Mindful Bites
Designing for a conscious cat feeding experience to prevent cat obesity
8 months // 2017
Individual
My Role:
Field Research
Journey Mapping
Persona Creation
Conceptualisation
Prototyping
User Testing
Collaboration:
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MINDFUL BITES is a research-through design project to tackle one of the biggest health problems in cat companions, obesity. Caregivers harm their animals with good intentions, by overfeeding. Why do people overfeed their animals and how we can change it? To answer this question, I explored feeding experience from multiple perspectives i.e. behavior, practice, and interaction. The final design concept, MINDFUL BITES, aims to create a conscious feeding experience to prevent obesity in cat companions.
Behaviour Change for Animal Welfare
UX Research
UX Design
Interaction Design
Mindful Bites
Mindful Bites is a package of products facilitating a conscious cat feeding experience in multiple ways. By focusing on both emotional and practical aspects of the overfeeding behaviour, MINDFUL BITES aims to prevent cat obesity in the long term.
Challenge
Obesity is a serious health condition that is sneakily increasing among cat companions. Contrary to popular belief, only a kg of extra weight is enough to put a cat into the high risk of serious health diseases such as diabetes, high blood pressure and heart attacks. Overfeeding is one of the most significant causes of cat obesity. Caregivers are the main food providers of their cats, who decide on the type, the portion size and the frequency of the food. Yet, so far the practical measures to stop cat obesity overlooked the human actions and their drivers. Why caregivers overfeed their cats? What are the behavioural drivers of overfeeding? How to create awareness on weight management to prevent overfeeding?
Project
The project is conducted in the scope of masters graduation project. The topic was self defined based on my personal interest. I adopted the design through research approach. The outcome of the project is based on great detail of research activites in the context of human cat relationship and cat feeding practice. It was a complex topic covering multiple disiclinary views. As an interaction designer I reframed the challenge as a behaviour problem. My interest was on the meanings associated with feeding practice and the emotion-driven concerns of overfeeding behaviour. The final product, MINDFUL BITES is an intervention for positive behaviour change in caregivers feeding habits.
Mindful Meals
‘Mindful Meals’ is a hand-feeding tool which facilitates an intimate and interactive meal feeding experience. By transfering the emotional appraisals -mostly vivid in treat giving- to meal feeding activity, Mindful Meals aims to create an emotionally fulfilling meal feeding experience. As a result the caregiver feel less urge to give extra snacks.
Mindful Treats
‘Mindful Treats’ is a treat box consisting of portioned treats with hidden messages inside. It aims to facilitate reflection in the moment of treat giving. By selecting a portion out of four categories- Attract, Appreciate, Compensate, Give in- the caregiver confronts with the emotional purposes of treating. The messages give tips on weight management, thus introduce weight related concerns to treat feeding.
Mindful Strokes
‘Mindful Strokes’ is a booklet to engage caregivers in regular body check-up of their cat. The booklet consists of two sections. The section 'Why?' explains the need of regular
body assessment through a story. This helps the caregiver to envision the potential overweight problem. The section 'How?' guides the user through the basic steps of the method in a comprehensible way.
Lack of Vision
Overfeeding is a behaviour issue that needs to be changed. Based on my research, I created the Overfeeding Behaviour Cycle. Each step depicts a certain stage of the weight management process with regards to caregivers attitudes. I primarly focused on the stage 2, when the caregivers have no vision on weight management therefore take no precautions against overweight.
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Caregivers have three distinct cat feeding styles. My target group consists of caregivers with indulgent feeding style, like Anna (persona). For Anna, providing satisfaction and happiness is the main driver of the feeding activity. She is not concerned with weight management until overweight becomes a severe health risk.
Indulgent Feeding Style
Storyboard?
How does overweight develop? Click to see the full storyboard of Anna & Mia.
Optimal happiness is more important than optimal weight.
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Emotional Purposes of Treats
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Treats are junk food and a serious risk for overweight. Yet they have an emotional function in the relationship of a cat and caregiver. When certain emotions are triggered, the caregiver feel the urge to treat the cat. I identified 4 main types of emotion based purposes.
Meals vs Treats
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Caregivers experience meal and treat (snack) feeding differently. Compared to treat feeding, meal are considered to be less interactive and less intimate therefore less fulfilling. Caregivers tend to give treats mostly in order to revive the emotional meanings of feeding activity.
Do you have any questions or do you want to know more? Contact me!
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+31 0651657854
This video shows the test footage of the Mindful Meals. As is shown in the movie, all participants confirmed that the hand feeding tool achieved its pupose of creating intimate interactions in meal feeding experience.
Testing Mindful Meals
Details?
Check my thesis to see the details of full concept evaluation.