Design for healthy eating: engaging children to understand food practices

Design for behaviour change is concerned with how design can influence people’s behaviour to address the challenges our society faces. It requires better understanding of the users, their context and particularly, the factors that affect behaviour (Tang, 2010; Zachrisson and Boks, 2012). The discipline of User Centred Design (UCD) offers numerous methods to gather this type of insight from adult participants, but little is known about effective data collection with children. This paper presents a review of UCD methods and assesses their potential to provide designers with useful insights into children's eating attitudes and behaviours to promote healthy eating. This paper begins with an investigation of the determinants of children’s healthy eating from a range of disciplines including economics, psychology, and sociology. Methods for user centred design for sustainable behaviour (Zachrisson and Boks, 2015) which could be used to uncover children’s eating behaviours, practices and beliefs are evaluated. Conclusions are drawn as to their suitability for the data collection with children for design for healthy eating. The findings of this review will inform the development of design interventions to promote healthy eating by children’s age and stage of development as part of the Downsizing project funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) and the Diet and Health Research Industry Club (DRINC) UK.