Grads/Undergrads Compete in Conference Design Competition
Two groups of UO students presented posters at the CHI 2006 Student Design Competition. CHI is the leading annual conference in the field of human-computer interaction. It was held this year in Montreal. The competition challenged students to develop computer-based systems that could address problems of nutrition and health.
Jiawei Rong, Leo Ochoa, Lee Ritter, and Erik Brown designed a "Food Information Network" to help people make better choices about the food products they purchase. The design process followed a scenario-based design methodology, which included field studies, writing activity scenarios, and early user testing with a paper-based prototype. A portion of the system was implemented, and additional user testing was done in an actual grocery store with the system running on a cell phone and a Palm simulator.
Victor Hanson-Smith, Daya Wimalasuriya, and Andrew Fortier addressed the national crisis of Type II Diabetes by designing a system called "NutriStat--Tracking Young Child Nutrition" that tracks a child's nutritional intake throughout the day. The system is useful for situations such as when a child is fed breakfast by one caregiver, lunch by another, and dinner by another. As part of their requirements analysis, the students interviewed food-bank administrators, parents of young children, a pediatric nutritionist, and an expert on the topic of fast-food media.
The projects submitted by these students were selected by expert judges to compete in the next round of the competition at the conference. The projects were developed in two classes that were integrated in the Fall term. The classes were CIS 443/543 User Interfaces, taught by Prof. Anthony Hornof, and ARTD 463/563 Communication Design, taught by Prof. Ying Tan in the Digital Arts program. The students and faculty in the two courses collaborated in the classroom and on their projects. Two of the students in the first group (Ochoa and Ritter) are students in the Digital Arts program.