Food Literacy while Shopping: Motivating Informed Food Purchasing Behaviour with a Situated Gameful App
Marcela Bomfim, Sharon Kirkpatrick, Lennart Nacke, and James Wallace. 2020. Food Literacy while Shopping: Motivating Informed Food Purchasing Behaviour with a Situated Gameful App. In Proceedings of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - CHI EA '20. doi:10.1145/3313831.3376801
Abstract
Establishing healthy eating patterns early in life is critical and has implications for lifelong health. Situated interventions are a promising approach to improve eating patterns. However, HCI research has emphasized calorie control and weight loss, potentially leading consumers to prioritize caloric intake over healthy eating patterns. To support healthy eating more holistically, we designed a gameful app called Pirate Bri's Grocery Adventure (PBGA) that seeks to improve food literacy—meaning the interconnected combination of food-related knowledge, skills, and behaviours that empower an individual to make informed food choices— through a situated approach to grocery shopping. Findings from our three-week field study revealed that PBGA was effective for improving players' nutrition knowledge and motivation for healthier food choices and reducing their impulse purchases. Our findings highlight that nutrition apps should promote planning and shopping based on balance, variety, and moderation.