Mihir Digavlekar

Aaaand thats a wrap! Don't know when we would return to tumblr.......ever😂

Finally, we present to you our concept video, where we've tried to briefly explain how our solution will work by communicating with the user and collecting data about their habits and health. We aim to give support to those who need it, and promote a more empathetic and optimistic approach towards mental health issues

Cheers!

Behind the mountain load of research we did, were some very helpful resources which helped us gain insights into the life of people dealing with eating disorders.

Please note! We mistakenly posted the video of the app prototype slightly early due to connectivity issues. For analysis purposes, please consider the video to be located here. Thanks!

In our ecosystem, the app allows the user to input their bodily parameters and daily routine to help Embody track the user’s physical and mental health as well as their meal habits. The simple interface displays information collected about the user’s behaviour over time. It also allows the user to take a break from the trigger inducing social media platforms and gives them a curated feed of positive affirmations and self love promoting content.

Demonstrated above are two examples of conversations between the user and the Voice User Interface of the Wing. The Wing talks to the user like a friend, making them feel comfortable and trusting towards the device, and gives them advice along with reassurance. The mirror in the Wing lets the user see themselves as the device tells them good things about their body, thus helping them internalise the thought and powerfully impacting them by making them love each part of themselves.

The ecosystem of our product, EMBODY, consists of three products; the Wing, which is a portable table top device that acts as a tangible interface between the user and product, the smartphone app, which collects and analyses data for the user, and the smartwatch, which is used to detect hand movements which might symbolise that the person is consuming food.

The Wing is the tangible part of our solution which acts as a device to encapsulate the interactions between the user and Embody’s Voice User Interface. The VUI of the device converses with the user like a friend to make them comfortable, while the in-built camera tracks weight changes and facial expressions of the user. The mirror of the device (which flattens to form a smooth surface), becomes a powerful tool for Wing to help the user manifest all the positive thoughts told to them by the VUI, by looking at themselves and identifying their beauties. The fan shape, which was once used to shy away from strange eyes, will now again become the companion of those who are insecure.

To help us identify pain points of our user base, we developed a persona of an adult woman named Divya, who has become accustomed to binge eating since the pandemic began. We developed a scenario around her traits and tried to identify the issues and triggers she faces which will help us gain further insights about our problem.

After much contemplation and analysis, we were able to derive some insights from our research. These insights helped us further develop our design brief which we then took further to consider for our design solution.

In this section, we explore the context of our problem, how it developed during the pandemic, and coping methods for the same. While eating disorders have been around for long, poor mental health conditions led to a rise in their numbers, with people turning to food, or away from it, to seek control and assurance.

(Ideally, this video should be located a few posts above at a place which is marked by a link. Please consider it to be located as such.)

Following our intense brainstorming and research sessions, we came up with this initial brief to help direct our thoughts further.

So, we read a LOT of articles, blogs, research papers, etc. to collect data about eating disorders and their different aspects.

The first step of our design process was to brainstorm the given topic; the effects of COVID 19 pandemic on people’s mental health. After putting our brains together and going wild for a while, we started to make sense of our idea dump by grouping together similar thoughts to create clusters which helped us converge in narrower directions.

The documentation of our design process begins here! :)