Solution Brainstorm

Today, we met to brainstorm solutions to the problem of making portion control fun. We began by getting everything we could think of up on paper. Our brainstorming session is recorded by the picture at right. No idea was to wacky! We were aiming for quantity, not quality.

Then, we organized those ideas into sets of similar ideas.

We then voted on our favorite ideas, narrowing it down to these five

• an interactive toy measuring system, like something you build to make more measurements (inspired by LEGO and Transformers)
• a measuring system that molds around things, such as your hand. Then when you hear, "A serving of rice is the size of your fist", you can actually make a hole the size of your fist to measure your rice
• a Tupperware system with built in scales that gives audio/visual feedback based on how long the food has been in the fridge. (ie, it makes a happy noise when the food is fresh, and less happy noises as it slowly approaches bad)
• a recipe book with pop-out measuring puzzles. For each recipe, there is a page with the necessary measurements for that recipe, which (like the collapsible measuring cups) can be popped out into a three dimensional form to measure the ingredients for the recipe.
• measuring cups designed to look like fake fruit--useful as well as ornamental!
• a portion control plate where the appropriate portion markings are built into the design of the plate, making it less obvious and more beautiful

We each took one of these items to prototype, so that we could take the prototypes to people and get feedback to iterate our design.