Case: Non-intrusive Monitoring

I have been reading further on non-intrusive ways of monitoring a person’s health and have found an article about how hair can be used to provide a vast range of information about a person’s nutrition and health conditions.

Analysing the hair can provide further information than blood tests. Hair can indicate the body’s mineral levels over a period of time where as a blood test only provides information at one point in time, when it was removed from the body.

‘Hair Mineral Analysis’ is the name of this test and there are many reasons for taking a test of this nature. It can help explain the cause of unsolved problems a person might be suffering from or the test could be used to help explore the best way to treat an illness or a disease.

I’ve seen many places that offer to do a hair mineral analysis, most of which involve sending a hair sample to a laboratory for testing. I have yet to find a portable device that analysis the hair. Therefore as it stands the hair mineral analysis currently might not be a portable idea that could be pursued, but it does show another form of technology in using a non-intrusive method to find out a person’s well being and might be useful in the development of our idea.

Information is from an article found here

Here is another example of a non-intrusive means of monitoring a person’s health:

Elliot found an interesting device (Viterion 100/500) that can measure blood pressure, blood oxygen, blood sugar, weight, temperature and other body readings. Its primary use is for patients who need to be monitored, as the information is then sent to the hospital. This could be adapted to our needs, as the device could send 'easy to understand' output to the child in the form of educational information/games/pictures etc.

Image of the device:

Although the exact technology may not exist currently, we have good evidence to show that the technology is improving and heading in the direction of having non-intrusive body monitors. This means we could develop a device that a child has strapped to their arm (as discussed in the meeting) that could use 'body' readings to prompt the child on how to eat/exercise depending on its readings.

More information on Viterion can be found here

This post was written in conjunction with Elliot Hyde.

Admin: Persona Template

Microsoft follow a persona template that we should follow, as it is a good example of a good template. It contains all the information we should need:

Some of the points can be ignored, use your discretion. We could also decide a set format for the 'Overview' section. On top of these points, could you try to find a photo/drawing to represent the person you are creating, like... Ash did.

More can be read about Microsoft's persona template here.

Admin: Meeting 4 Rescheduled

Due to the weather, John, Elliot and Adele were unable to get to university safely, and therefore the meeting had to be cancelled. This has now been rearranged for Monday 12th February at 3-5pm (just before HCI). Notice, starts at 3 UNTIL 5, if this is not good for you, turn up at the usual time but expect the meeting to of begun already.

What I was thinking, because we have fallen behind other groups due to the problems with meeting Russell, we should really crack on with the design process. I have a plan:

Agenda:

1. We finish off discussing the healthy eating/living brainstorm we started last time.
2. We decide on a third and final idea, giving us a total of three key areas/ideas to invest our research and effort into.
3. We all construct one persona each, Ash and Adele already have drafts done, I suggest you read theirs for inspiration. (EDIT) I have found the Microsoft persona template. Use it to structure what you need to write about. I would now like everyone to try and write a persona for Monday if possible. The next post I do will give details about the persona template.

Using the personas we create, we can evaluate the ideas we have and develop them or drop them depending on the feedback we get. Anybody with connections to children should try and briefly run our ideas passed them to pick up a general response (unless a more thorough one is possible).

We also need to discuss the time of the next meeting, which depends largely on Russell. I am unavailable Wednesday 14th and Thursday 15th, so we need to plan ahead.

Case: Thermography And Health

I know this idea may sound a little advanced, however I found it quite interesting and a different approach to monitoring body fat...

Thermography is a type of infrared imaging which detects radiation in the infrared range of the electromagnetic spectrum and then creates images based on that radiation. The amount of radiation emitted by a human being is dependent on their temperature - the hotter the person, the higher the radiation. Different temperatures are displayed in the resulting images by different colours, allowing variations in temperature to easily be seen.

The ability to monitor the temperature of different parts of the human body can be very useful in monitoring health. For example for overweight people, the imaging technique can display areas of the body that are colder than normal due to the fact their blood supply is being restricted because of the excess body fat. Thermography can also be used to monitor the temperature of different body parts during exercise.

Please click the images below to view in full:






References:
Images taken from 'Flipside', March 2007, No.21 Pages 10 - 11.