Communication

Health and Wellness: Concepts and Designs

Before I go any further, I’d like to point out that our initial website is up: Pebble In A Pond

wtf does that mean?!

Simply, it is a metaphor of our purpose. A single pebble dropped into a calm pond, causes ripples to spread further and wider. There is a dualistic relationship here: One is that the change the pebble has made spreads farther over time and reaches the edges of the pond. This is indicative of the change and impact we as individuals have on the whole. Secondly, the wave formation is also a pattern of knowledge spreading. Each educated person will share their insights and pay if forward. As more individuals become involved and active, the more influence will rapid transform our old way of living into something new, cleaner, healthier and simple better.

So back to the concepts and designs.

Our group has come up with two strong candidates. The first being a list making system that uses a profile of an individual to create a list that is used during grocery shopping indicating healthy alternatives. The recommendations would not replace the list of goods normally purchased by any individual, but provide them knowledge of alternatives and details of why it is healthier. There are two components: An online system where detailed information is researched and tracked while the other is the list itself acting as a simple artifact of transferable knowledge. Other similar systems exist, where individuals can provide a service provider with options of food to be delivered to their home. While this is great, there can be more involvement from the user to make it more exciting, educating and useful.

Secondly we have the mobile (wearable, think bracelet, watch, keychain, etc) senor. This idea spins off the notion of boy scouts and their badges that they earn. Imagine you had this keychain where it knew when you decided to recycle instead of trash the can of soda or you decided to ride the bus instead of taking your car. Hell, you decided to walk instead of riding the bus. Each instance triggers the keychain to calculate new values of how much carbondyoxide you are eliminating from your everday decisions. These values can be viewed from an online profile (yes another one, but they are necessary to do anything personal these days, unless I’m oblivious to something revolutionary). Going even further, if these values are traced over time, then trends can be inferred showing to some estimate the awesomeness that you are by being a little bit wiser. Even better, you could possible infer the money saved by not driving your Hummer or BMW.

More to come as we sketch out some scenarios and I can get some scans in to show you all the cool stuff we’re working on. Stay tuned!