D/E Project

In my Intro to Engineering class, I, along with a two others, were tasked with addressing a health issue that the University of Pittsburgh faces and creating a prototype to help remedy the issue. Our group's goal was to promote healthy eating habits at University of Pittsburgh Dining Halls such as the Eatery. Before creating prototypes, our group went out to interview fellow students in order to better understand how healthy habits played a role for students. Common trends that we found, were that many students often wished that they were better educated about healthy eating habits and that many students at University Pittsburgh dining halls found that eating healthy at was often inconvenient. Based on feedback from the people we interviewed, we created three prototypes aimed at solving these issues.

Prototype 1

Our first prototype was a meal builder app. This prototype attempts to educate students about healthy eating habits and also tries to make eating healthy more convenient. With this app you would be able to organize your diet, track eating habits, compare your diet to a healthy diet, and visualize your health related to food.

Prototype 2

Our second prototype was a Meal Suggestion Screen. This prototype would consist of a screen inside of at all dining halls at the University of Pittsburgh that would display healthy meals created by dietary experts for that day in addition to telling students where each component of that meal would be found. The aim of this prototype allows for students to get a grasp of what a healthy diet looks like in addition to make it more convenient for students to maintain a healthy diet.

Prototype 3

Our third prototype was a dietary course. This prototype would a mandatory course that all incoming students at the University of Pittsburgh would take. The main goal of this prototype would be to educate incoming students about healthy eating habits. Furthermore, this prototype could also administer surveys to students about their dietary habits and collect that data so that the school could use that information to make informed decisions.

Prototype Reception

After creating our prototypes, we went out to test them with students around campus. Based on our interactions with students, we gained valuable insight about what are protypes do well and what we need to improve on. For example, many interviewees suggested that we combine the features of both prototype one and prototype two into one individual prototype. Furthermore, many students did not like prototype three as they did not like the idea of being required to take another educational course on top of the other ones required. After the numerous amounts of information gained from our interviews, we deduced that prototype one was our prototype of three and that any future effort would be put into that prototype as opposed to the others.

Prototype Presentation

After deducing what our best prototype was, I had to deliver an elevator pitch to my peers. The elevator pitch was meant for me to talk about our group's prototype and how it solves the issue of unhealthy eating on the University of Pittsburgh's campus. Following the presentation, I had to evaluate my presentation and the presentation of others and determine what I did well and I what I need to improve upon.