Context
Danone Research and OLPC France collaborated on the development of a software educational game about nutrition. This collaboration took the form of hiring an intern Danone Research co-supervised by Danone Research and OLPC France. The course ran for six months from April to October 2011. The intern was Stefanie Nobel, engineering student at the ETH. Danone Research Supervision was directed by Jean-Michel Antoine, Director Nutrition Expert at Danone Research. The frame was made by OLPC France Lionel Laski, president of the OLPC France.
The internship report is available here . Functional and technical presentation of the activity and took place in September 2011 during the SugarCamp # 2 hosted by OLPC France, the video is available here . Finally, the sources of the application are available here .
The Center Daniel Carasso of Danone
Objectives
The objectives of the program were:
- Enable children to understand the importance of nutrition on their health without using the theoretical concepts of nutrition (food category, calories, ...)
- Want to give to children vary their diet and discover new tastes, taking pleasure in developing recipes and share them with their peers,
- Allow Danone and other members of the scientific information gathering anonymous food to better understand dietary patterns of children in different countries.
Classroom in Nosy Komba
Software Guidelines
The principles of the software had been raised during a workshop led by Olivier Maurel Danone Communities in February 2010 in L'Atelier BNP. The proceedings of this workshop is available here .
The principle adopted for the game is to live a virtual avatar representing the child. The health status of the avatar is represented by the value of different gauges. The child can prepare recipes and feed the avatar to improve the value of the gauges. The child can also perform various physical activities at his avatar to decrease the value of the gauges. By optimizing the best absorption of nutrients and practice activities, the child may actually materialize and the importance of nutrition on the health of her avatar, and thus itself.
The diagram below describes the core elements of the software produced.
The following sections detail these.
The food base
For this program it is necessary to have the nutritional values of different foods that will be used by the child. Specifically we have chosen to use the decomposition of each food in 22 essential components: water, total energy, protein, fat, sugar, Calcium, Iron, Magnesium, ... Each value is fixed for 100g of product.
These values must be available for raw foods (eg tomato), for processed foods (eg tomato puree) and processed foods because they contain additional additives (including sugar or salt) added at the factory .
As described below, these values will be filled by an administrator of the software, however, the values of bases are provided in the software. These values are derived from the database of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (detail here ) that contains over 7000 foods and we have taken part in the software.
The basis of activities
Activities are the different physical activities it is possible to carry out his avatar. These are sports, travel, games ... These activities lead to a tired child and therefore consumption of nutrients. For simplicity, we therefore considered that an activity could be represented by the set of values of the components which leads to the expenditure (a kind of "food as a negative"). We calculated these values for 1 minute for each activity and we have included in the software.
On the same principle, we consider that the disease is a specific activity that will result in more expense than normal.
The engine
The heart of the software consists of an engine that represents the effects of the diet. The objective of this engine is both to provide a realistic representation of the mechanisms of digestion and absorption and spending of nutrients, while providing an algorithm simple enough to be integrated into a computer game.
Specifically the engine based on the food base and the base of operations to calculate the intake and expenditure of nutrients and enhance the status of various gauges of the avatar. The engine also relies for this on a table of daily values of the various nutrients necessary for a child s.
It should be noted however, that the engine required some simplifications. For the energy expended in an effort such as this can come either carbohydrates or lipids. We spend 100% of the sugar when making an intensive sport and not normal, against 40% sugar and 60% fat when you do a little sport intensive routine. To simplify this specific example, the engine now considered an expense and therefore not a normal spending of sugar.
Achieving revenue
One goal of the game is to raise revenue. This comes in the game in two steps:
- selections of food ingredients the recipe,
- completion of the recipe by preparing and mixing the food.
For reasons of time, only the food selection was developed in the game today, this selection is to choose on different displays (fruits and vegetables, meat, dairy and other products) ingredients. Specifically, we select a booth and then click on the image of the chosen food or using the text search engine to find it. Finally, choose the desired amount in grams or number of "portions" of which we estimate the weight for each food. All foods selected are added to a list to be used for the preparation of the recipe.
The realization of the recipe is to combine food using utensils and different method of preparation (cutting, cooking, ...). Each step is automatically recorded on the recipe book to be shared.
The setting
From one country to another, there are a variety of ways to eat. Since its conception, the game was expected to reflect this diversity. It takes the form of setting options of the game at different levels.
Primarily through food. The food base supplied as standard and can easily be adapted to provide only specific foods to the country where the game will be deployed. The composition of food in their elementary constituents can also be modified to take account of local varieties or environmental factors modifying their absorption. The interface of choice of food can also be configured so that the food visible primarily on the stands are the most common foods in the country.
Finally, just as food, the basis of available activities (games, sports, ...) is configurable as well as the expense of nutrients they cause to reflect such climatic conditions in which they are used.
Traceability
To allow the collection of information on dietary patterns of children, each share of the game is drawn. And food intake by the avatar and the achievement of physical activities are recorded in a log file detailing the composition of elements come into play
Although this is not the case in the current version of the game, the goal is to centralize and provide this information for the purpose of dietary survey. One can imagine such measure the composition of one or more meals a set of children for several days or weeks.
Demonstration
The video below dessousprésente a sequence of full utilization of the game At first we chose its food (here's Beef, pasta, cheese, yogurt, peaches and a glass of water), they consume what increases the counters of the avatar.
http://www.dailymotion.com/videoxma66e
Then performs an activity (here presented for 1 h) which causes the decrease of the counters.
Conclusion
The game has been achieved, even if only as a prototype, we used to validate the concepts we were trying to demonstrate:
- It is possible to represent and understand the concepts of nutrition on health in a fun way. With a configurable engine based on a food base and a base of activities, with some simplifications can represent the digestion, absorption and spending of nutrients by the body.
- It is possible to trace food and children's expenses to consider an anonymous collection or a food survey.
We have not had time to stage the pleasure of discovering new tastes and sharing by implementing the functions for creating recipe. The first model that we designed for these features, however, let us think that it is quite feasible.
Result will be to turn this prototype into a full realization of both functionally and in design and ergonomics to make it attractive to children.
