. Transdisciplinary Journal of Cultural Participation, 4(1). doi: 10.7146/tjcp.v4i1.97728.
Arrasvuori, Juha & Boberg, Marion & Korhonen, Hannu. (2010). Understanding playfulness: An overview of the revised playful experience (PLEX) framework. Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Design and Emotion.